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Comment by yborg | Hacker News Reader

Another downside of globalization, it has become cheap and easy to move food items across the world, so Vietnamese sugar syrup can be sold here as "honey" and it becomes a race to the bottom - actual honey producers either go out of business or have to do the same thing. Then a free trade advocate will point to how much the consumer price of "honey" has declined to show how well it works.

This should be straight up regulated, the FDA apparently has no source origin or testing requirements for honey, unless someone actually is sickened by a batch it's all caveat emptor and this stuff is all labeled "raw", "pure" or even "organic" and it takes an NMR machine to know differently.

I do find it surprising that the one sample out of four that wasn't obviously adulterated was the brand from Wal-Mart.

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Balsamico, Cider and Pine Nuts suffer from this problem.

The Balsamico you see in the supermarket is red wine vinegar with added sugar and flavourings. The real stuff it fermented, it's closer to whisky than vinegar.

Cider should be made from pulped apples, sadly it is all too common for it to be made from commercial apple syrups. These are ultra-processed mixes of sugar from various apples. The production process removes the aromatics, so those have to be re-added.

Chinese pine-nuts are far more common than the real Italian pine nuts. They taste nothing like the real thing because they come from a different species of tree.

I've come to the conclusion that anything you buy at a supermarket or chain store is basically fake rubbish. If you want the real thing you need to go visit farm shops at the source.

>visit farm shops

And come up with a good estimate for their production capacity vs sales...

You know, I'd rather live in a world where the supermarkets are well stocked with product that anyone can afford, but where it's still accurately labeled as "cider-like product" instead of cider, "honey-like syrup" instead of honey, and "frozen dairy dessert" instead of ice cream.

Because the genuine article isn't always cheap to make, but it shouldn't have to compete with imitation products that are disguising themselves as it with no way for consumers to know the difference.

I used to laugh that Kraft singles were labeled as “cheese product” instead of just, you know, cheese. Now I can appreciate Kraft for their “honesty” (even if it may have been mandated by law). Still don’t buy their products, but I don’t have a negative view of the brand. I’m sure there are things they are actually good at/for.

Why all the talk about globalization?

The problem is US-based companies fraudulently representing sugar syrup as honey. Would it make a difference if they called locally produced sugar syrup “Tennessee Honey”?

The use of Vietnamese syrup over domestic syrup is irrelevant to the overall fraud.

We went through all this same stuff circa 1880-1920 and that's what lead to the rise of "brands" because you didn't know what was in some random white box soap but at least you knew you could trust Dove(TM) soap not to have nasty stuff in it (or whatever, just an example).

You could. Now, you can't. Because a) known brands are pulling their own shenanigans, b) white-labeling of China manufactured goods on Amazon, et al. essentially turns into a DDoS on the idea of brands.

That the Wal-Mart sample wasn’t adulterated isn’t surprising at all. Wal-Mart is notoriously bossy and intrusive to its suppliers; it’s sometimes said that if you sell to Wal-Mart, they end up knowing your business better than you do.

> so Vietnamese sugar syrup can be sold here as "honey"

Come again?[1][2]

> it takes an NMR machine to know differently

Does it really?[3]

[1] https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/PDF---Guidance-for-...

[2] https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_108.html

[3] http://www.aoacofficialmethod.org/index.php?main_page=produc...

From [2]:

"Divisions may detain, without physical examination, the specified products from the firms listed in the Red List of this import alert."

Presumably they're not detaining every batch?

The fact that the import alert has been in place for 7 years suggests -- unless there's further clarifying data about numbers of stops and such -- that it's still a problem, that fake "honey" is being imported?

Per [3], https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17386484 "Study and validity of 13C stable carbon isotopic ratio analysis by mass spectrometry and 2H site-specific natural isotopic fractionation by nuclear magnetic resonance isotopic measurements to characterize and control the authenticity of honey." it looks like they use SNIF-NMR and SCIRA-MS (magnetic resonance and mass-spectroscopy) in determining authenticity of honey?

This, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328029044_Authentic..., is quite intersting on the topic.

I wasn't prepared to spend $15 to buy AOAC Official Method 991.41 but the above ResearchGate linked study suggested "honey" could have up to 7% corn syrup and still pass that test. Later (p.8) they summarise:

>"While the study showed that some 73% of commercial honeys analysed were classified as pure according to AOAC criteria10,11,16 and previous studies8,12,13,15,17–20 it is entirely possible this overestimated the actual number of pure honeys. This is because honey is sometimes adulterated using C-3 sugars, such as those from sugar beet7. It is unfortunate that the methods used here cannot detect this form of adulteration61. Consequently, detection of adulteration of this nature remains a challenge7.In addition to C-3 sugars, other adulterants in honey are difficult to detect due to the development of new and more sophisticated practices and lack of officially accepted analytical techniques. The use of EA-IRMS (Elemental Analysis - Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry) is the only official detection method for addition of C-4 sugar in honey42. This study also relied on a number of AOAC criteria10,11,16 to determine if honey samples were pure. As shown in Table 1, 65% (17 of 26) of samples classified as adulterated did not meet the δ13Ch-p and the C-4 sugar criteria; 9 samples also failed to meet the relevant criterion for δ13Choney<−23.5‰10. While the C-4 sugar criterion is considered robust and has broad application, the AOAC 998.1211 method does identify that a small percentage of genuine pure honeys fall outside of the accepted criterion for non-adulterated honey (≤7%)." (ibid)

It is surprising how many handicrafts in Tanzania have Made in China stickers on them even though they are being sold as locally made. English is a common language there so it's unlikely the locals don't know what the sticker says, it probably just doesn't matter to the tourists buying the stuff. Wouldn't be surprised if this was the case in many indigenous craft markets around the world.

Paris is full of guys with wares on blankets selling 100-for-5 euro Alibaba mini Eiffel towers for 3 euro a pop. People stop and buy them. It's baffling.

Or the "Christmas markets". Hahaha. What a scam.

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