[Etheryte]

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.

[jart]

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 suspicions. Why can't they prove it? To make these kind of claims without proof is arguably worse than fraud. This would all be outrageous if it's true, since it becomes impossible to make any rational choices as consumers if the food system has gone fraudulent.

[nextaccountic]

Note this also happens with olive oil

https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/11-o...

https://www.oliveoiltimes.com/business/europe/top-italian-po...

[dreamcompiler]

To a first approximation it's accurate to assume any imported olive oil on a grocery store shelf in the US is fraudulent. The only kind I buy now is 100% grown in California and certified by the California Olive Oil Council. And it is very expensive.

[ugh123]

Absolutely. Avoid any blends outside the U.S.

[throwaway2037]

Honestly, I don't care about "olive oil fraud" from/within the EU. As long as the final country that bottles it is responsible for food safety, then I am OK with it. Seriously, if you told me that tomatoes were mislabelled from Portugal instead of Spain, I would not care. What are the tangible drawbacks for consumers of mislabelled olive oil from EU?

[Glawen]

There was an article about the word enshitification, what you describe the real life example: you are paying a premium price for a product with a lowering quality every year that goes by. Fighting labelling fraud is the correct answer.

If it is written extra virgin olive oil that means a certain oil quality expected in terms of taste. For me that means I can enjoy a non rancid oil on my tasteful tomatoes with real mozzarella di buffalo, and that is a world of difference with making the same salad with tasteless but "tested on rats safe" products

[solumunus]

You’re overpaying for poor quality products. Quite simple.

[throwaway2037]

So, if olive oil from Portugal is imported to Italy and bottled and mislabelled as from Italy, this makes it automatically lower quality? This is the kind of virtue signalling bullshit that I reject on HN.

[solumunus]

If something like this is done it’s done to save cost, which almost always correlates with quality.

[collingreen]

It sounds like you're trying to be angry. I don't see any virtue signaling here except some "holier than thou" from the tone in your comment.

Nobody is claiming that a label magically changes the quality. The comments above are claiming that olive oil from some regions fetch a higher price in the market, ostensibly for good reasons, and that taking something else and claiming it is from that region is fraud. I'm surprised that feels controversial.

[araneae]

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.

[NelsonMinar]

The phrasing in the article about "suspected to be fraudulent" is over-cautious, probably because of Britain's very generous libel laws covering newspapers.

[Etheryte]

If you find this hard to believe, I recommend reading this Forbes article [0] which gives some pretty stark numbers. I've included a few select quotes below:

> According to the sampling and monitoring work carried out by the Brussels-based body, almost 50% of the honey from non-European countries is cut with sugar syrups made from rice, wheat or sugar beet.

> All the 10 honeys entered via the United Kingdom were marked “non-compliant” and mixed with imports from Mexico, Ukraine and Brazil.

> Apart from the main fraudulent addition of sugar syrups, the report also alerts of the presence of additives and colorings and the falsification of traceable information.

So yeah, a considerable part of honey contains more than what's on the label and often isn't of the origin written on the label. As for outrageous, it is — beekeepers have been sounding the alarm on this issue for years — but nothing has been done to stop this on the policy side.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2023/03/24/hal...

[alright2565]

fyi, "forbes.com/sites" is just some blogging platform.

In this case, it's mostly right, but the original source is https://food.ec.europa.eu/food-safety/eu-agri-food-fraud-net...

[gmerc]

You’re too generous.It runs paid influence campaigns.

[pradn]

It makes total sense for European farmers to cry foul if cheaper imports get to masquerade as the real thing. This has been a big sticking point for the EU-Mercosur deal that recently concluded.

[throwaway2037]

Why do consumers think honey is a special food deserving to spend so much money upon it? I never understand it. Also, I am no doubting this specific Forbes-hosted blog (as I call them), but reader beware. I don't think there is any editorial guidance from the main publishing house. You see all kinds of dubious crap posted on that platform! In the last year or so, HN front page now specifically distinguished blog posts from these subsites, versus the main publisher's website.

