How adding honey to your yogurt improves gut health

Evidence has been building about the health benefits of probiotics. Now, new research has found that putting a tablespoon of honey on your yogurt helps the probiotics it contains to survive in the gut. It’s a win-win combination that’s both healthy and delicious.

Humans love to ferment food and drinks – think kimchi, kombucha and beer – and we’ve been doing it for tens of thousands of years.

Yogurt is a fermented favorite. Conventional yogurts are produced by fermenting milk using a standard ‘starter culture’ of Lactobacillus and Streptococcus bacterial species; probiotic yogurts supplement the starter culture with probiotic strains such as Bifidobacterium animalis.

There’s growing evidence that consuming probiotics positively affects mood and gut health. Given that honey is commonly added to yogurt, a source of probiotics, researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign examined the effect that adding honey to yogurt had on the gut microbiome across two studies.

“We were interested in the culinary pairing of yogurt and honey, which is common in the Mediterranean diet, and how it impacts the gastrointestinal microbiome,” said Hannah Holscher, associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, part of the College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at the University of Illinois, and the corresponding author of both studies.

In the first study, the researchers examined whether adding one of four varieties of honey – alfalfa, buckwheat, clover, and orange blossom – to a commercial yogurt (Activia) containing B. animalis affected the survivability of probiotics in the yogurt during digestion. They added 42 g (two tablespoons) of honey to 170 g (two-thirds of a cup) of yogurt and exposed the mixture to solutions in the lab that mimicked digestion in the mouth, stomach, and intestines.

“The enzymes in our mouth, stomach, and intestines help with digestion and facilitate nutrient absorption, but they also reduce the viability of microbes,” Holscher said. “That’s great when it’s pathogens but not necessarily when it comes to beneficial bacteria. We wanted to see if honey could help probiotic bacteria survive in the gut.”

For the mouth and stomach solutions, the researchers observed no difference in B. animalis survival between the different honey varieties and control versions (yogurt mixed with sugar or water). However, yogurt with honey – particularly clover honey – helped probiotic survival in the intestinal phase of digestion.

Then, the researchers tested their findings from the first study in a clinical study. Sixty-six healthy adults were randomly assigned to two groups: the control group ate 170 g of commercial pasteurized yogurt with B. animalis twice daily for two weeks, and the treatment group ate the same amount of the same yogurt plus 21 g of clover honey for the same amount of time. After two weeks, and following a four-week washout period, the treatment and control groups swapped. Participants were asked not to consume supplemental or dietary probiotics, fermented dairy products and fermented foods. They provided fecal samples and information about their bowel movements, as well as completed questionnaires to evaluate their mood, cognition, and overall well-being.

“Our findings showed that pairing honey with yogurt supported the survival of the yogurt’s probiotic bacteria in the gut, so the lab study results did translate to real-world application in humans,” Holscher said.

However, the researchers found that adding clover honey to yogurt did not affect how long food took to travel through the gut, frequency of bowel movements, mood, or cognition. Holscher attributes this to the participants being healthy to start with.

A small follow-up study was conducted wherein 36 participants consumed yogurt with sugar. Comparing the results of all three study conditions, the researchers found that combining yogurt and honey preserved the most probiotics, but there was no effect on the other health factors measured.

“We found that one tablespoon of honey in a serving of yogurt helps support probiotic survival,” said Holscher. “However, we have to keep in mind that honey is an added sugar, and most Americans need to be cognizant of the amount of sugar in their diet to maintain a healthy body weight. But adding a little bit of honey to unsweetened yogurt is a nice culinary pairing to incorporate into your menu rotation.”

Both the first and second studies were published in The Journal of Nutrition. The research was supported by the National Honey Board.

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