| > 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/ |
>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.