Adulteration of Honey, Syrups and more...
In the last blog, we discussed how the pasteurization process that makes honey adulterated and destroys many of the key nutrients provided by honey in its raw form. If you missed that email, here’s a link to get you up to speed! Now we will dive into how else honey can be fraudulent.
Watch the blog highlights here: https://youtu.be/gEfkdAyEXtI
Facts about adulterated honey.
- Honey is the third most counterfeited food product
- In doing research on fraudulent honey, Vice found that 70% of honey in the U.S. is either adulterated or fraudulent.
- Other countries, such as China, are known to adulterate their honey and have their honey shipped to other countries to import to the US to hide where they are originally from.
- Countries that ship honey to the U.S. store their honey in metal barrels which contaminates the honey, making it contain various heavy metals that are detrimental to one’s health.
- Bees will be fed sugar water instead of nectar and honey to help them produce more honey. This ends up leaving the honey without the key micronutrients that makes raw honey so valuable.
With the production of honey being a very labor intensive process it makes sense as to why some of these other countries and bee keepers want to cut down on costs and make the most bang for their buck. Adding rice, corn or other syrups to the honey directly delude it and create a food product that is not pure honey.
With the sugar water example, there are some instances to feed the bees sugar water, like in difficult times and tough months for pollen, but feeding them sugar water/ syrup regularly is like feeding them junk food.
“I knew a beekeeper who fed sugar syrup to her bees all spring and summer with honey supers in place and then marketed her product as “pure honey.” -Honeybeesuite.com.
Because honey originates from pollen, the source of the honey should be directly correlated with the pollen that was used. In many cases food investigators have struggled with finding the source of various honeys. Some companies will filter their honey so much that it will have zero pollen in it, leaving us to question is it even considered honey anymore?
With a large amount of honey fraud going around it is always best to know where your honey comes from! Our Vitamin Honey is always made with raw honey. We have quality ingredients because it matters what you put in your body!
If you want to use honey for its health benefits, make sure to buy high quality. If you just want to use honey as a sweetener, you are better off saving some money and buying table sugar.
SOURCES
https://www.insider.com/fake-honey-problems-how-it-works-2020-9
https://www.vice.com/en/article/884kq4/your-fancy-honey-might-not-actually-be-honey
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/health/the-honey-trap-74476
https://www.honeybeesuite.com/turning-syrup-into-honey/
https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/food-fraud-and-commonly-mislabeled-foods-31388