Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn't Honey | Hacker News Reader

Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn't Honey

foodsafetynews.com

25 pointsmapleoin13 comments

"honey is [..] forced at high pressure through extremely small filters to remove pollen, which is the only foolproof sign identifying the source of the honey. It is a spin-off of a technique refined by the Chinese, who have illegally dumped tons of their honey - some containing illegal antibiotics - on the U.S. market for years."

What's to stop the bad honey having good pollen added?

It's interesting that pollen is being filtered out, but I'm not sure why it's important for consumers to know this?

Am I right in thinking that this is the argument:

Claim 1) Chinese honey often contains contaminants

Claim 2) Ultra-filtering honey makes it impossible to trace origin

Therefore:

Ultra-filtered honey contains contaminants.

That's obviously fallacious reasoning, but it's all I can extract from the article.

Additionally, I'm not convinced that pollen-rich honey is a good thing. The only arguments I can see for keeping the pollen in are:

1) In case it came from China

2) Pollen is good for you

3) I don't want people messing with my food

In response to (1) I don't see a link between honey lacking pollen and China, and I don't see the problem with Chinese honey so long as it really is free from other contaminants.

(2) http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_bee_pollen_good_for_you

(3) Our food is processed to a huge degree. I always use bread as an example of the original processed food. Again there's no necessary link between 'additives' or 'processing' and 'bad for you', just a massive body of anecdotal evidence. Salt and pepper and ketchup are 'additives'. Chopping vegetables is "processing" your food. Not all processing is bad.

^3) If I lived in the US I'd be more concerned about the ubiquity of HFCS and animal growth hormones than because imported honey may have been purified. TFA also has the xenophobic suggestion that the pollen filtering is done by the Chinese, perhaps (and more likely) it is done by, or at the behest of, US importers?

Filtering out pollen may hide the origin, but surely people concerned about health should be testing for contaminants not pollen? This article seems to be screaming "OMG the Chinese are sending us their honey!"

EDIT: this 'news site' is the mouth piece for a lawfirm. This is good old fashioned protectionism mixed with xenophobic mud slinging propagated by some all-American legal vultures.

> this 'news site' is the mouth piece for a lawfirm

nice, how'd you find that out?

edit: right, yeah the domain is owned by Marler Clark LLP - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marler_Clark for an extensive list of sites owned by them.

"about us"

cunning foxes.

I believe the argument is that there is no reason to ultra filter except to try to hide origin, and there is no reason to try to hide origin unless the origin is China, hence when you buy uktr filtered honey the chances a very high it is from China.

Right, but according to wikipedia[1] "Ultrafiltered honey is processed by very fine filtration under high pressure to remove all extraneous solids and pollen grains. The process typically heats honey to 150–170 °F (approx. 65–77 °C) to more easily pass through the fine filter. Ultrafiltered honey is very clear and has a longer shelf life; it crystallizes more slowly because the high temperature breaks down sugar seed crystals, making it preferred by the supermarket trade."

I remain unconvinced that "there is no reason to ultra filter except to hide origin".

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey#Classification_by_packagi...

In the EU, it is legal to mix different olive oils. Similarly, I think may be legal to mix honeys from different places of origin. So use n% american honey, (100-n)% non-american honey and supermarkets might still sell it under a brand name which has "American" in its name, e.g. "Sunlit Meadows True American Wildflower Honey" and in the fine print it might say "Contains a blend of American and Non-American Honeys". To make it untraceable and hide the weight fractions of the ingredients, ultra filtering helps such that n = 0.05 (= 5%).

Honey without pollen is very hard to quality-control (you can't find and shut down the manufacturer); thus, showing that lots of honey has no pollen shows that much of the honey Americans eat has poor quality control, and is thus much more likely to be bad for them.

what does "bad for them" mean though? Surely if there's something in the honey that's "bad" then test the honey for that. Why use pollen as some kind of oblique test for likelihood of badness?

Honey loses its medicinal properties once pollen is removed. You might want to read the article again and also other sources of natural health to get that.

> medicinal properties

Let's examine the medicinal properties of honey, as listed on the wikipedia page[1]:

> Claim 1: Manuka honey ... may be useful in treating MRSA infections

This only applies to Manuka honey, which is not the subject of this article, and we must be careful not to fall into the trap of saying "Manuka honey has medicinal properties therefore honey has medicinal properties".

