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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

#161

Post by wtvanhest »

yorwba wrote: post #52
elmomle wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is correct. They are considering the most extreme case; in the most extreme case, no non-botulism-infected infants eat honey, and honey was the cause of botulism for those 20 infants. If that is so, then completely removing honey exposure for infants would mean that 80 rather than 100 infants get botulism poisoning. So the new probability of contracting botulism is (80 / 100) * (old probability), and (80 / 100) *…

There are no errors in the calculation, but it's wrong anyways because it calculates the answer to the wrong question. "At best" suggests this is the largest possible effect, but it is the smallest possible. To get an upper bound estimate on the usefulness of avoiding honey, you would need to know how many parents of 1-year-olds are avoiding honey.

Thanks! You said that much better than I did.

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

#162

Post by loeg »

borski wrote: post #154
loeg wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Diabetes isn't caused by sugar intake.)

Not directly, no. But indirectly, by increasing weight gain and eventual metabolic syndrome, if eaten in excess… which was my point :)

Type 1 isn't caused by any of this stuff. Type 2 is caused by excess body fat -- consuming too many calories in total over a long period of time. It doesn't matter what the composition of those calories is. You can eat mostly sugar, at maintenance levels, and never be at risk for T2D.

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

#163

Post by dartharva »

> Contrary to best practices in the medical community, LLMs 1) express stigma toward those with mental health conditions and 2) respond inappropriately to certain common (and critical) conditions in naturalistic therapy settings — e.g., LLMs encourage clients’ delusional thinking, likely due to their sycophancy. This occurs even with larger and newer LLMs,...

Isn't all this just a problem of how the system prompt is set?

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

#165

Post by fc417fc802 »

cess11 wrote: post #164
jodrellblank wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your claim is refuted

The pasteurisation is not done to destroy yeast?

I doubt it, but even if that were the case it would not support your earlier claim. When fermenting things you will generally intentionally introduce a very small quantity of a carefully controlled culture to the bulk media. Which is to say, you would almost certainly have your own yeast culture at home that you would inoculate the mead-to-be with. Maintaining a sourdough start is an example of this practice.

If you want to start your own culture from scratch there are established practices for culturing "wild" yeast from the environment.

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

#166

Post by p3rls »

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…

like frogs around a pond, phaedo

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

#167

Post by mhb »

dylan604 wrote: post #160
xandrius wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The white stuff is just fat or sugar blooming, so you can totally melt down chocolate and be good to go.

Let's see, set a jar of honey in sunlight, or get out your double boiler to melt down chocolate and be sure to get out the molds that I'm sure everyone has. yeah, that's the same thing. roughly. but you'd be good to go to be sure

Is this you confidently asserting the opposite of what TFA says and what is known to be true about chocolate? Impressive.

A wise citizen once said:

It is telling how someone can think their idea is so novel, and rather than doing research go ahead and announce it like it is something new.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44503723

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

#168

Post by gwern »

gerdesj wrote: post #24
kragen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I edited "millennia" into "centuries" in my comment above because the Wikipedia article claimed those claims didn't pan out: > (However, no edible honey has been found in Egyptian tombs; all such cases have been proven to be other substances or only chemical traces.[29]) ...but the citation is from 01975. The Smithsonian page is a great link! It mentions that the pH of honey is 3–4.5 (another crucial fact omitted fro…

I'm so sorry but I can't help myself: 01975 is the dialling code for somewhere in Aberdeenshire! WP: "(However, no edible honey has been found in Egyptian tombs; all such cases have been proven to be other substances or only chemical traces.[29])" [29] is https://gwern.net/doc/history/1975-leek.pdf - this does not look like a peer reviewed paper. They do look to be reputable and they refute some rubbish documented ca…

> I'm going to call out the WP article as being factually wanting on that point.

No, it's not. What is factually wanting is any case of an actual tomb honey.

When I looked into it, every single supposed tomb honey, not already debunked by Leek, deadends in a useless citation which is 'someone somewhere once found tomb honey trust me bro'. Clearly made-up. They don't exist.

The burden of proof is on anyone who still believes in tomb honey to name a single specific verified instance, with time and place and tomb, and someone actually witnessing it and analyzing or eating it and proving it's honey, rather than several other possible residues like the Leek examples. Otherwise, it's just more telephone game nonsense.

(Note: the Leek PDF is unfortunately not working right now, because Hetzner has temporarily disabled my account over torrenting alerts.)

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

#169

Post by cess11 »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #165
cess11 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pasteurisation is not done to destroy yeast?

I doubt it, but even if that were the case it would not support your earlier claim. When fermenting things you will generally intentionally introduce a very small quantity of a carefully controlled culture to the bulk media. Which is to say, you would almost certainly have your own yeast culture at home that you would inoculate the mead-to-be with. Maintaining a sourdough start is an example of this practice. If you…

It's absolutely why its done, because people would otherwise inadvertently initiate fermentation with it.

Not seeing this and instead going for 'hehe my little dude, pasteurisation doesn't destroy the sugar, you can still add yeast and ferment it' doesn't come across as particularly impressive from my perspective.

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

#170

Post by kragen »

gwern wrote: post #168
gerdesj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so sorry but I can't help myself: 01975 is the dialling code for somewhere in Aberdeenshire! WP: "(However, no edible honey has been found in Egyptian tombs; all such cases have been proven to be other substances or only chemical traces.[29])" [29] is https://gwern.net/doc/history/1975-leek.pdf - this does not look like a peer reviewed paper. They do look to be reputable and they refute some rubbish documented ca…

> I'm going to call out the WP article as being factually wanting on that point. No, it's not. What is factually wanting is any case of an actual tomb honey. When I looked into it, every single supposed tomb honey, not already debunked by Leek, deadends in a useless citation which is 'someone somewhere once found tomb honey trust me bro'. Clearly made-up. They don't exist. The burden of proof is on anyone who still b…

Thank you very much! Maybe a real case will come to light one day, but "almost certainly don't exist" seems like a good default until then.

Condolences about the censorship.

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