Daghmous Honey's Antioxidant Strength Traces Back to Its Phenols

• Scientists isolated the phenol rich fraction from Daghmous honey and found it produced stronger antioxidant activity in laboratory tests than the whole honey did.
• Ten phenolic compounds were identified in that fraction, including gallic acid, caffeic acid, quercetin, and kaempferol.
• Aqueous extracts made directly from the Euphorbia officinarum plant scavenged free radicals more than twenty times more effectively than the honey in the same assays, and outperformed it by roughly tenfold in enzyme inhibition tests.
• The review noted that beekeepers in Morocco often sell honey from more than one Euphorbia species under a single generic label, without stating which plant it actually came from.

Take a jar of Daghmous honey, made from Euphorbia officinarum blossom, and pull out just its phenolic compounds. Test that isolated fraction against the honey it came from, and the fraction wins. A review of laboratory research on Euphorbia officinarum, published in the journal Molecules, reports that a phenol fraction extracted from monofloral Daghmous honey samples showed stronger antioxidant activity in vitro than the entire honey. Ten distinct phenolic compounds turned up in that fraction, among them gallic acid, caffeic acid, quercetin, and kaempferol.

The finding comes from a broader review that pulled together several Moroccan and Portuguese studies on the honey and plant chemistry of Euphorbia officinarum, a spiny succulent known locally as Daghmous that grows across southern Morocco. Rather than running new experiments, the review synthesizes earlier laboratory work, including free radical scavenging assays such as DPPH and nitric oxide tests, alongside inhibition tests against the enzymes acetylcholinesterase and lipoxygenase.

The same body of work found that aqueous extracts made directly from the Euphorbia officinarum plant consistently outperformed the honey in these tests. Two of the free radical assays put the plant extract's advantage at more than twenty times the honey's activity. Three further tests, covering a different radical type and the two enzyme inhibition assays, showed the plant extract still ahead by roughly tenfold. That gap fits with why the honey's own antioxidant activity was traced back to its phenol fraction rather than the honey as a whole. The review also flags a labeling problem worth knowing about: beekeepers in Morocco commonly sell honey under a generic Euphorbia origin label without distinguishing between the separate spurge species that can produce it.

These are laboratory assays on isolated compounds and extracts, not tests of what happens once honey is eaten, and the honey samples involved were limited in number rather than part of a large scale survey. The enzyme inhibition and radical scavenging results describe activity measured outside a living body, not a demonstrated health benefit.