> Claim 2: Honey appears to be effective in killing drug-resistant biofilms which are implicated in chronic rhinosinusitis

This was not generic 'honey' but again Manuka and Sidr honey. We can't take evidence that Sidr/Manuka have certain properties as evidence that other types of honey have those properties too. Indeed, the paper[2] even mentions that "two Canadian honeys had no cidal effects on the bacterial biofilms". The Canadian honeys in question are "Canadian Clover and Buckwheat honeys (Farmboy Inc., Ottawa, Can- ada)". So while this paper shows that Manuka and Sidr kill some bacterias, it also shows that two other types of honey do not.

> Claim 3: the antioxidant constituents in honey help clean up oxygen free radicals present

This claim cites an article[3] authored by P C Molan (same as Claim 1), which cites an MSc thesis of one of his students (ref 31 in [3]), unfortunately I can't find that thesis online, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if we again were talking about Manuka honey. Also of note is the fact that the 'free radicals' that the honey 'cleans up' are those produced by hydrogen peroxide present in the honey itself.

> Claim 4: honey has been used successfully in a comprehensive treatment of diabetic ulcers when the patient cannot use topical antibiotics

(sorry, I missed this one, have to go out, will research later)

Ok I'm back now, swam 16 lengths :) The 'reference' this links[4] to is an article with one anecdote and a mention that a study is in progress. The current Wisc website[4a] still only says the trial is in progress - no results published that I can find.

> Claim 5: relatively acidic pH level prevents the growth of many bacteria

This isn't really a medicinal property; it's simply a fact about honey. You could as well claim that coke has medicinal properties due to it's high pH level.

> Claim 6: The presence of the synergist in manuka honey more than doubles MGO antibacterial activity

Manuka.

> Claim 7: Antioxidants in honey have even been associated with reducing the damage done to the colon in colitis

This study[5] was done on rats, using honey enemas... I'm not sure how much we can take from that.

> Claim 8: according to recent research, may be an effective soothing agent for coughs

The cited article[6] has since published an update which states: "In the item below we said that a study compared buckwheat honey with dextromethorphan, a common ingredient in children's over-the-counter medicine in the US, and found that honey was more effective at relieving the severity, frequency and bothersome nature of the cough and that dextromethorphan was slightly more effective than a placebo. In fact the study, which was funded by the US National Honey Board, concluded that while honey was the most effective treatment for all outcomes related to cough, child sleep and parent sleep, direct comparison between honey and dextromethorphan did not yield statistically significant differences."

So not only is honey no different from other over-the-counter medicine, but the study is funded by the US National Honey Board, which really should raise some questions. Sadly I can't find the exact study in question so can't delve further than that.

----------

There are a few other claims made in the wikipedia article, but I hope I've gone some way to showing that the 'medicinal properties' of generic honey are at best elusive. Furthermore, I saw nothing which suggested that the removal of pollen might hinder any properties which are present.

What I did find was a lot of studies produced by researchers who I find it difficult to call independent (eg Dr Peter Molan lends his name to a "gold standard" Manuka honey certification scheme[7]), or funded by bodies such as the US National Honey Board. I also found that a lot of these studies are used to back up claims which their findings do not support - when a study which shows honey enemas in rats is effective against colitis is reported in a way which conveniently misses out the rat and enema parts and presents it as "Antioxidants in honey have even been associated with reducing the damage done to the colon in colitis" - I find this very misleading at best.

Finally, even if all of the medicinal claims above were 100% watertight and applied to generic off-the-shelf honey, it still means that ultra-filtered honey is A-OK unless I have colitis or diabetic ulcers and am planning to administer said honey in an enema / topical foot creme. None of these studies say "a spoonful of honey a day wards off cancer", they're all very specific medicinal applications of honey which mainly seem to revolve around the antibacterial properties.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey#In_medicine

[2] http://www.metroatlantaotolaryngology.org/journal/nov10/biof...

[3] http://www.worldwidewounds.com/2001/november/Molan/honey-as-...

[4] http://www.news.wisc.edu/releases/13738

[4a] http://www.fammed.wisc.edu/research/external-funded/honey-ul...

[5] http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=Sho...

[6] http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/dec/04/health.medical...

[7] http://www.greenbayharvest.co.uk/shop/categories/Articles/A-...

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