Why we sweeten with honey, and what that does not mean

There is no refined sugar behind our counter. Not in the shakes, not in the coffee, not in the sauces. Anything that needs sweetening gets honey. People assume this is a health claim. It is closer to a kitchen decision, and it is worth being straight about the difference.

What honey is not

Honey is sugar. Roughly speaking it is glucose and fructose with some water and trace compounds. Per gram it carries slightly more energy than table sugar, though you tend to use a little less of it because it tastes sweeter. If you drink four honey-sweetened shakes a day you will be in exactly the same trouble you would be in with four sugar-sweetened ones.

Anyone selling honey as a weight-loss ingredient is selling you something. The trace minerals and antioxidants in it are real and, at the quantity you would use in a coffee, nutritionally trivial.

So why bother

Three reasons, none of them miraculous.

• It forces restraint. Honey is more expensive and more strongly flavoured than sugar, so a kitchen using it puts less in. Refined sugar is cheap and neutral, which is exactly why it ends up in everything at quantities nobody notices. Our default sweetness is lower than the equivalent drink elsewhere, and that is the part that actually matters.
• It comes with a taste. Sugar makes a drink sweet. Honey makes it taste of something. In a coffee protein shake or a fruit smoothie that is a genuine flavour advantage, not a marketing one.
• It draws a line. "No refined sugar" is a rule the whole kitchen can follow without a nutritionist present. Rules that survive a busy Saturday are worth more than rules that are technically more precise.

The same logic runs through the rest of the menu

We also do not use artificial colours, flavouring agents or preservatives. Again, not because a colouring agent will hurt you in the quantity you would eat — mostly it will not — but because a kitchen that cannot reach for them has to make the food taste good some other way. Usually that means better raw ingredients, more herbs, and actually seasoning things.

Constraints make cooks better. That is most of the philosophy.

What we would tell you at the counter

If you are counting calories, count the honey. Ask for less of it, or none — every shake on the menu can be made unsweetened, and a fair number of regulars order them that way. The point of printing the numbers on the menu is that you get to decide, rather than trusting a word like "healthy" to do the deciding for you.

More on that in the protein piece, or come and taste the difference in a coffee protein shake.