Tuesday, November 8, 2011

If Honey Contains No Pollen . . . It's NOT Honey!

I hope I get to meet Richard someday.  He has yet another thoughtful post on what real honey is on his blog.  He also has a link to an article on food safety that describes how three-fourths of honey sold in grocery stores does not fit the definition of honey. It has been filtered so extensively it has no pollen. Thus, it cannot be traced back to its country of origin . . . you see where I'm going with this. Honey from China and India has been found to be contaminated with illegal antibiotics and heavy metals.

Folks, if you click on that food safety link, you will see that they name names.  I love that.  I also like confirmation that those $1.99 honey bears we saw at Kroger were exactly what we thought they were: glorified supertreated liquid sugar, called honey.

"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. "

Buy local! ;-)

FYI: our honey, especially the cotton blossom honey, is starting to sugar in this cooler weather. On Sunday we put on a big pot of water, heated it on low, and put our various partial jars in to slowly liquefy. It worked just fine. We suggest you to avoid microwaving your honey (it kills the beneficial enzymes) or boiling it rapidly.