On-the-go superfood packed with the most bioavailable nutrients for sustained energy

In today’s culture, we tend to equate caffeine with energy. Caffeine will certainly give you “energy” in the short term, but you pay the price once the caffeine wears off. The brief perception of increased energy is actually a combination of 1) adenosine receptors being blocked by caffeine, making you feel more awake, 2) increased stress hormone adrenaline, and 3) glycogen dumping providing elevated blood glucose levels. Once this wears off, people often experience a caffeine crash as the body tries to recover from the state of hyper stimulation. This begins a positive feedback loop where people chronically consume caffeine to ward off the crash, eventually causing a state of chronic exhaustion.

Sustained energy comes from whole, nutrient-dense foods that our bodies can breakdown and distribute with little to no inflammatory metabolic byproducts. The essential fat in grass-fed ghee is a slow burning fuel source that can sustain athletes throughout their performance. Meanwhile the combination of fructose and glucose from raw honey is a fast burning fuel source that supports and replenishes lost glycogen and electrolytes in tired muscles, providing the strength to persevere during more energy intensive activities. Together, ghee and honey create a synergistic effect with the fat acting as an insulin buffer, slowing down the transport of glucose to the muscles to provide a much smoother, consistent release of energy. Without this buffer, even raw honey has the potential to cause an insulin spike.

The best way to consume honey, and all its nutrients, is the way nature intended - straight from the hive. Raw honey is naturally rich in vitamins and minerals, including B-vitamins thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, and pantothenic acid. B-vitamins help release energy from carbohydrates and fat, break down amino acids, and transport oxygen and energy-containing nutrients around the body. But when raw honey undergoes industrial processing, much of the nutrient profile is lost. Research shows that attempts to replace lost nutrients through refortification do not provide the same benefit.

Most conventional energy gels are made with ultra-processed sugars, synthetic vitamins, and preservatives that wreak havoc on your organs and negatively impact your health, athletic performance and longevity. When you consume one of these gels, you will feel a surge in energy due to a spike in blood sugar. Your pancreas secretes insulin to carry the glucose to your cells to use for immediate energy. You experience a sugar rush, followed by a sugar crash, followed by fatigue and inevitable cravings for more. Although insulin is an amazing hormone that plays a key role in transporting energy into our cells, it is crucial this hormone never gets overworked. When insulin can't do its job due to too much sugar consumption, you become insulin resistant, allowing sugar to build up in the bloodstream causing your blood vessels to harden and narrow. The inability of insulin to function properly can lead to some serious health risks including diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and organ failure. BUT, there's good news! By being your own health advocate - reading labels and learning how nutrients are utilized in the body - you can make good choices to fuel your activities and accomplish your goals without sacrificing your health!

Hunghee Energy is made in small batches with pure, nutrient-dense ingredients that are never processed or altered from their natural state. This allows your body to efficiently digest the nutrients and fuel your muscles during activity without spiking blood sugar or creating any inflammatory metabolic byproducts. Organic grass-fed ghee is a healthy fat and slow burning fuel source packed with Omega-3's. When combined with raw honey, a fast burning fuel source packed with B vitamins and enzymes, they make the perfect combo to provide a smooth release of energy during your activity. Since fat acts as an insulin buffer, honey will not cause an influx of excess sugar in the bloodstream since the pancreas and liver work together to utilize both fuel sources as needed. Honey will refuel glycogen depleted muscles to maintain strength while the fat from ghee will be converted into essential fatty acids that fuel the duration of the activity. Together, honey and ghee create this synergistic effect to fuel peak performance and adventure!

At Hunghee, we embrace ingredient transparency as a best practice and hope to inspire the food industry to do the same! Check out where our ingredients are sourced and learn more about their benefits here.

Saturated fat is naturally occurring in most animal-based foods, including organic grass-fed ghee (clarified butter). Although there is much fear around saturated fat, there really shouldn't be. Instead, we should be eliminating all processed foods and seed oils from our diets and replacing those polyunsaturated fats with quality, essential fats. Let's hear from the experts, then you can decide for yourself!