[portaouflop]

Honey is a special food and one of the key ingredients for modern civilisation

[throwaway2037]

   > one of the key ingredients for modern civilisation

I tried to Google about this but I could not find anything scientific. Lots of of pseudo-science, however. Can you explain more? Essentially, honey is sugar, an inessential part of the human diet. What am I missing?

[portaouflop]

Without bees agriculture is not possible. Without agriculture modern civilisation would not exist.

[hofo]

I assume that the notion of adulterated honey is new to you and that you’re not in the industry. This has been an issue for decades, it’s nothing new. There are commercial honey producers and packers that are clean but the easiest and surest way to avoid fake honey is to buy local.

[0xEF]

Wait til you hear about maple syrup...

That aside, yeah, this is a real problem with honey (and maple syrup) in the US. Food manufacturers will go to insane lengths to get around any laws that protect product purity and honest labeling because the profits are far greater than the fine for breaking the rules.

As we all know, if the punishment is a fine, it's only illegal for companies that cannot afford to pay...like the guy at the farmer's market with the mason jars.

[Aloisius]

I have never heard of maple syrup fraud in the US nor can I find any articles on it.

Unless one is talking about imitation maple syrups, but those are labeled properly.

[skylurk]

It's also a thing, unfortunately.

https://news.uoguelph.ca/2023/04/maple-syrup-fraud-undermine...

[Aloisius]

That "article" appears to be a promotion for a test to detect maple syrup fraud in Canada.

It doesn't say maple syrup fraud is common in the US. It does cite an article about someone who bought fake syrup from a random "trucker" on the internet, but that article explicitly says it's not a big issue.

[_3u10]

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.

[jart]

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...

[ryandrake]

Oh, the USDA publishes a rule! Surely everyone will follow that and the problem is solved.

Unfortunately we get the behavior that we let people get away with. Regulators are asleep, courts let companies weasel their way around everything, and reality doesn't care about published rules and standards.

[warkdarrior]

Regulations like these are onerous. Have you ever watched a bee filling out a Dept of Ag or FDA form? Dept of Govt Efficiency will fix it.

[colechristensen]

A 90s percent of honey is fructose, glucose, and water. A very high 90s percent of corn syrup is fructose, glucose, and water. Getting the ratios the same is trivial. There is nothing magical about fructose or glucose from different sources, they’re exactly the same simple molecule.

If you had very clean corn syrup, you could undetectably dilute honey and it would be quite the same. Lab tests being what they are these days, someone could probably make a part per billion analysis that would be very hard to evade, but the difference is emotional not practical.

People have wrong ideas that honey is so much healthier than corn syrup when it is indeed very similar. Not that i support selling corn syrup as honey, but it wouldn’t make any actual difference other than diluted flavor.

[dghlsakjg]

Orange juice is more than 90% water, but you would need to get your sense of taste checked if you confused it with sugar water.

By the same token if you can’t taste the difference between sugar syrup and honey, then you need to get your taste checked, or perhaps you’ve never had real honey.

The flavors in honey are also deeply affected by what the bees eat. Buckwheat honey is a totally different thing than Tupelo honey, and neither are anything like clover honey.

Even if you ignore all of the health claims, saying honey is just sugars and water, you are ignoring the fact that humans want more than nutrient paste.

[dredmorbius]

Hoboy, don't get started on orange juice. The commercially-prepared stuff is also rather distantly-related to fresh-squeezed:

Once the juice is squeezed and stored in gigantic vats, they start removing oxygen. Why? Because removing oxygen from the juice allows the liquid to keep for up to a year without spoiling. But! Removing that oxygen also removes the natural flavors of oranges. Yeah, it’s all backwards. So in order to have OJ actually taste like oranges, drink companies hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that make perfumes for Dior, to create these “flavor packs” to make juice taste like, well, juice again.

