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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

#91

Post by araneae »

jart wrote: post #79
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.

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…

I'm sorry you're just hearing this only right now, but unfortunately it's been happening for a while, and we've also known it for a while.

I.e. https://food.ec.europa.eu/food-safety/eu-agri-food-fraud-net... found widespread fraud and put measures in place to prevent it, but it continues to be challenging.

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

#92

Post by avidiax »

acomjean wrote: post #84
yumraj wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can heat it in a microwave to reverse the crystallization. Do not do this ifs the honey is in a squeezable bear container. The honey will boil, make a hole in the bear and spray honey all over the inside of your microwave (the turntable helps this). This will make a huge mess and will make opening the microwave more challenging.

Sous-vide at 110F. It will take hours, but it won't affect the flavor.

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

#93

Post by jart »

_3u10 wrote: post #87
jart wrote: post #79

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.

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...

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

#94

Post by crazygringo »

fsckboy wrote: post #83

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…

> 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 observed how the antimicrobial properties diminish as adulteration increases.

Now, does this mean honey has health benefits when you eat it? Not necessarily. The antibiotic properties have traditionally been utilized when applying honey on top of a wound to prevent infection -- not by eating it.

You may very well be right that consuming honey isn't any different from consuming HFCS. But it does have a lot of additional chemical compounds in it (as the antibiotic properties demonstrate), so the best answer is that we really don't know.

In any case, it is demonstrably not "just sugar syrup". But yes, you're probably correct that it will give you diabetes just as fast as Mountain Dew.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey#Antibiotic

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37107465/

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

#95

Post by araneae »

yumraj wrote: post #55
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.

Now old dudes will buy supermarket honey and unlabeled jars. Unverifiable provenance in both cases..

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

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

#96

Post by cortesoft »

Michelangelo11 wrote: post #5

Feels like wherever you turn, you see a high-trust society disintegrating into a low-trust one.

How would you distinguish that from a society that is slowly discovering long lasting frauds that have been going on for decades?

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

#97

Post by _yb2s »

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.

All of the honey I buy at grocery stores crystalizes almost immediately… sugar syrup won’t do that. I usually buy something that appears to be directly from a local farm with a name and address I recognize, and is in a regular mason jar with no fancy branding.

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

#98

Post by throwup238 »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #80
throwup238 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had raw honey straight from both domesticated and wild hives as it was collected so unless the bees themselves are adulterating it, I think I’ve got an accurate baseline for how honey is supposed to taste. Go out and buy a good manuka or wild Himalayan honey and you’ll quickly learn how to spot the real stuff. The honey I buy isn’t meant to look like filtered golden sugar syrup so adulterating it is practically…

I remember an episode of Dirty Jobs where there was an old candy plant or something that bees had gotten into, and they made blue honey from the syrup that was left over in the plant. Rare, but possibly the bees were doing a swindle.

From my limited understanding almost all beekeepers give their bees sugar syrup to help them overwinter anyway so nothing stops them from supplementing their diets in the spring. It’s obviously not ideal since a lot of the other aromatics from pollen will be missing but it’s still a step up from mixing the end product with sugar syrup.

Blue honey sounds cool though.

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

#99

Post by WhiteDawn »

RHSeeger wrote: post #45
Etheryte wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many studies into this, but this Forbes article [0] is a good example: > Of 123 honey exporters to Europe, 70 are suspected of having adulterated their products, and out of 95 European importers checked, two-thirds are affected by at least one suspect batch. This is only one example, similar stings elsewhere have likewise found bleak results. As the son of a beekeeper I can attest to this, the honey you fin…

> Of 123 honey exporters to Europe, 70 are suspected of having adulterated their products That sounds better than the rates I saw of good/bad extra virgin olive oil, and you can most certainly find good EVOO at a grocery store; you just need to know what brands to look for. Is there any reason to believe it isn't the same with honey? If not, then that's a pretty far cry from "If you see honey at a supermarket, no you…

And similar to olive oil. Once you taste the real deal, it's very easy to identify the fake/watered down stuff by taste alone.

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

#100

Post by fsckboy »

crazygringo wrote: post #94
fsckboy wrote: post #83

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…

> 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…

when people are sloppy with language, they're probably sloppy with the science too.

>But it does have a lot of additional chemical compounds in it

if a jar of honey had one sloughed off cell from the colon of a honeybee, it would have "a lot of additional chemical compounds in it" because there are a lot of chemical compounds in a single cell. As a percentage of a jar of honey it's trace amounts. Govt standards for selling grains specify the acceptable quantities of rodent feces and insect parts, because it's not practical to take those numbers to zero. Nobody talks about the benefits of eating grain because of trace chemicals from that. I'm not saying trace amounts don't matter, I'm saying evidence based or gtfo.

I'm not saying don't look at it, I'm saying be reasonable and don't draw conclusions without conclusive evidence. One piece of conclusive evidence we have is that it is extremely difficult for scientists to tell the difference between authentic and adulterated honey, and it requires extreme measures not generally taken for foodstuffs, measures never said to be indicative of nutritional value.

>(as the antibiotic properties demonstrate)

no, any antibiotic properties would not demonstrate "a lot of additional chemical compounds". A chemical antibiotic component might be found to be a single compound.

I'm not saying people are not allowed to establish a religious cult of honey and have kosher-honey rules; I'm saying that for people not in the cult, the difficulty of telling the differences makes you wonder what you're hoping to find out, or why you should pay high prices, and as a practical matter makes it very difficult to police the marketplace.

the honey market in terms of fraud is much much worse off than the olive oil market. Some people could take advantage of this in their personal lives by switching to fake honey.

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