Why is fake honey allowed to be sold in British Supermarkets?
Posted by Alarm-Different@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 460 comments
I recently learnt that the majority of honey sold by UK supermarkets with 'eu and non eu blend of honeys' is actually fake honey with dubious origin (China, and god knows where else).
How are the govt, local authorities and food standards allowing supermarkets to label this fake honey as genuine honey (potentially filled with all kinds of shit) and sell it to consumers?
Also how deep does this go? How much other food do supermarkets sell that isnt really genuine?
HazelAndSky@reddit
I buy most of my honey from people in one of three villages adjacent to where I live, people with a few hives in their own meadows. On the odd occasion that I buy supermarket honey it’s exclusively from M&S, single-apiary honey with the beekeeper’s name and address. Sadly even our local farm shop sells honey from Eastern European hives, maybe a good enterprise for the individual importing it but it not anything I’d consider buying.
notcutedaisy@reddit
Its quite the thing, I know that twice as much Manuka honey from NZ is sold than has been produced. This was years ago now.
No-Calligrapher9934@reddit
Hot dogs, they aren’t actually made of dogs—I’m disgusted, don’t even get me started on spotted d*ck!
MathematicianOnly688@reddit
If you’re on the lookout for real honey there’s probably a beekeeper near you that you’re unaware of. Try asking around.
Amateur Beekeepers tend to keep very low profile or else they’re blamed anytime someone gets stung. My cul-de-sac of 18 houses has 2 people keeping hives so I’m able to get local honey most of the year.
J_Thompson82@reddit
Moved house just over a year ago and was delighted to see that my local beekeeper is just around the corner from my house. I’ve been back and forth to his a few times last year to pick up a jar. He just has an honesty system with a QR code to pay him. Cheaper than the supermarket’s and local too!
Worried-Penalty8744@reddit
My local beekeeper you have to race to get jars before all the “local honey to cure hayfever” lunatics get to it first
Consistent_Tension44@reddit
We aren't lunatics, we just sneeze a lot :(. I had to carry a towel around with me one garden wedding I was sneezing so much, it isn't fun :(
Embarrassed_Run7562@reddit
Which by the way is complete bullshit and it has no proven effects….
Jetboy01@reddit
Stay positive!
I think you both just proved that the main effect is ensuring that local bees can thrive, so at least they've got that going for them.
Worried-Penalty8744@reddit
Definitely keeps the honey man in business
I just can’t fathom why this one particular strand of quackery persists. Every single year at the same time people start mentioning it, but they turn their noses up at fexofenadine
Helenarth@reddit
Fexofenadine mentioned. That is the ONLY one that helps me.
Nfjz26@reddit
As someone with hayfever symptoms that aren’t treatable with antihistamines I sympathise with people being desperate enough to try anything.
Unfortunately the medical treatment that actually works as at desensitisation is small dose pollen shots but it can cost £500-1000 a year.
m205@reddit
Hi, sorry if this comes off patronising but just wondering if you have tried the kenalog injection?
Nfjz26@reddit
I hadn’t heard of it but Google says the nhs no longer recommendeds this treatment due to the serious side effects side effect risks so I’m guessing that’s why my gp hasn’t mentioned it.
Fresh-Extension-4036@reddit
It's because it takes a tiny pinch of truth, in that carefully controlled immunotherapy uses small precise doses of specific allergens to decrease reactivity, and then completely ignores the key words "carefully controlled" and decides that they can do this part themselves, even though bees go for whatever attracts them, they don't only harvest from the specific plants that any particular individual is allergic to in the precise amounts required for immunotherapy.
Muayry@reddit
It must be placebo, as it definitely lessens symptoms for me. Many people are losing faith in pharmaceuticals. There is a time and a place for both imo.
Embarrassed_Run7562@reddit
I have bees, I’m all for bees.
I just don’t know where the myth comes from that local honey cures it, it sells jars don’t get me wrong and that’s fine. But scientifically, there is literally no evidence at all.
I had to draw the line at the lady that bought it for her dog with hayfever…
MissionLet7301@reddit
Confirmation bias and the placebo effect mainly.
Southernbeekeeper@reddit
My understanding is that local honey doesn't cure hay-fever but that it does alleviate the symptoms.
Anecdotally I have lots of returning customers who swear my honey is cures their hay-fever. I'm not going to argue with them.
nitroxc@reddit
I used to get really bad hayfever so looked into the "honey from local bees helps accustom you and build immunity to the pollen" stuff.