<https://gizmodo.com/dirty-little-secret-orange-juice-is-arti...>

And that's for product actually marketed as orange juice, rather than, say, a sweetened citrus-flavoured beverage, for which the first ingredient often is sugar and/or corn syrup, e.g., "True Orange Mango Orangeade":

Ingredients: Cane sugar, crystallized orange (ctiric acid, orange juice, orange oil), natural flavor, stevia leaf extract, beet juice and beta-carotene.

(Beet juice and stevia are both sweeteners, the first is effectively liquid sugar, the second is a non-caloric / low-caloric non-sugar sweetener.)

<https://www.truecitrus.com/products/true-orange-mango-orange>

The fact that you're better off either squeezing your own or better yet eating whole fruit is a whole 'nother matter.

A more detailed production process:

"How products are made: Orange juice":

<https://www.madehow.com/Volume-4/Orange-Juice.html>

[sitharus]

Take a holiday to New Zealand and try honey here. It’s definitely not adulterated because we don’t allow any honey imports. Try clover, Rewarewa, Manuka, and multiflora, you can taste a clear difference between each.

Of course they’ll likely be creamed honey rather than pourable, but that’s just a preference.

[tharkun__]

Oh absolutely, real honey has flavor differences en masse!

The worst we ever tried was pure Buckwheat honey. Very distinct. Sorta "refreshingly different" the first time you try it. For us personally, after that: toss.

[nativeit]

We share more than 90% of our DNA with rats. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’d like to suggest there are some qualitative differences between myself and a literal rat.

[saagarjha]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=v5sc2F0oQvw

[labster]

In most politicians, the percentage is even higher.

[maltyr]

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10346535/

Numerous studies have concluded that honey does have a better effect on health than the same amount of simple syrup, at least.

> It has been demonstrated that honey consumption can influence plasma lipid, glucose, and insulin levels through different biochemical mechanisms. The decrease in blood glucose may be due to the fact that honey has a stimulatory effect on insulin secretion and improves insulin sensitivity

[carbocation]

An uncited statement in a review article!

If I'm rich in time and money enough to routinely take the time to wander down to my friendly beekeeper and buy their small-batch artisanal honey, for so many reasons I will live longer than someone who isn't.

Someone should randomize people to honey vs fake-honey-sugar-mix and settle the issue.

[oasisbob]

Honey and sugar syrups have other various constituents, and it's trivially possible to tell them apart via GC/MS at far higher levels than ppb.

https://zenodo.org/records/438103

[jfengel]

The remaining 10 percent is very significant to flavor. You can definitely detect it with your tongue and nose.

But as you say it is utterly irrelevant to nutrition or health. Even the antibacterial elements are real but negligible.

[portaouflop]

That’s like saying humans are the same as chimps because they are both 60% water - the difference is not emotional

[fooker]

We share 98.8% of our DNA with chimpanzees, doesn’t make us chimpanzees.

[Der_Einzige]

This is the truth about most types of oil too. All oil is bad and it’s all almost the same.

[result2vino]

This particularly americanised brand of nihilism is so bloody tiring.

[liontwist]

The "down to earth local grower" is a form of marketing that appeals to you. It's not a guarantee of quality, and probably more variable. Many vendors at farmer's markets just buy and relabel stuff, because producing goods efficiently enough to make a profit is actually hard.

[weitendorf]

This is true but there are varying degrees of “buying and relabeling” stuff. At its worst yes they could be going to a wholesaler or supermarket or restaurant supply store and just reselling those goods.

What I suspect is more common and isn’t as bad is that someone operates as a consumer brand/storefront for several small scale local farms. Given the variety of produce sold at so many of the farmers’ markets stalls in CA, and that most of it does indeed seem artisanal (ie not the kind you’d see in a grocery store), locally growable, and in-season I’m pretty sure this is commonplace.

