I can't see how honey, fruit, or maple syrup would be much different from any other simple carbs. As far as I've seen there's not been much difference determined between sucrose and fructose metabolism, for example. The big difference would be in cutting out all simple carbs, I would think, and then in cutting out carbs in general and going full ketogenic.
The complex sugars in fruits and honey are different from table sugars because of the way they are metabolized by your body. They don't spike your insulin as much, and can also add essential nutrients to your diet. Nothing in dieting (and life for that matter) needs to be done on the extremes, oftentimes common sense and moderation prevail.
Fruits and honey do not have complex sugars. They have simple sugars like fructose, glucose and maltose. Fructose doesn't spike your insulin as much, but it's also 50% of table sugar. So honey is chemically almost the same as diluted sugar.
Most of the nurtients in honey is small bee pieces. The rest of it is sugars and water.
Excluding water, honey is about 85% fructose and glucose in a ratio which is close enough not to matter to HFCS. It also has about a 10% of maltose and sucrose.
Either there is something extremely protective in that remaining 5% that we all should consider supplementing ourselves with or the whole 'honey is healthier' thing is nonsense.
