Honey

Exposing Imposters

They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery.

For people this might be true but when it comes to honey it could be disastrous.

Have you ever noticed how clear honey can look sometimes? Almost unnaturally so. Well that is because most “honey” you buy is not honey at all just HFC(High Fructose Cornsyrup) with what you could call honey flavoring.

That’s right you’ve been had! These so called “honey” companies are selling you a sweet honey like substance that according to our own FDA does not constitute honey at all.

“the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration says that any product that’s been ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen isn’t honey. However, the FDA isn’t checking honey sold here to see if it contains pollen.”

Well despite the gross negligence of the FDA we can definitely say there are people waking up to the nasty truth about the “honey” industry. After an investigation from Food Safety News  consumers are now able to see the whole picture and it’s seems that there are quite a few prominent “honey” companies that are selling you more than what might be marked on their bottles. Even more interesting they are selling you these suspicious products under the guise of public interest.

What?

Yes that is right, apparently the average consumer of honey is interested in receiving another form of High Fructose Cornsyrup sold to us as honey instead of just buying it with it’s original name. Oh yeah of course we want all the pollen removed from our honey so we can’t trace the source and accurately verify it’s nutritional properties.

Wait a minute.

All of that sounds incredibly stupid and doesn’t really make sense, perhaps these companies are not interested in what the public wants, but more in their profit margins from buying HFC cut or chinese imported at a much lower cost than actual honey.

Levelling the Playing Field

Just to make sure that these corporations are not getting an unfair advantage due to huge budgets and high quality marketing we wanted to share this list of major “honey” brands that have no pollen in their product.

“76 percent of samples bought at groceries had all the pollen removed, These were stores like TOP Food, Safeway, Giant Eagle, QFC, Kroger, Metro Market, Harris Teeter, A&P, Stop & Shop and King Soopers.

100 percent of the honey sampled from drugstores like Walgreens, Rite-Aid and CVS Pharmacy had no pollen.

77 percent of the honey sampled from big box stores like Costco, Sam’s Club, Walmart, Target and H-E-B had the pollen filtered out.

100 percent of the honey packaged in the small individual service portions from Smucker, McDonald’s and KFC had the pollen removed.”

Bad for People and Bees

As if the possibility of toxic contaminants from chinese honey wasn’t bad enough we are starting to find that using HFC to feed the bees or ourselves seems to have negative effects on both. Go figure this nutrient deficient sweetener seems to be toxic to the natural healthy bacteria in the stomach of bees and people. So whether the honey is cut with HFC or it is fed directly to the bees it really doesn’t matter this stuff is no good to the stomach of the consumer.

Don’t worry there are trustworthy brands of honey out there.

“Bryant found that every one of the samples Food Safety News bought at farmers markets, co-ops and “natural” stores like PCC and Trader Joe’s had the full, anticipated, amount of pollen.”

Keep an Eye Out

Central Texas Bee Rescue Honey can be found at all Austin Wholefoods locations except the newest Domain location. We are also currently talking with HEB/Central Market and Trader Joes about having them carry our honey as well. In the next 3 weeks we should have a fully functional storefront that will allow you to purchase honey directly from us as well.

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