Bee pollen: the superfood of tomorrow
When you think of healthy “food,” you might not immediately think of anything that comes from bees, except for perhaps honey. However, honey isn’t the only useful food product that bees produce. In fact, bee pollen is considered one of the best modern-day superfoods available, with some experts going as far as to consider it a medicine. So, what does the best quality bee pollen have to offer us? How is it produced? And with the dire straits that the bee population is facing, how does that affect the outlook for bee products and can we reverse that trend? All these items and more will be discussed in the following paragraphs.
What is bee pollen?
You’re probably aware that bees are one of the biggest pollinating species in the world and many plant species, such as cherries, are heavily dependent on bees to pollinate their flowers. But what exactly is bee pollen, and why should we be consuming it?
Bee pollen if created by adolescent bees that interact with flowers. Bee pollen is a combination of pollen, honey, and their saliva. The pollen is transported back to their hive and that the pollen, after fermentation, is what feeds their hive. Beekeepers are capable of harvesting this pollen from their bees by installing combs at the entrances of the hives that can whisk the pollen off of the bees’ legs.
The bees play a vital role in the fertilization process of the plants since this pollination process is what carries pollen from the male part of the plant to the female part, which allows fertilization to occur and for the plant to bear seeds. Without the bees and their tireless work, many plant species don’t survive and certainly don’t repopulate as quickly.
When you purchase bee pollen, it comes in the form of crunchy little pieces. Its nutritional value is extremely high, even for just a tablespoon or two. Bee pollen contains a lot of protein, carbs, and hundreds of vitamins, nutrients, and more. The recommended consumption for adults is 3-5 tablespoons each day, and for children just 1 to 2 tablespoons daily.
Benefits of bee pollen
The benefits are wide-ranging and numerous. Here are a few.
- First, bee pollen helps to reduce inflammation, and even offers similar results to many anti-inflammation pharmaceuticals, making it a great natural remedy if you’re dealing with inflammation in areas such as your liver.
- It also acts as an antioxidant, along the same lines as fermented items, and it contains vitamins A, C, and E along with compounds found in wine, tomatoes, and more. If you’re unfamiliar with the benefits of antioxidants, they help you to maintain your health by fighting pollutants that you inhale, such as smoke, chemicals, and pollution.
- Going along with the theme of filtering out pollutants, bee pollen also helps to keep your liver functioning at top efficiency and can even reverse liver damage to a certain extent.
- It can help to boost your immune system, which you might’ve guessed when you read that it contained a good amount of vitamin C. Bee pollen can help supplement your immune system to be able to fight viruses and illnesses as well as bacterial infections.
- There have even been links to bee pollen and the health of babies conceived by those who regularly consumed bee pollen, and even lifespan increases.
- It can also help to increase circulation of blood throughout your nervous system, which helps to lower your stress levels and increases your energy. And this increase in circulation also helps in many other areas, such as your skin’s ability to heal and even the moisture and hydration of your skin.
- It’s also shown to decrease your bad cholesterol levels and increase your heart health.
- For those who deal with menopause and the effects of that, such as hot flashes, bee pollen has been shown to ease many of these symptoms, which 71% of women included in a study reporting that bee pollen helped ease their menopausal symptoms.
- And lastly, pollen can help boost your metabolism and help your body to distribute vital nutrients better, meaning that the nutrients that you consume aren’t going to waste when combined with bee pollen.
Please note that almost all of these benefits have only been confirmed in animal studies, and very few human tests have been completed, since this product is a relatively new trend.
Possible side effects
As with all good things, it doesn’t always work for everyone, and there are possible side effects associated with bee pollen consumption. You should also ensure that your bee pollen is coming from a company that has a strict quality assurance program since there are companies that have been found to be filling their bee pollen with dangerous fillers that offer worse side effects than normal.
Even for quality bee pollen, the risk of side effects exists, and they include itching, lightheadedness, breathing complications, and swelling. For this reason, you should speak with your physician before taking bee pollen, and you should immediately stop taking it and speak with them again if you notice any of these side effects. Very few people report these effects, and most people take it without noticing anything but positives, but you should always be aware of negative side effects to look out for.
Bee pollen shouldn’t be mixed up with other bee products, such as honey. It’s possible that your honey contains bee pollen, but it’s also possible that it doesn’t and it might also include other ingredients that don’t benefit you and might actually outweigh the positives of any bee pollen that might be contained in it.
So, now that you know the wonders that bee pollen can work, you probably want to purchase some, but as we warned previously, you don’t want to just buy from any random source, since it could contain dangerous filler ingredients.
We’ll recommend a few companies that make their pollen without any additives or processing, so that you know that you’re getting only the best quality bee pollen without any dangerous fillers. When it comes to bee pollen, and most food items, less processing and less ingredients are better.
Trusted bee pollen brands
Stakich Bee Pollen is a great example of a company that does bee pollen right. They don’t process their pollen; they don’t even dry it either. The bee pollen that you get from them is the same bee pollen that they harvested, and that’s the greatest assurance you can get that there aren’t any unhealthy manufacturing or ingredient mixtures included with your pollen.
They have been in business for 95 years and have been producing bee products such as honey the whole time, so they’re experts when it comes to this stuff.
You can get it on Amazon for $17.95 for a 16-ounce pouch, which equates to about 20 to 30 adult servings, so you’re paying a fraction of a dollar for each serving, not too bad.
Another great company that is a little bit cheaper than Stakich is YS Eco Bee Farms. They also avoid processing their bee pollen and you can buy their pollen in bulk, so you can stock up for a few months and pay less over the long term, and bee pollen isn’t incredibly expensive to begin with, considering you’re paying anywhere from $15-20 per month for all of those incredible benefits.
Where to buy bee pollen:
You should also be able to buy best quality bee pollen at any supplement or nutrition store, such as GNC or Vitamin Shoppe. And many drugstores also carry bee pollen in their supplement section. And it’s available through online sources such as Amazon.
Bee pollen might be the next wave of superfoods that can work wonders for you in terms of making sure that your organs are functioning at peak efficiency, your nutritional intake is high, your immunity is high, and you’re feeling energized and relaxed. Hopefully more confirmation can come in the coming years to show the validity and magnitude of some of these benefits through human studies.
In the meantime, you’ll just have to try it for yourself and see how much it helps and how much better you feel after taking it. There are many doctors that have come out in support of bee pollen and many satisfied customers who have also claimed it works wonders.
Save the bees!
And lastly, a short PSA to remind you that the wonderful insects that give us bee pollen are in danger, and without them, we not only won’t have honey or pollen, but we won’t have one-third of the food that we currently consume.
Bees are dying off at an alarming rate due to factors such as pollution, pesticides, drought, habitat destruction, and more. To help, you can look at greenpeace.org or you can buy products that don’t use dangerous pesticides and you can help to preserve habitats.