[fsckboy]

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 cult is, homeopathic. What the govt should allow is the sale of labelled fake honeys, it would be dirt cheap and would taste indetectably different, i.e every bit as good, and no more unhealthy.

(if you don't like the viscosity of your sugar syrup, change the %age of water. if you want it to crystalize, dry it out. it's rock candy, not magic)

[laxk]

You've somehow overgeneralized it. This is of course fructose, but with much better properties. :)

Just facts [0]:

- honey contains antioxidants, amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) and vitamins and minerals, such as Thiamin, riboflavin, pyridoxin, vitamin A, niacin, panthothenic acid, phyllochinon, vitamin E, and vitamin C

- honey also has been successfully used for wound and burn healing. (If you grab a frying pan or burn your hand/skin, apply honey, there will be no blisters or peeling skin.)

- honey consumption reduces risk factors of cardiovascular diseases

[0] https://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/the-sweet-science-behind-honey...

[crazygringo]

> 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/

[fsckboy]

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.

[crazygringo]

> As a percentage of a jar of honey it's trace amounts.

Percentages don't matter -- vitamins and minerals are trace amounts but essential for our health. Literally everything beneficial for our nutrition that isn't a macronutrient (carb/fat/protein) or bulk (water/fiber/etc.) is present in "trace amounts" when expressed as percentages of mass.

Honey is very clearly not "just sugar syrup", because the rest of the stuff clearly has meaningful effects such as antibiotic properties. Turns out "trace amounts" can do that, so you shouldn't dismiss them out of hand.

You're simply taking way too extreme of a position. I don't know about "honey cults" as you call them, but you're being equally unscientific in denying any meaningful difference whatsoever from sugar syrup.

[Dylan16807]

> 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.

It's hard to tell the difference because natural flavors vary so much.

If you give me two jars of honey and tell me one is the original and one has either 0% or 25% or 50% sugar water mixed in, I can run a taste test and figure out the answer. But if you only give me one jar, it's not easy to figure out if weak flavor means adulteration or a bad season.

In other words: Even if I can't figure out if a specific batch was adulterated, the adulteration is making a significant difference. There's a lot coming from the flowers other than raw sugar.

[dreamcompiler]

> Honey has scientifically proven antibiotic properties

Topical antibiotic properties. Eating honey won't cure anything.

[crazygringo]

Perhaps read the full comment I wrote, instead of stopping halfway...

[sitharus]

If you think the taste of honey is indistinguishable from sugar syrup, you haven’t had real honey.

In addition to flavour compounds from the nectar, honey contains trace amino acids that cause it to slowly undergo the malliard reaction at room temperature, resulting in a caramel undertone that increases as the honey ages.

The flavour also strongly depends on the nectar, with some being very subtle and resulting in a very syrup-like honey, and others being extremely strong.

Other than flavour, and some anti-microbial properties, it has the same dietary properties as sugar syrup.

[fsckboy]

>If you think the taste of honey is indistinguishable from sugar syrup...

you have completely missed the plot, it's sad.

I'm not talking about what I think of the taste of honey. I'm simply reading (with comprehension) TFA (and many similar articles over the past 30 years) that say that the honey market is filled with adulteration and it's difficult to control because there are few ways to tell the difference. The world's biggest experts on honey say this, not me.

I'm just pointing out what they say to you because you can't read.

You seriously seem to believe that industry experts have to cancel international events because you can taste honey and they can't.

[baobabKoodaa]

This is false. I'd be willing to wager substantial amounts of money on my ability to differentiate good acacia honey from sugar syrup.

[someothherguyy]

Here is an article summarizing the composition of a variety of acacia honeys.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13197-019-035...

Its mostly sugar water (syrup), but there is more to it.

[tvshtr]

What about acacia flavoured sugar syrup?

[fsckboy]

you don't need to wager substantial amounts of money, just buy honey, eat it, and you'll be able to tell if it's the real thing, enjoy if it is; return it if you're dissatisfied.

Be sure to tell the authors of this article and the officials at these judging conventions that you don't know what they're on about.