"Fat-soluble vitamins in butterfat from grass-fed ruminant animals aid mineral absorption & support endocrine function, allowing optimum physical development and lifelong good health." - Weston A. Foundation

"Grain and seed oils [like canola] have already undergone a significant degree of oxidation, and damaged fat damages you." - Max Lugavere, Nutritionist

Let's dive in a little deeper with Dr. Paul Saladino: "The word “cholesterol” is often used colloquially to refer to all of the lipoproteins in our blood, but technically, cholesterol is a steroid backbone type of molecule that is used to make all sorts of vital compounds in human physiology. Our body makes around 1200 mg of cholesterol every day for many important purposes, including the proper formation of all our cell membranes. Without cholesterol, these would fall apart instantly, and we’d melt into a pile of mush on the floor. The cholesterol molecule is also used as a precursor for all of the steroid hormones in our body. These include estrogen, testosterone, cortisol, progesterone, and aldosterone - hormones that are kind of a big deal when it comes to kicking lots of butt. The bio acids used to help digest fats are made from cholesterol as well; without them, we would quickly become malnourished and deficient in fat, soluble vitamins like A, K2, and E. When our skin is exposed to sunlight, cholesterol is also a precursor for the formation of vitamin D and cholesterol sulfite, a molecule hypothesized to play a role in preventing after atherosclerosis.

We’ve been eating animal foods with saturated fat in them for the entirety of our evolution of humans. This has led us to become the extremely intelligent, large-brained, strong, and adaptable people we are today. Science has also recently begun to support the things we already knew to be true, and studies have shown that high-fat ketogenic diets containing plenty of saturated fat reverse diabetes and insulin resistance. They also lead to weight loss and improvements in inflammatory markers, as well as a reduction in hypertension, dementia, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and a host of other conditions. Animal studies show that saturated fat does not induce leaky gut, but polyunsaturated vegetable oils, like corn oil, do open tight junctions and damage the gut lining.

The benefits of a ketogenic, fat-based metabolism are many. There’s evidence that such diets can reverse insulin resistance and diabetes, lower blood pressure, increase mitochondrial biogenesis, turn on longevity genes, and reduce oxidative stress and DNA damage. There is further evidence that these diets can decrease appetite, lead to profound weight loss, improve mood, and be protective for our brain. From a cardiovascular risk standpoint, a ketogenic diet has also been shown to decrease triglycerides and metabolic dyslipidemia while increasing HDL. On the other hand, low-fat diets generally increase triglycerides, lower HDL, and raise levels of insulin. Many of us have been wrongly led to believe that eating lots of fat will cause weight gain, but this just isn’t true. It’s completely possible to lose weight, eating fat in a 1:1 ratio with protein. The secret to this is how satiating fat is as a macronutrient. Once we start incorporating more good fat sources in our diet, we may be surprised at how full we feel throughout the day. In this situation, it’s incredibly freeing to no longer be controlled by our appetite all of the time as so many are on carbohydrate-heavy diets. We are not used to thinking of animal fat as a nutrient source, but it’s a uniquely valuable food we have sought preferentially throughout our existence that should not be neglected or undervalued.”

What happens in our body when our blood sugar spikes after meals? There’s good evidence that these high levels of glucose can damage the endothelium of our blood vessels, leading to inflammation within the vessel wall and atherosclerosis. Similarly, elevated blood sugar has been found to directly damage the gastrointestinal epithelium, the endothelium in the kidneys, and the blood-brain barrier. Elevated blood glucose levels appear to make all of the tissues of our body leaky. We definitely don’t want insulin resistance, and it appears to be the single greatest driver of chronic illness in Western populations living today, but the good news here is that it’s fairly easy to detect, and it’s completely avoidable if we pay some attention to our diet and lifestyle."

If you're still with me, I will end with a quote from Dr. Robert Lustig: "You can eat good fats in your diet or you can make bad ones in your liver."