The Truth About Your Honey May Not Be So Sweet
By Chip Kelly, Harrison Bay Honey Farm
February 2, 2022
LOCAL RAW HONEY
Pure, raw honey is the second most faked food on the planet, closely following extra virgin olive oil. Faked? Why would anyone fake a food? Just as with crab legs, when a product reaches a certain price level, those who see a chance to profit are quick to seize the opportunity. While imitation crab meat is clearly marketed as “imitation”, that is not the case with olive oil or honey.
I don’t know the details on how extra virgin olive oil is faked, but I do know quite a bit about honey. You don’t have to be a student of economics to understand that when demand rises every year and out-paces supply, prices of the sought after product should go up. Why, then, does the price of pure, raw honey not increase with demand? The answer is the fact that much honey is thinned down and supplemented with other sugars, increasing available supply at a lower cost.
ADULTERATION
For decades, the less scrupulous honey suppliers have adulterated honey with less costly substitutes, often blended in with real honey to market to the unaware. Brown rice syrup, beet syrup and high fructose corn syrup are just a few of the most common additives to honey in past years. As consumers, retailers and governments wised up to these methods, more sophisticated additives were developed.
Today, most of the faked honey contains synthetic sweeteners developed by companies in China for the express purpose of defeating most government tests. Honey suppliers throughout the world, including India, Vietnam, Africa and elsewhere use these chemically modified beet sugars and high fructose corn syrups to mimic the structure of the honey molecule. Most recently, nuclear magnetic resonance testing has become the only reliable way of verifying authentic honey. The Chinese companies have become very adept at defeating purity test standards in use by most honey importing nations with their synthetic additives. Regrettably, only two laboratories world-wide have the equipment to perform the nuclear magnetic resonance testing at present. The two labs are in Germany and the United States, respectively.
POLLEN REMOVAL
Adulterated honey is not the only problem with honey, however. Most honey marketed in retail stores has been filtered to remove all pollen grains. It is believed that removing the pollen from honey yields a more shelf stable product that is less prone to crystallization, a natural process where the sugars in liquid honey solidify. Research done over time by labs such as Texas A&M University have found in some tests that 100% of the honey purchased from stores had all the pollen removed.
PASTEURIZATION
Worse still is pasteurization. While the acidity in honey naturally prevents bacteria and other harmful organisms from tainting pure honey, honey contains natural yeast. Yeast can ferment, so most all commercial honey packers heat honey to a level to kill the yeast. Such pasteurization has a side benefit for these commercial entities--it slows down crystallization, making for a more attractive product. Heating honey to temperatures over 105 degrees Fahrenheit has been shown to chemically modify the natural enzymes found in honey that many people believe are beneficial to human health.
THE RIGHT STUFF
Pure, raw honey is 100% honey, without additives or removal of honey. It is not pasteurized, has not been heated to temperatures above 105 degrees Fahrenheit and is unfiltered. Most frequently it is lightly strained simply to remove the odd bees, bee parts or other unwanted things that honey may come into contact with and absorb. Pure, raw honey will likely crystallize at some point. It can simply be heated and will return to its former liquid state. (Please, never heat honey in a microwave, or to temperatures over 105 degrees F.) One of my favorite methods of returning crystallized honey to a liquid is simply to place it on an “always on” heating pad and walk away for a day or two. When you return, the honey should have liquefied.
Pure, raw, 100% honey is thought to have many health benefits. While some scientific tests refute any benefits from raw honey, other scientific tests have demonstrated that honey can be beneficial to one’s health. The most common belief about pure raw honey is that if one consumes honey from one’s local area, the local pollens found within the honey can help alleviate allergic reactions to certain pollens.
HOW TO GET “THE GOOD STUFF”
For the most part, pure, raw honey is seldom found in chain stores. To achieve the level of sales necessary to make a profitable regional or national business in honey, one must heat the honey to insure it flows quickly from tank to bottle, filter it to remove pollens, and pasteurize it to kill yeast. The resulting product is real honey, but without pollen and the beneficial enzymes destroyed. In other words, it is simply a sweetener.
Commercial beekeepers produce such a volume of honey that they cannot afford to sell direct to consumer. Their customers are honey packers, such as Sioux Honey and other national and regional firms, who go through all the above processes to market their honey to national chain stores.
Around Chattanooga, many honeys sold might be authentic, but are definitely not local. Some resellers buy genuine honey from Florida or other area and sell it locally, calling it “local honey.” Still others are not real honey at all. Strange Honey Company in Del Rio, TN was sued in civil litigation in 2020 for selling a product found to contain “very little honey, and what honey that was in it, was from Vietnam.” Strange Honey Company markets “Tennessee Mountain Honey” and “North Carolina Mountain Honey”.
Pure, raw honey is most easily obtained from a beekeeper. A beekeeper who bottles the honey from his or her own hives will more than likely not heat, filter, or pasteurize honey. If you do not know a beekeeper, check with your state or local beekeeping association for a list of beekeepers with honey for sale, or ask friends if they know of a beekeeper who sells honey.
About the author:
Chip Kelly operates Harrison Bay Honey Farm, with hives in Birchwood, Chattanooga, Georgetown, Harrison, Hixson and Ooltewah. Chip holds memberships in several local, state, regional, national and international beekeeping organizations. For more information, see Harrison Bay Honey Farm on Facebook.
Additional reading:
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/11/tests-show-most-store-honey-isnt-honey/
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/raw-honey-vs-regular#TOC_TITLE_HDR_3
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/honey-fraud-detection
https://www.vice.com/en/article/884kq4/your-fancy-honey-might-not-actually-be-honey
