Congratulations Dr Wan Iryani Wan Ismail, the scientist whose research into honey, to control obesity, has won a L’Oreal – Unesco Fellowship For Women In Science (FWIS) award

Congratulations to Dr Wan Iryani Wan Ismail! 

Wan Iryani, from Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT), has been conducting research and development (R&D) on honey, for the past 10 years, and she was recently awarded the L’Oreal – Unesco Fellowship For Women In Science (FWIS).

Her research on honey is to produce a capsule-based health supplement which contains only natural honey, to treat obesity. His research covers all types of honey available in Malaysia including honeycomb and honey bees. She said that the consumption of natural honey is able to control one’s appetite and thus address the problem of obesity .

Wan Iryani said that honey is one of the easiest, cheapest and natural products available, has no side effects and contains complete nutrients to nourish the body. She said that people who claimed that they developed diabetes after consuming honey, which they said was sweet, had been eating artificial honey.

Her experiments on laboratory mice showed that mice given natural honey were generally thinner and healthier, but those eating artificial honey became fatter and had more illnesses.

Wan Iryani said that there are three ways to distinguish between natural and artificial honey besides laboratory and machine tests, and that ordinary people can use taste, smell and vision, to distinguish between natural and artificial honey.

She said that native honey has a distinctive taste and aroma derived from the plants and flowers, while artificial honey smells of sugar and water and tastes very sweet. She also said that artificial honey is a more transparent, unlike native honey which contains many active ingredients.

With the RM30,000 grant she received, Wan Iryani will continue her research to test the effects of original honey supplements on humans and to identify the dosage needed to control obesity.

She also said that she would like to give the honey to individuals who are overweight and see how honey reacts in the human body. Her research will try and discover how honey stimulates our fat cells and find out the optimum frequency of taking the supplement.

Congratulations to Prof Wan Iryani!

The public also hopes that a study will be conducted on affordable devices that can detect the difference between natural and artificial honey.