Honey – sigh! What to say? Honey has long been the earthy, natural, sorta healthy counterpart to evil high fructose corn syrup, or just-not-so-good refined sugar. Pure like the golden sun, it is produced from flowers in sunny meadows by bees. Unfortunately, even this iconic “hippie-food” has been corrupted.
One of the reasons honey has been thought to better than many other sweeteners is its complexity, in particular the pollens it contains collected by bees. Pollens are also a honey fingerprint, in that analyzing the pollens reveals the source of the honey. The process of ultrafiltration removes the pollen from honey. As the pollens are collected by the bees flying around the area where the the honey is made, those pollens are like fingerprints, specifically identifying the source of the honey. Removal of the pollens then also erases all evidence of the honey’s origin. This is a concern because Chinese honey producers have been dumping honey, contaminated with heavy metals and antibiotics, on the world market. Without testing it is impossible to source the honey and stop the problem. The US FDA (the same folks who allow pizza to count as a vegetable in school lunches) says that honey without pollen is not honey.
The recent analysis of honey sold in the US by Food Safety News was shocking. http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/11/tests-show-most-store-honey-isnt-honey/ All samples of honey from fast food stores and pharmacy chains were entirely pollen-free, as were 76% of honey samples sold in grocery stores. Nearly 30% of honey labeled as organic at major chain grocery stores contained absolutely no pollen whatsoever. The only honey that consistently contained pollen was purchased at local farmer’s markets and, perhaps surprisingly given their use of Chinese imports, Trader Joe’s.
Once again, this is a reminder that supporting your local farmer and local economy is healthy for many reasons.