Unlike sugar – which has the nutritional benefits of Styrofoam – and chemical-spiked artificial sweeteners, honey does your body good while taking the edge off your morning or afternoon tea. For starters, the antioxidant-rich elixir protects your heart, and despite packing more kilojoules than sugar (88 per teaspoon versus 67), honey's unlikely to expand your waistline: a recent study by an European university in medical science, found that overweight or obese patients who received a 70 gram dose of honey every day for a month lowered both their total and LDL cholesterol, while they maintained or even lost weight.

The preliminary research also concluded that honey may improve memory and reduce anxiety. Need a pre-workout snack? This liquid gold call honey may also boost athletic performance. Experts have yet to pinpoint how much of the bee by-product will bring the most benefits, but a senior lecturer at a university in New-Zealand, recommends using honey anytime you would normally go for sugar, sweeteners or syrups like fake maple syrup.

Whether your pepper comes in small fiery chilli form, or as a sweeter, larger proposition, it will provide you with a super-healthy does of vitamins.

Not content with the honorable distinctions of being a cancer-fighter and immune-system booster, this righteous vegetable has one attribute few other can lay claim to – it's both a noun and a verb. It may not sound much of an accolade, but we thought it was worth mentioning – because if you pepper you dishes with peppers, you get immediate and impressive health benefits. They're rich in vitamin A, and antioxidant that combats free-radical damage, thereby protecting you against cancer and heart disease; are an excellent source of lycopene, which helps protect your prostate; and, gram for gram, contain more than three times the amount of vitamin C as oranges. The C vitamin is a nutrient your body can't store, so you need a daily intake – it's used for tissue growth and repair, as well as healthy gums, making peppers a must-eat.