There’s just no way a “down to earth local grower” could farm 15+ different kinds of crops at the scale required to operate one or more farmer’s market stalls multiple days a week, and operate the stalls. You’d need a big operation for that to not be a logistical nightmare. That said, if a vendor is just selling one or two things that keep well (like honey) it seems totally feasible that they’re truly a “down to earth local grower” although that also means they’re “possibly a complete amateur/fraud”

[Etheryte]

I'm pretty sure my own father is not masquerading as a beekeeper to market his honey to me. You're right though that it alone doesn't pay the bills, but it does definitely help.

[dingnuts]

same experience. Bee keeping is a fairly accessible hobby, actually, and the honey is very good, although you wind up with far too much of it

I do prefer my dad's to buying "local" stuff at the supermarket but I'm not sure I believe all the uncited claims in this thread about everything on the shelf there being fake

[esperent]

Not to say there aren't some frauds out there. But the well known "honey stall dude" in my area happens to be my friend's father and I've been lucky enough to be able to go around with him to see the many many beehives he has stashed around the local countryside. For most of these people, it's a passion, and their honey is legit.

[slt2021]

agree, a lot of honey growers feed sugar syrup to the bees to maximize honey production.

it is sort of cheating

[esperent]

In some climates if there's been a bad year, or an inexperienced beekeeper harvested too much honey, it is sometimes necessary and normal to feed bees with sugar in autumn/winter to prevent starvation. This shouldn't make it into the honey harvested on spring and summer.

https://www.honeybeesuite.com/winter-feed-q-a-liquid-vs-soli...

[dmckeon]

Or to keep hives alive when nectar is scarce but colonies have not started to hibernate. Adulteration of produced honey with syrup would be 10x easier than feeding bee with syrup and then doing extraction from comb.

[umanwizard]

How do you know this? Is there actual reporting on what percentage of honey in supermarkets is adulterated, rather than just anecdotal reports that at least some is?

[Etheryte]

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 find at a grocery store and what actually comes out of a hive are very different things. Even if you boil natural honey you still don't get the texture and consistency they have at the store.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2023/03/24/hal...

[RHSeeger]

> 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 don't, that's sugar syrup".

[WhiteDawn]

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.

[mft_]

> similar stings

:)

[sholladay]

Agreed that fresh honey and store honey are very different. You would think that, given how different they are, it would be easy to detect the fake honey. But apparent lyrics not.

[tharkun__]

And he is definitely globally wrong anyway.

Our local supermarket sells honey from a local beekeeper that we've also bought honey from directly before. Only that one local supermarket has their honey and it's closer to us than driving to the beekeeper. And yes it has a nice looking but plain label on the jar.

He is probably mostly right about large quantity, imported honey tho.

[vinnymac]

I think as a guide for buying honey his advice is valuable, although a bit dramatic, and it won’t apply to every country or region.

As someone who is a beekeeper and owns a farm, you can be much more certain what you’re getting is honey where I am from when it’s being purchased from the back of a van from some random person with some glass jars, than you can at any supermarket. Hi it’s me I am the random person with the glass jars :)

[pbronez]

From the article:

An EU investigation published last year found 46% of imported sampled products were suspected to be fraudulent, including all 10 from the UK. Samples used in October by the UK branch of the Honey Authenticity Network for a novel form of DNA testing found that 24 out of 25 jars from big UK retailers were suspicious.

[buran77]

Also:

> Regulators in the UK have not published detailed results of official tests, but rejected claims of significant fraud.

If I remember correctly this was already the situation in Germany already decades ago. At least half of the honey on the German market was (to use the term from the present article) adulterated as EU investigations at the time showed. The investigators was even hidden camera footage with importers admitting they knew this was the case. Then a lot of lobbying money moved around between importers, distributors, and local authorities, and the honey kept flowing.

The labs that did the testing were good for far more delicate work so it wasn't a matter of precision and accuracy, more a matter of Germans loving their honey. Stopping the flow of cheap, even if adulterated honey from China and at the time I think also Ukraine would be a big hit to the industry's wallet. I bet all those involved just told themselves "sweet is sweet" and went about their profit making business.

