90% of the aticle is spent implying that heating up honey to prevent crystallization somehow makes it "not honey". I'm not sure I follow the logic there.
Fancy honey might not actually be honey
61–70 of 115 posts
Re: Fancy honey might not actually be honey
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why all the talk about globalization? The problem is US-based companies fraudulently representing sugar syrup as honey. Would it make a difference if they called locally produced sugar syrup “Tennessee Honey”? The use of Vietnamese syrup over domestic syrup is irrelevant to the overall fraud.
We went through all this same stuff circa 1880-1920 and that's what lead to the rise of "brands" because you didn't know what was in some random white box soap but at least you knew you could trust Dove(TM) soap not to have nasty stuff in it (or whatever, just an example).
You could. Now, you can't. Because a) known brands are pulling their own shenanigans, b) white-labeling of China manufactured goods on Amazon, et al. essentially turns into a DDoS on the idea of brands.
Re: Fancy honey might not actually be honey
#6390% of the aticle is spent implying that heating up honey to prevent crystallization somehow makes it "not honey". I'm not sure I follow the logic there.
It makes it no longer raw honey (depending on your definitions).
Re: Fancy honey might not actually be honey
#64Re: Fancy honey might not actually be honey
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
You sound exactly like the kind of person you'd like to see branded. You first.
Mean words on the internet are rather different from violence, one would think.
Er... they're suggesting that we brand sociopaths and basically ends it at that. I'll pass on a world where having a bad day could lead to enforced disfigurement.
Re: Fancy honey might not actually be honey
#66The problem, if it is even a problem, is that 99% of the reason we initially sought out honey no longer exists. We liked it because it was the purest source of sugar that was available. We didn't care that it happened to be bee vomit flavored with a bit of plant sperm, or that we were exploiting the reproductive strategies of flowering plants, we just wanted the sweet. This is similar with maple syrup, which comes fr…
Well, I like honey because good honey tastes different from plain sugar. Traveling in Greece I tasted some honeys that were unlike anything I had ever tasted before, ranging from bitter, to floral, to earthy. It's the sweetness, sure, but not only the sweetness.
Do you like (sweetened) birch? Why or why not?
Re: Fancy honey might not actually be honey
#67And your olive oil might not be olive oil. Our daughter is allergic to sunflower oil which is commonly used to adulterate the olive oil. Chips supposedly made with olive oil will sometimes give her a rash. For bottled olive oil we try to buy local California olive oil...,
I'm friend with a Tunisian in the country we both live. One day he was really happy, because a fellow countryman brought him a jar of olive oil. I didn't understand, why the hassle of travelling half the world with a product available in any supermarket? He explain, then let me taste it. After that I understood... it's was incredibly tasty.
With the industrialization of food we (as a society) forgot the real taste of raw aliments and artisanal intermediate products.
Re: Fancy honey might not actually be honey
#68Another downside of globalization, it has become cheap and easy to move food items across the world, so Vietnamese sugar syrup can be sold here as "honey" and it becomes a race to the bottom - actual honey producers either go out of business or have to do the same thing. Then a free trade advocate will point to how much the consumer price of "honey" has declined to show how well it works. This should be straight up r…
> so Vietnamese sugar syrup can be sold here as "honey" Come again?[1][2] > it takes an NMR machine to know differently Does it really?[3] [1] https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/PDF---Guidance-for-... [2] https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_108.html [3] http://www.aoacofficialmethod.org/index.php?main_page=produc...
From [2]:
"Divisions may detain, without physical examination, the specified products from the firms listed in the Red List of this import alert."
Presumably they're not detaining every batch?
The fact that the import alert has been in place for 7 years suggests -- unless there's further clarifying data about numbers of stops and such -- that it's still a problem, that fake "honey" is being imported?
Per [3], https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17386484 "Study and validity of 13C stable carbon isotopic ratio analysis by mass spectrometry and 2H site-specific natural isotopic fractionation by nuclear magnetic resonance isotopic measurements to characterize and control the authenticity of honey." it looks like they use SNIF-NMR and SCIRA-MS (magnetic resonance and mass-spectroscopy) in determining authenticity of honey?
This, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328029044_Authentic..., is quite intersting on the topic.
I wasn't prepared to spend $15 to buy AOAC Official Method 991.41 but the above ResearchGate linked study suggested "honey" could have up to 7% corn syrup and still pass that test. Later (p.8) they summarise:
>"While the study showed that some 73% of commercial honeys analysed were classified as pure according to AOAC criteria10,11,16 and previous studies8,12,13,15,17–20 it is entirely possible this overestimated the actual number of pure honeys. This is because honey is sometimes adulterated using C-3 sugars, such as those from sugar beet7. It is unfortunate that the methods used here cannot detect this form of adulteration61. Consequently, detection of adulteration of this nature remains a challenge7.In addition to C-3 sugars, other adulterants in honey are difficult to detect due to the development of new and more sophisticated practices and lack of officially accepted analytical techniques. The use of EA-IRMS (Elemental Analysis - Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry) is the only official detection method for addition of C-4 sugar in honey42. This study also relied on a number of AOAC criteria10,11,16 to determine if honey samples were pure. As shown in Table 1, 65% (17 of 26) of samples classified as adulterated did not meet the δ13Ch-p and the C-4 sugar criteria; 9 samples also failed to meet the relevant criterion for δ13Choney<−23.5‰10. While the C-4 sugar criterion is considered robust and has broad application, the AOAC 998.1211 method does identify that a small percentage of genuine pure honeys fall outside of the accepted criterion for non-adulterated honey (≤7%)." (ibid)
Re: Fancy honey might not actually be honey
#69I could be wrong about this but... from a European perspective this strikes me as an American problem. It’d be interesting to see if the same problems applied to European honey.
One example: https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/food-safety/tesco-honey-test-not...
I suppose the key there was that it was withdrawn after this was found out (and own brand supermarket stuff is often the cheapest variant if a product with all the corner cutting that implies)
Re: Fancy honey might not actually be honey
#70I only buy honey that has crystallized a bit. AFAIK only natural honey does this. It's insane that people don't like this, so sellers are heating the honey to stop the crystallization.
It's harder to use honey that's crystallized, because it doesn't flow out the spout of the bear shapped bottle. It's not hard to warm it up yourself, but it's an extra step you need to do.