[lukehutch]

I grew up in NZ and find it hilarious when I see a tub of manuka honey in a supermarket in the US. This is the most genius marketing ripoff of all time. Most honey you could buy in NZ back then was either clover honey or manuka honey, it cost about $3 for the same amount, and there was nothing special about manuka honey. Manuka is just teatree, by the way. And all honey has the same antimicrobial properties -- it has nothing to do with hydrogen peroxide and definitely nothing to do with UMF. The reason honey kills microbes is it has exceptionally low water content.

[spats1990]

>And all honey has the same antimicrobial properties -- it has nothing to do with hydrogen peroxide and definitely nothing to do with UMF. The reason honey kills microbes is it has exceptionally low water content.

Nah. It's about dihydroxyacetone and methylglyoxal, which are found in what is referred to as "active" mānuka honey, and which are not found (or at least not found in such high concentrations) in honey from other flowers. Dihydroxyacetone in mānuka honey converts to methylglyoxal over time. Not all honey from mānuka is "active", and there is an ongoing fight between NZ beekeepers and the NZ Ministry of Primary Industries about the latter's guidelines for what constitutes mānuka honey.

Some or all of these details are glossed over in the article, which is pretty low-quality for HN, but this has probably gone unnoticed because it's a long way from most readers' usual fields of expertise.

I think it is silly for people to buy expensive honey with labels claiming high antibacterial properties, high activity, etc, when there are no proven medical benefits to just eating it. On the other hand, its efficiency as a topical (iirc) antibacterial relative to other honeys is scientifically proven, but you generally can't use the off-the-shelf stuff for that no matter how strong the label says it is. However... people buy all kinds of silly things, and if there's a premium market for such things overseas, and no full-on marketing lies are being told, then I'm all for it. NZ needs a few high-value, high-scarcity exports to make up for all the thousands of tons of milk formula, etc.

I just wanted to push back on the idea that the whole thing isn't science-based at its core. It is. However, it's true that the marketing hype and shady practices (mixing mānuka honey with lower-value kānuka because the two can be very hard to distinguish in testing...) were out of control for a while there, and this has been reigned in somewhat by the MPI guidelines, even if those guidelines have created additional stress and strife for beekeepers in some cases.

edit: A very short primer on DHA and MG in mānuka honey: https://www.analytica.co.nz/Portals/0/Docs/Articles/DHA_MG_a...

edit 2: If any of you readers in the UK or US find yourselves standing in front of a whole shelf full of expensive imported New Zealand honey, try the Arataki rewarewa honey, which is from a honeysuckle-esque NZ native tree. That stuff is incredible.

[11thEarlOfMar]

Topical... my daughters ran around with mānuka honey on their faces for years. Word to the wise... pick your battles carefully.

[mkl]

Exactly, manuka honey was always just ordinary honey in NZ! It's like this article is from an alternate reality or something.

[spats1990]

Older beekeepers in NZ will tell you that until the late 1990s/early 00s, it wasn't even considered commercially viable and was only suitable as winter feed for bees, because all anybody wanted to buy was clover. There was not much space in the market for darker honeys from the NZ bush and scragglier hill country. This fit perfectly with the mindset of thousands of NZ farmers, who were diligently clearing the mānuka off their land because it was "scrub" that could be replaced with grass. Fast-forward to the year 2020 C.E. and Comvita is doing mānuka plantations...

[quixoticelixer-]

Not only was there not much market from it it is also quite difficult to extract.

[Scoundreller]

Will trade manuka for maple syrup.

[canada_dry]

I've read that Canadian maple syrup is the cure for post-election-anxiety.

At least that's how I figure we should market it to our friends down south!

[lisper]

> Canadian maple syrup is the cure for post-election-anxiety.

It's been working wonders for me :-)

[Reason077]

> "Exactly, manuka honey was always just ordinary honey in NZ!"

Not any more. Cheaper to buy it in the UK I reckon!

[Jimmc414]

>The reason honey kills microbes is it has exceptionally low water content.

Do you have a source for this?

A simple search on scholar.google.com for "manuka" and "MRSA" studies in 2020 and there is a substantial amount of evidence showing its unique medical properties.

[quixoticelixer-]

There are a few reasons why honey is antimicrobial and one of them is it's high osmotic pressure. They also have some hydrogen perexide activity and some honeys such as mānuka have things like methylglyoxal.

[jelliclesfarm]

Honey is hydrophilic. Perhaps that has something to do with its topical medicinal quality.

[staticautomatic]

It also tastes very unusual and I might have guessed that before buying it had I known that Manuka is tea tree.