[trimethylpurine]

Some part of the verbiage here is unscientific. We're in need of a percentage of suspicion that applies to a percentage of jars and whether that percentage of suspicion is based on the presence or absence of certain adulterants.

Otherwise these percentages give more ambiguity than insight about the products.

[secondcoming]

It's extremely common for honey sold in the UK to be labelled as a 'blend of EU and non-EU honey', or similar. There's no doubt in my mind that what this really means is that they've no real idea where the honey comes from.

On the rare occasion I do buy honey it's usually Scottish Heather Honey, which is as delicious as it is expensive.

[Marazan]

Yeah as soon as I see 'blend of EU and non-EU honey' then I'm noping out of there as it just means disguised sugar syrup.

Actual location authenticated honey costs actual real money.

[skylurk]

Honey supply chains are opaque and global, plus the incentives to cheat are clearly there and it's hard to definitively prove a batch was not adulterated. I'd say it's fair to be suspicious.

That said, this old article seems to think its not as common a problem as you would expect: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2011/11/25/142659547/re...

[throwup238]

> "Consumers don't tend to like crystallized honey," says Jill Clark, vice president for sales and marketing at Dutch Gold. "It's very funny. In Canada, there's a lot of creamed honey sold, and people are very accustomed to honey crystallizing. Same in Europe. But the U.S. consumer is very used to a liquid product, and as soon as they see those first granules of crystallization, we get the phone calls: 'Something's wrong with my honey!'"

Anecdotal but everything in that NPR article rings true to me. American consumers are used to the bear shaped bottles with purified honey that’s barely distinguishable from sugar syrup and could easily be adulterated but the raw honey I usually buy is so obviously honey from the taste and texture that I have a hard time believing any of it is adulterated. If honey producers were really that good at artificially replicating flavor profiles, they’d be far ahead of the rest of the food science industry.

[highcountess]

Are you sure what you believe is unadulterated honey because you are familiar with the taste, is not just adulterated and you are just so accustomed to fake honey that you confuse the two?

I say that because basically all the honey I’ve ever bought in a store has always tasted flat and lacked flavor depth that has long made me wonder about its authority compared to known hive honey.

[throwup238]

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 impossible. That said I buy it from ethnic grocery stores so unless you’re getting the good stuff at Trader Joes YMMV (I like their manuka)

[michaelbuckbee]

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.

[nuodag]

My Grandpa is a beekeeper, i help him take care of his hives. The honey i get out of that crystallises quickly to a relatively rough texture, and has a deep taste. It is a completely different thing than what you get in the store.

I don’t know if that one is adulterated, or just processed so much that it is all flat and smooth.

[pfannkuchen]

I’m so confused by people not liking crystallized honey. It’s so much more convenient to use, it doesn’t drip anywhere it’s practically like thick peanut butter consistency. Great for yogurt, toast or tea. Why would anyone want it to be runny?

[yumraj]

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.

[acomjean]

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.

[yumraj]

I think the general recommendation is to put the bottle in warm/hot water. I don’t believe microwaving is a good idea, unless done at low power for longer.

[avidiax]

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

[dredmorbius]

Warm water is sufficient, though with recent cautions about heating plastics and leaching of chemicals, I'd prefer transferring the honey to a glass jar if it's not packaged in such already.

You can double-boil if you want, where the jar sits in a shallow water bath which you boil for 10--20 minutes or so to decrystalise the honey.

[7thpower]

The first thing that popped into my head after reading this was the large container of Kirkland honey I have.

I thought: “Costco wouldn’t lie to me? Would they?”

Now I must go and find out.

[hollerith]

Just because they're not lying doesn't mean they've done the work of finding out whether the honey is pure.

[scheme271]

Costco apparently sells one of the few olive oils that aren't adulterated. So their honey might also be real.

