161–170 of 241 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, the USDA publishes a rule! Surely everyone will follow that and the problem is solved. Unfortunately we get the behavior that we let people get away with. Regulators are asleep, courts let companies weasel their way around everything, and reality doesn't care about published rules and standards.
Regulations like these are onerous. Have you ever watched a bee filling out a Dept of Ag or FDA form? Dept of Govt Efficiency will fix it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it's not. Honey is defined by the USDA as being flower nectar that's been processed by bees[1]. Artificial honey can not be called honey[2]. If they're mixing it with high fructose corn syrup, then there should be a way to scientifically determine that. [1] https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Extracted... [2] https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Extracted...
A 90s percent of honey is fructose, glucose, and water. A very high 90s percent of corn syrup is fructose, glucose, and water. Getting the ratios the same is trivial. There is nothing magical about fructose or glucose from different sources, they’re exactly the same simple molecule. If you had very clean corn syrup, you could undetectably dilute honey and it would be quite the same. Lab tests being what they are thes…
By the same token if you can’t taste the difference between sugar syrup and honey, then you need to get your taste checked, or perhaps you’ve never had real honey.
The flavors in honey are also deeply affected by what the bees eat. Buckwheat honey is a totally different thing than Tupelo honey, and neither are anything like clover honey.
Even if you ignore all of the health claims, saying honey is just sugars and water, you are ignoring the fact that humans want more than nutrient paste.
the reason that adulterated honey is difficult to detect is that honey is just sugar syrup, and if you add more sugar syrup you'll get more sugar syrup than you started with. the mistaken belief is that there is something special about natural honey. people: it's sugar syrup, it'll give you diabetes as fast as a truckload of mountain dew. Now, I don't believe in homeopathy, perhaps you do. But that's what the honey c…
This is false. I'd be willing to wager substantial amounts of money on my ability to differentiate good acacia honey from sugar syrup.
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13197-019-035...
Its mostly sugar water (syrup), but there is more to it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> honey is just sugar syrup That's factually incorrect. First of all, obviously it has tons of extra flavor, which indicates a whole range of additional chemical compounds. > But that's what the honey cult is, homeopathic. Honey has scientifically proven antibiotic properties [1]. > adulterated honey is difficult to detect I don't know what you mean by "difficult", but it can certainly be detected [2]. And it can be…
> Honey has scientifically proven antibiotic properties Topical antibiotic properties. Eating honey won't cure anything.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A 90s percent of honey is fructose, glucose, and water. A very high 90s percent of corn syrup is fructose, glucose, and water. Getting the ratios the same is trivial. There is nothing magical about fructose or glucose from different sources, they’re exactly the same simple molecule. If you had very clean corn syrup, you could undetectably dilute honey and it would be quite the same. Lab tests being what they are thes…
We share more than 90% of our DNA with rats. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’d like to suggest there are some qualitative differences between myself and a literal rat.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "down to earth local grower" is a form of marketing that appeals to you. It's not a guarantee of quality, and probably more variable. Many vendors at farmer's markets just buy and relabel stuff, because producing goods efficiently enough to make a profit is actually hard.
agree, a lot of honey growers feed sugar syrup to the bees to maximize honey production. it is sort of cheating
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honey supply chains are opaque and global, plus the incentives to cheat are clearly there and it's hard to definitively prove a batch was not adulterated. I'd say it's fair to be suspicious. That said, this old article seems to think its not as common a problem as you would expect: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2011/11/25/142659547/re...
We buy from Costco and most/all of it crystallizes after some time. Not sure if that makes it good honey, but there’s that.
We have had wildflower honey crystallize in the honeycomb when we left it in the garage over winter.
It can be decrystallized easily with gentle heat. I put our jars in a water bath in a pot and leave it over a low setting for about an hour until it is good. The water never gets over 125 or so, which should be fine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, it's basically this. Most wouldn't survive winter.
How do they survive winter? Do they hibernate, go south or stay?
Here's a very straightforward guide to buying honey. If you see honey at a supermarket, no you don't, that's sugar syrup. If you see honey online, no you don't, that's sugar syrup. If you find an old dude with a small stand and a bunch of (most likely unlabelled) jars who only accepts cash, that's where you get real honey.
If you see honey at a supermarket, no you don't, that's sugar syrup. I get my honey from a local beekeeper who delivers to my door. He welcomes people to tour his farm to see how it's produced. He also sells his honey in the local chain supermarkets. Your broad generalization is false.
If 1/3 of the honey in the store is fake, but you don’t know which 1/3 is fake, then what is the point of buying any honey at that store? If you need advice about where to buy pure honey because you don’t personally know the farmer then, “treat everything at the grocery store as suspect” is fine advice.
If you have personally toured an apiary, know the keeper, and happen to know that he sells at a few grocery stores as well, you don’t need the advice, and your addition isn’t helpful since the end result is the same: the average person can’t trust the honey at their large grocery store, and they should find a local beekeeper.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But all the honey labels say the only ingredient is honey. We've always been able to assume that with things like jams, or any other food, when manufacturers adulterate it with things like corn syrup, or even mild poisons, they proudly say so on the label. To not do so is fraud. How can people just claim that an entire industry is committing fraud??? Even this article doesn't mention anything about proof, just suspic…
That’s because honey is sugar syrup with a liberal sprinkling of marketing. The sugar syrup they are blending it with doesn’t have the right marketing and is therefore not honey.