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The chemical secrets that help keep honey fresh for so long

bbc.com

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Re: The chemical secrets that help keep honey fresh for so long

#141

Post by BobbyJo »

IAmBroom wrote: post #125
grues-dinner wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something that I think about sometimes. Life on Earth has had billions of years and expanded to fill so many niches, but they're nearly all damp niches. Nothing has ever really managed to really thrive in deserts. Sure, there are a few cacti, succulents, a bit of scrub, a few palms and rodents and a few birds that eke out an existence. But really it's mostly barren, compared to temperate or tropical climates…

> Life on Earth has had billions of years and expanded to fill so many niches, but they're nearly all damp niches. Nothing has ever really managed to really thrive in deserts. By definition, the desert "niche" IS filled. It has as much life as it can support. That doesn't mean wall-to-wall forest; you wouldn't expect to find that covering a field of barely weathered granite, either. All life on Earth uses water to tr…

I think you missed the point of parent's comment.

> All life on Earth uses water to transport chemicals and ions across its cells. Period. It's one immutable requirement of life on Earth.

They were pondering this. With billions of years of evolution, life has found no way around this, and that's interesting.

That's all they were saying.

Re: The chemical secrets that help keep honey fresh for so long

#142

Post by OJFord »

bob1029 wrote: post #135
computerphage wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it relative humidity that matters here instead of absolute humidity?

Relative humidity is an easier unit to work with because it auto scales with temperature.

I think GP knows that and it's exactly their point: why do you need slightly less water to stop mould growth as the temperature slightly drops? (If anything, one might expect the opposite anecdotally - it's e.g. hot and humid bathrooms that are particularly prone.)

Re: The chemical secrets that help keep honey fresh for so long

#143

Post by OJFord »

cypherpunks01 wrote: post #28

This article is missing what I think is a pretty important PSA on the topic of bacteria in honey: Honey commonly contains small amounts of the anaerobic bacteria Clostridium botulinum, which causes botulism. This is why you should not feed honey to infants, because their immune systems cannot safely handle any amount of it yet. Even though the levels apparently are small enough for the rest of humans to consume worry…

Americans/people on the internet worry far far far too much about botulism.

Re: The chemical secrets that help keep honey fresh for so long

#144

Post by some_random »

serf wrote: post #140
some_random wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know that that "It has as much life as it can support"? What would an unfilled niche look like?

an unfilled niche would have the known properties of life with resources so bounding that there isn't a strict need for competition for survival. (a brand new uncovered dish of agar media) a populated biome has an active +- exchange of resources between participants that facilitates the need for competition due to resource bounds. (the rain forest, most of the biological world) a sterile biome has no known properties…

Thank you, and I knew all that time studying spherical cows would come in handy one day!

Re: The chemical secrets that help keep honey fresh for so long

#145

Post by [deleted] »

grues-dinner wrote: post #91
Jun8 wrote: post #30

Same principle, reducing water activity (aw), is how Nutella keeps fresh for so long without refrigeration: its water activity is even lower than honey. Most bacteria need an aw of around 0.85 to thrive, Nutella’s aw is around 0.4, honey’s around 0.5-0.6. Peanut butter is 0.7, so it stays fresh for relatively long, too. Here’s the definition of water activity from FDA: https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enfor…

This is something that I think about sometimes. Life on Earth has had billions of years and expanded to fill so many niches, but they're nearly all damp niches. Nothing has ever really managed to really thrive in deserts. Sure, there are a few cacti, succulents, a bit of scrub, a few palms and rodents and a few birds that eke out an existence. But really it's mostly barren, compared to temperate or tropical climates…

[deleted]

Re: The chemical secrets that help keep honey fresh for so long

#146

Post by kragen »

bookofjoe wrote: post #118
kragen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

vlovich123 may be correct that I am giving the BBC too much credit in general. But I don't think I'm especially well-informed; I'd never heard of methylglyoxal before looking this up in Wikipedia. I agree that its focus is somewhat wrong. I don't think that the backgrounder on the importance of food preservation is completely without value. It's just that it's already fairly well known that food rots and why. My larg…

>I think it's fine to have lots of the wrong kind of details, but it's not fine to omit the right ones. Who decides which are "wrong" and which are "right?"

The title of the article, "The chemical secrets that help keep honey fresh for so long," seems like a good criterion in this case.

Re: The chemical secrets that help keep honey fresh for so long

#147

Post by SeanDav »

I used to keep a few bee hives until I started getting increasingly severe reactions to bee stings, so reluctantly quit before I had an anaphylactic reaction.

Utterly fascinating and wonderful hobby and contributes towards the environment, while having a delicious outcome. Could not recommend enough!

Re: The chemical secrets that help keep honey fresh for so long

#148

Post by loeg »

borski wrote: post #83
tayo42 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whole food crunchy Instagram grifters push that infants should eat honey Though tbh do people really eat that much honey? I only have some in my kitchen to have with tea when I have a cold. Other then that I almost never use it.

Yes. I literally collect different honey (including from my own hives) and my love of it is very strong. And no, I don’t have diabetes yet. I’m not insane about it, but I do have it frequently.

(Diabetes isn't caused by sugar intake.)

Re: The chemical secrets that help keep honey fresh for so long

#149

Post by kragen »

positr0n wrote: post #43
vlovich123 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure this isn’t just the Gell-Mann effect? It sounds like you’re probably better informed about this than the typical person and might be expecting a lot more detail than a newspaper would be endeavoring to try to convey. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

Isn’t the entire point of the Gell Man amnesia effect that all news is low quality, you just only realize it for topics you know a lot about? And OP evidently knows a lot about honey :)

I had a vague memory that it had some kind of antibacterial properties, but no, I don't know a lot about honey; I just went and looked it up in Wikipedia.

Re: The chemical secrets that help keep honey fresh for so long

#150

Post by alanpearce »

IAmBroom wrote: post #128
littlestymaar wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honey contains spores of Clostridium botulinum, not live bacteria. And as such, honey cannot in itself cause botulism. But the intestinal microbiot of infants (not their immune system) is not necessarily developed enough, and as such Clostridium botulinum can colonize their intestine (it strives in anaerobic environment) and then they can develop a special kind of botulism where the toxin is actually produced in thei…

You state honey cannot cause botulism, and in the very next sentence explain how it can. I think you're making a novel semantic difference, which is irrelevant to anyone puking their guts out from botulism.

I for one found the technical difference interesting
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