[dghlsakjg]

Crystallization isn’t an indicator of fake or low quality honey.

We have had wildflower honey crystallize in the honeycomb when we left it in the garage over winter.

It can be decrystallized easily with gentle heat. I put our jars in a water bath in a pot and leave it over a low setting for about an hour until it is good. The water never gets over 125 or so, which should be fine.

[yumraj]

I had meant the other way, that it crystallizes so if it means that it’s a good honey.

[dghlsakjg]

There are a number of things that can affect crystallization; Storage conditions, filtering, what the bees foraged, etc.

There are some genuine honeys which rarely crystalize.

Afaik (as an amateur beekeeper), it is not a good indicator of anything in particular, there are even reports of adulterated honey crystallizing. This make sense, since honey and fake honey are both a supersaturated solution of sugars that will gladly crystalize if given an opportunity.

[EA-3167]

The place I buy honey is run by an older woman in Vermont who owns a lovely apiary. I've visited and seen the process, she's fantastic, her product is delicious, and it's as real as it gets. They're 4th gen family owned, so they really know what they're doing and it's all about the bees, the honey and their reputation.

Plus the honey is so delicious. When I visited she gave me this little container of the foam that collects on top of the raw honey. It was delicious, I ate a little spoonful of it every day until it ran out.

I don't work for them, I don't get money from them, I'm just an enthusiastic long-term customer.

Champlain Valley Apiaries: https://www.champlainvalleyhoney.com/

I cannot recommend them enough.

[Mtinie]

My mom discovered Champlain Valley about 10 years ago, so now every time she visits (we’re in VA, she’s from CA), she sends an order with a two pound jar ahead so she has a honey she likes in our pantry. I don’t complain at all, because it means we have excellent honey to consume once she leaves :)

[EA-3167]

Your mother sounds great; it's funny too because I was also introduced to this by my mother! She's an avid tea drinker, and loves honey in her tea. Meanwhile I have Greek yogurt most mornings, and with addition of really good honey it becomes unbeatable.

I guess the point my mother would claim is, "Listen to your mother, she knows best." Heh

[greatgib]

I would easily say that the old dude with a small stand in the market is the most suspicious. Most of them are frauds tricking tourists and co by the "local artisanal" aspect. In the same way that it is now very hard to find a Christmas market selling authentic artisanal products.

And in 2024, if he does not accept cash, it might probably because he is happy to not declare all his incomes. That is a bad sign if you expect such a guy to be honest to not mess with his honey!

[reaperducer]

If you see honey at a supermarket, no you don't, that's sugar syrup.

I get my honey from a local beekeeper who delivers to my door. He welcomes people to tour his farm to see how it's produced.

He also sells his honey in the local chain supermarkets. Your broad generalization is false.

[dghlsakjg]

His point is that there is no reliable way to differentiate between real honey and adulterated product for the average consumer in store.

If 1/3 of the honey in the store is fake, but you don’t know which 1/3 is fake, then what is the point of buying any honey at that store? If you need advice about where to buy pure honey because you don’t personally know the farmer then, “treat everything at the grocery store as suspect” is fine advice.

If you have personally toured an apiary, know the keeper, and happen to know that he sells at a few grocery stores as well, you don’t need the advice, and your addition isn’t helpful since the end result is the same: the average person can’t trust the honey at their large grocery store, and they should find a local beekeeper.

[yumraj]

Now old dudes will buy supermarket honey and unlabeled jars.

Unverifiable provenance in both cases..

[araneae]

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

[bagels]

Can't fake honeycomb be made and placed in to jars of fake honey?

[pfannkuchen]

I think the market is probably too small to put the money into figuring out how to fake it convincingly. Also the market leans towards enthusiasts who detect fakes more readily than the average honey normie.

If it ever becomes mainstream this will definitely happen.

[dredmorbius]

Cost/reward is likely sufficient disincentive.]

