Pure Honey

Yesterday I posted on bees and the debate going on whether colony collapse disorder, a hot topic over the last decade had run its course and is no longer a concern.

Today on a related subject: One thing that everybody agrees on is that the price of honey has roughly doubled in the last 10 years. That price increase has led suppliers of honey to add other sweeteners to the honey to make it go further. This practice is illegal if not mentioned on the label.

Fresh, Pure Honey. Probably.

Honey always makes it near the top of the most counterfeited foods (Bon Appetit's list, a nutritionist's website list, mental floss' list, USAToday list). It's really tempting for some producers to add a little bit of cheap ingredients to make the honey go further. 

Honey has always been a favorite dish. Here's a recipe from Ancient Egypt for a dessert. The Romans knew Britain as the Isle of Honey and here's a mead recipe from 2,000 BC. Everybody, everywhere always liked honey.

Ancient Egyptian Instructions on Producing Honey

But here's the current problem in a nutshell. Honey sells for roughly $7 per pound today. High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) costs about $.40 per pound. So adding a little HFCS to the honey is a gold mine if you can manage it.

So how can you choose a honey that's pure honey? There's not a test that you can do in the field that will give a good answer. The FDA has some pretty complicated tests they can run in the lab but they don't lend themselves to supermarket testing. But here are some rough guidelines that you can follow to help get real honey:

• Buy dark honey. HFCS and other sweeteners tend to lighten the color of the honey. Buying darker shades ensures that little or no sweetener has been added. However most people like the lighter colored honeys.

• Don't buy Chinese honey. About 40% of the US honey supply comes from other countries and about 1/3 of that comes from China. There have been lots of issues with the quality of honey from China because of sweetener additives. It should be labeled under country of origin laws. However the large honey distributors tend to mix honeys to get the consistency they want so it's not always on the label where every part of the mixture came from.

Do You Trust This Bear?

• The dissolve test. I haven't tried this but I've read that you can put a spoonful of honey in a glass of warm water it will sink to the bottom if it's pure but will dissolve quickly if it has a lot of other sweeteners. I may try this and report back.

• Deal with somebody you know and trust. Probably the best way to get unadulterated honey is to deal with a beekeeper you know and trust. Not everybody knows a beekeeper, but if you do that's the way to go.

So, it's harder than most people realize to get pure honey. The producer incentives to add cheaper artificial sweeteners are strong. For some people it doesn't matter much -- a sweet additive to their tea is just that. But to everybody buying an expensive product that is really much more cheaply made than you know can be both maddening and in the case of foods scary.