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Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

theguardian.com

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Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#181

Post by nuodag »

highcountess wrote: post #48
throwup238 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Consumers don't tend to like crystallized honey," says Jill Clark, vice president for sales and marketing at Dutch Gold. "It's very funny. In Canada, there's a lot of creamed honey sold, and people are very accustomed to honey crystallizing. Same in Europe. But the U.S. consumer is very used to a liquid product, and as soon as they see those first granules of crystallization, we get the phone calls: 'Something's w…

Are you sure what you believe is unadulterated honey because you are familiar with the taste, is not just adulterated and you are just so accustomed to fake honey that you confuse the two? I say that because basically all the honey I’ve ever bought in a store has always tasted flat and lacked flavor depth that has long made me wonder about its authority compared to known hive honey.

My Grandpa is a beekeeper, i help him take care of his hives. The honey i get out of that crystallises quickly to a relatively rough texture, and has a deep taste. It is a completely different thing than what you get in the store.

I don’t know if that one is adulterated, or just processed so much that it is all flat and smooth.

Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#182

Post by tdeck »

yumraj wrote: post #122
araneae wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you /really/ want to be sure, buy comb honey. Impossible to fake.

I've seen it but never dared to buy. What do you do with the honey comb, eat it? Does it taste waxy?

Yes you can eat it and you spit out the wax. The wax is a bit flaky so I didn't find it that pleasant to chew on. Some people apparently spread it in toast like jam and eat it wax and all. It's not great for stirring into drinks.

Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#183

Post by thwarted »

liontwist wrote: post #135
thwarted wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rose colored glasses looking at the past. Nostalgia for something that never was.

How do you reconcile this with the narrative that life was unlivable 100 years ago and everyone was miserable and died of disease young?

How do I reconcile my claim that Michelangelo11 is looking at the past with rose colored glasses against your observation that things were much worse 100 years ago? These views are the same. There is nothing for me to reconcile.

Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#184

Post by thwarted »

mmooss wrote: post #74
thwarted wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rose colored glasses looking at the past. Nostalgia for something that never was.

Do you have evidence of that? Things do change, and sometimes for the worse. PE squeezing hospitals, nursing homes, and rent is a new thing. Look at rents - the inflation of them is not something that happened in the past.

The original claim that Michelangelo11 made is that society in the past was higher trust. That's the claim that needs evidence. The person who disagrees with the initial claim is not the one who needs to initially provide evidence.

Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#185

Post by gmerc »

alright2565 wrote: post #142
Etheryte wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you find this hard to believe, I recommend reading this Forbes article [0] which gives some pretty stark numbers. I've included a few select quotes below: > According to the sampling and monitoring work carried out by the Brussels-based body, almost 50% of the honey from non-European countries is cut with sugar syrups made from rice, wheat or sugar beet. > All the 10 honeys entered via the United Kingdom were mark…

fyi, "forbes.com/sites" is just some blogging platform. In this case, it's mostly right, but the original source is https://food.ec.europa.eu/food-safety/eu-agri-food-fraud-net...

You’re too generous.It runs paid influence campaigns.

Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#186

Post by liontwist »

thwarted wrote: post #183
liontwist wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you reconcile this with the narrative that life was unlivable 100 years ago and everyone was miserable and died of disease young?

How do I reconcile my claim that Michelangelo11 is looking at the past with rose colored glasses against your observation that things were much worse 100 years ago? These views are the same. There is nothing for me to reconcile.

I did not express my idea clearly. The narrative is that the past was awful, and to a degree that it sounds cartoonish. I personally think it's smelling like propaganda: "You think it's bad now? Well you should be grateful. Before we came around life was unlivable, etc."

So I'm asking why you think nostalgia is more powerful than: 1. the dominant narrative 2. The possibility of that narrative being true and living it.

Old people are not easily scammed because they are inherently stupid. It's because they grew up in a time when fewer people were trying to scam them, and are not on guard. I don't think seniors from the Soviet Union have this problem.

Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#187

Post by Der_Einzige »

colechristensen wrote: post #112
jart wrote: post #93

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…

This is the truth about most types of oil too. All oil is bad and it’s all almost the same.

Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#188

Post by esperent »

liontwist wrote: post #136
Etheryte wrote: post #10

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.

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.

Not to say there aren't some frauds out there. But the well known "honey stall dude" in my area happens to be my friend's father and I've been lucky enough to be able to go around with him to see the many many beehives he has stashed around the local countryside. For most of these people, it's a passion, and their honey is legit.

Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#189

Post by esperent »

slt2021 wrote: post #148
liontwist wrote: post #136

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

In some climates if there's been a bad year, or an inexperienced beekeeper harvested too much honey, it is sometimes necessary and normal to feed bees with sugar in autumn/winter to prevent starvation. This shouldn't make it into the honey harvested on spring and summer.

https://www.honeybeesuite.com/winter-feed-q-a-liquid-vs-soli...

Re: Beekeepers halt honey awards over fraud in global supply chain

#190

Post by fooker »

colechristensen wrote: post #112
jart wrote: post #93

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…

We share 98.8% of our DNA with chimpanzees, doesn’t make us chimpanzees.
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