This is shades of "if you can fake sincerity you can fake anything":

<https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/12/05/fake-honesty/>

(Uncertain origin, though often attributed to Groucho Marx, George Burns, Jean Giraudoux, Celeste Holm, Ed Nelson, Samuel Goldwyn, Daniel Schorr, Joe Franklin, and/or Anonymous.)

[yumraj]

I've seen it but never dared to buy. What do you do with the honey comb, eat it? Does it taste waxy?

[tdeck]

Yes you can eat it and you spit out the wax. The wax is a bit flaky so I didn't find it that pleasant to chew on. Some people apparently spread it in toast like jam and eat it wax and all. It's not great for stirring into drinks.

[Anon_troll]

The comb walls are basically like chewing gum. It does not have much taste.

[Aurornis]

This isn’t true at all in the United States at least.

Sugar syrup or even honey adulterated with sugar syrup behaves differently. I’ve had some cheap generic brand bottles that flowed too easily, dissolved too quickly, and never crystallized. Probably sugar syrup.

But I haven’t seen this once since over a decade ago in my college days when I shopped at some questionable neighborhood supermarkets.

Everything I’ve bought from local supermarkets and chains like Costco has felt, looked, flowed, tasted, and crystallized like real honey.

You should probably be more suspicious about those roadside shops, too. With the rise of “farmers’ markets” as a side hustle you can no longer tell what’s what just by the fact that they’re operating out of a stand and taking cash. Around here, a lot of the “farmers’ market” and even roadside stand operators are reselling products they get from other entrepreneurs who sell them the produce, honey, and other goods. There’s a group of people here who have roadside stands with signs spray painted by hand to look like mom and pop DIY operations, which tricks people until they realize those exact signs are in 100s of locations across the state. It’s just another business preying on people’s lack of trust in institutions but implicit trust in anything that feels mom and pop, just like your comment implies.

[bowsamic]

My brother in law owns bees and gifts us honey. One is strong, thick, crystallised easily. One is thin and flows very easily, very see through. These things aren’t good indicators of adulteration at all

[pfannkuchen]

Is it like a bloom filter? Crystallizes easily means real? Doesn’t crystallize easily means unknown?

[sitharus]

Unfortunately not. The rate of crystallisation depends on the source of nectar for the honey, I know from experience that clover honey seems to crystallise a lot sooner than Manuka honey.

It also depends on the sort of processing done. Commercial honey is pasturised, but local suppliers might not.

[bowsamic]

No you can buy cheap “mix of non EU” honey in both styles from the supermarket for about the same price

[Filligree]

Different blooms cause different types of honey, yeah.

[pfortuny]

Are you talking about a specific country or anywhere (in the West, I assume)?

[phatfish]

What I had heard was that anything that isn't "single source" likely has sugar syrup added. this includes all major brands. I wouldn't even trust the expensive "organic" versions of big brands. Apparently exported Chinese "honey" is the main offender which gets mixed with other sources.

Two of the supermarkets in the UK I shop in have their own brand "Spanish Forest Honey", that claims to be single source from Spain. I have no reason to not trust that it is yet. It is about x2-3 more expensive than the big mainstream brands, darker and tastes stronger.

The Spanish producers could be adding sugar syrup as well I suppose, but aside from hunting down honey from farmers markets it's the best option I have.

[secondcoming]

Sainburys has Scottish Heather Honey. According to the label it's 100% Scottish honey.

[Marazan]

Interesting you appear to be getting downvoted for presumably accurately stating that China is the majority source of fake honey.

It was such a known problem that China had to start laundering its honey, I believe at one point Singapore suddenly became one of the world's latest exporters or "honey"

[c2h5oh]

Better yet befriend a beekeeper. You gain a friend and honey.

[codetrotter]

Cut out the middleman. Become friend with the bees. You gain a hive mind as friend, and honey! :D

[ponector]

Bit to get honey would mean to rob your hive friend.

