Monday morning myth: royal jelly is good for you

Royal jelly is not just good food, it is great food—for honey bees. But let’s leave it at that. Just because it’s a super food for honey bees doesn’t mean it’s the same for humans.

Consider this: with a little help from their symbiotic friends, termites eat wood. The termites grow healthy and strong and have few problems with heart disease and cancer. Termites are never arrested for drunk driving and not one has ever failed a college entrance exam. But if you serve a log to your toddler for dinner, your parenting skills will definitely be called into question.

And how about dung beetles? They eat dung. This super food meets their nutritional requirement for vitamins, minerals, and energy. I’ve heard that the baby beetles grow strong, are never unemployed, and seldom need orthodontics. All the essentials of dung beetledom are found in one slippery package. But feed the same to your family and child protective services will relieve you of all further responsibility.

According to various sources, royal jelly is about 68 percent water, 13 percent crude protein, 11 percent sugar, and 5 percent fatty acids. The rest is a variety of vitamins, minerals, and enzymes—none of which are unique to royal jelly. There are no miraculous components or secret ingredients. It will not cure your disease, improve your sex life, or make you rich and famous. It is not regulated by the FDA and no scientific studies have shown it to affect human health one way or the other.

Regardless of the inanity, people pay top dollar so they can eat royal jelly. How strange is that? It is extremely difficult to collect so it is very pricey. But no matter how much you pay or how much royal jelly you eat, you will never be queen, not even for a day. Trust me.

So save your money and let the bees keep their royal jelly. It’s their province and they deserve it. Besides, we humans have chocolate, so how can we complain?

Rusty