[Snacklive]

Na dude, they are chill. They produce more under your friendship so you can keep a little. If they think the relationship is going toxic they just leave. It's awesome

[spookie]

Yeah, it's basically this. Most wouldn't survive winter.

[notyourwork]

How do they survive winter? Do they hibernate, go south or stay?

[cgh]

Yeah, one of my best friends is a beekeeper and we get our honey from him. This led to an uptick in honey consumption around here and perhaps not unrelatedly, I got my first ever cavity about six months ago.

[deadbabe]

So I’ve never had real honey? Why doesn’t someone just sell the stuff the small dude sells in a store?

[bluGill]

They do sell it in stores, but there is no clear way you can know if you are getting the real stuff or fake - the labels look the same.

[bongodongobob]

They do, parent is full of shit. Too much Instagram probably.

[deadbabe]

There seems to be a lot of gatekeeping where if people buy something too easily it’s made clear they are not getting the “real” thing. Why?

[_yb2s]

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.

[Spivak]

On the complete opposite end, if you go to a supermassive grocery store and buy their store brand then you'll be getting real honey simply because they have deep pockets and a massive target on their backs if they're committing fraud.

[randomcarbloke]

in america yes that is a good rule of thumb

>said the UK should require importers to label the country of origin on all honey, including blends

It actually does require that, it must specify country of origin and whether it is a blend, if it's a blend then it contains syrup and possibly antibiotics.

Buy single origin which in europe is certainly available, in the UK avoid anything that has the line "a blend of EU and non-EU honey", you should be buying UK honey anyway if you're UK-based, it is better and not blended (except where fraud has been committed as in the article).

[bud_davis]

I buy my honey from an old man, who parks off of Beach street, off of I-30, most saturdays. He drives a 30 year old van, falling apart, and places his goods on a plywood table.

Most of the honey is in canning jars, with a home printed label. The claim is it is sourced locally, and there are significant variations in color and taste over the year.

Is he scamming me and buying fake honey on Amazon and re-packaging it to look artisinal? Maybe. But I am convinced it is the real deal.

[bpodgursky]

The supermarkets around here sell local honey. Same product as at the farmers' market, but more convenient.

[elorant]

I regularly buy honey from the supermarket from a long established Greek brand and it’s as good as any honey I get from local markets, if not better.

[bena]

Nope, he just bought from the store, repackaged, then resold with a markup as it is cheaper to do so

[doctorpangloss]

I have a Flow Hive in an urban environment, and to me, my honey - it’s harvested by a clever cell, and it isn’t harvested by scraping comb, so it is very clean and homogenous - is indistinguishable from most industrially distributed honey. So I feel like your criteria would mean I’d be accused of adulteration.

Can people see and taste the differences between (a) sugar syrup and (b) dehydrated flower nectar and liquid sugars? Certainly in the case of small scale harvesting in a traditional hive: it will be have ground up comb, dead bee parts and gas that, in my opinion, adds little.

Sometimes bees get into stuff like a cherry syrup factory and they barf out blue food coloring into the cells which dehydrate and become blue honey, which you can also see.

Do people physiologically interact with something in the honey other than its sugar? Like is there something missing from sugar syrup? One clinically proven difference is that honey is an effective antibiotic on wounds whereas sugar syrup is not. Of course besides antibiotics in the honey, the bee barfs out other stuff that gets in there that can affect the development of bees, and trace amounts of pollen and bee poop get in it too, but I don’t think any of that interacts with us.

It’s a complex problem. You can easily read more about it, bees are well studied animals. For most culinary purposes you don’t want weird solids, moisture, gas and contaminants like that, so industrial honey suits people better anyway. But if you are applying it to a wound you want bee produced honey without comb, which readily exists in the medical supply chain. It is not accurate to say that the small town seller is the only source, or even the best source, of “real honey.”

[lttlrck]

Buy from a bee keeper if you care that much. The "cash only old dude with a stand" filter will fail.