From what I remember there was like two "main" studies on the topic, both with a low volume of test subjects, not peer reviewed or really big or proper enough to come to any solid conclusion. iirc one study said there was a potential link to reduced symptoms, and the other study said there was no link found.
I get what you say in "there is literally no evidence at all", that in of itself doesn't mean there ISNT a link, just that it's not really as important of an issue for anyone to fund and run a decisive large scale study/trial on if it does or doesn't help.
I can see the logic in that honey produced from local bees carrying the pollen in your area might have a mild "exposure therapy" effect, like those jabs you can get from your GP to expose you and build immunity to the allergens. However I don't think it's really able to "cure" hayfever.
I think it's a bit of a mixed bag honestly, if having a bit of local honey makes some people with hayfever feel a bit better, then great! I think there are genuinely people that gain some measurable benefit from it, regardless of if its "treating" the hayfever, making some of the symptoms a bit less drastic or not actually doing anything other than the placebo effect.
Aye I get your frustration when people treat it like some holy grail cure, but of all the things to get mad at, it's ranks pretty low on the list. If people wanna support local beekeepers, for a reason that isn't "scientifically proven" who cares? It's not like they're using up vital medical supplies. Smile, agree politely and enjoy taking their money.
ChineseRobinWilliams@reddit
Surely that was implied by the comment you replied to?
_terminal_velocity_@reddit
No proven effects or lack of evidence does not mean it’s not true, it often just means that the thing in question has not been studied much and there is no conclusive answer either way.
DeepPanWingman@reddit
Despite having to take weapons grade hayfever chemicals for the last 30 years my mum still keeps banging on about trying local honey as a cure.
The twist? My dad is a beekeeper and I've been eating local honey for 30 fucking years.
sheistybitz@reddit
SMH
richardjohn@reddit
Never understood this, the pollen that fucks me up blows in from Norwegian forests.
toad__warrior@reddit
Beekeeper here - the reason this is a myth has to do with pollen types. Allergies are largely caused by pollen from different grasses. Bees do not collect pollen from grass, instead they collect from flowers.
IansGotNothingLeft@reddit
Yes, I buy mine from a local guy. £6 a jar, but worth it. And it lasts around 2 months (I only use it on my yoghurt).
ThinIntention1@reddit
How do I find and what's the process of finding a bee keeper
JaffaMafia@reddit
Try looking [here] (https://www.bbka.org.uk/find-beekeeping-near-you)
ElGhon@reddit
Thank you, kind stranger. I have just went out to my local beekeepers (never knew they existed) 5 minutes from my house. Best honey I have ever had and well worth the money!
ThinIntention1@reddit
Thanks
SpiritedGuest6281@reddit
My mums neighbour has 2 or 3 hives in his back garden and you wouldn't know it. There isn't an abundance of bees about or anything.
Raunien@reddit
They tend not to pollinate the flowers immediately surrounding the hive, instead preferring to venture up to two miles out. Also, when they're home, they tend to stay in the hive unless they think they're under attack.
SpiritedGuest6281@reddit
Lots of surrounding rape fields so probs off visiting them then.
Fresh-Extension-4036@reddit
Chances are, anyone who has a decent sized set of allotments near to them will have real honey local to them. I buy honey from my local allotments, they have a small shop that they open once a week on a saturday morning during the summer months, and they sell honey from the hives they have on site there. You don't have to have an allotment to buy from there. If not, farmer's markets, farm shops, local garden centres and attractions like local open gardens are all good options for finding honey local to you.
Sea_Pomegranate8229@reddit
Best place to meet them is at local dances. Keep a close eye on their moves and that will direct you to their hives.
Flying_worms@reddit
How can I tell if it’s real honey or not?
DrFriedGold@reddit
Real honey is expensive
Programmer-Severe@reddit
Just buy local, a jar lasts ages
fsuk@reddit
Not in my house!
nikadi@reddit
Same. My kids don't know the meaning of moderation 😑
New_Libran@reddit
Yep, no way I'm buying a jar of £20 honey for those hooligans I have at home!
Ashamed_Length_2436@reddit
I'm like fucking Winnie the Pooh, just sitting there with a fucking jar wearing nothing but a red shirt, just scooping that shit into my gob.
jtr99@reddit
These OnlyFans ads are getting creative.
Waldo-Calrissian@reddit
Salute you! Proper LOL 😂🤣
QuantitySharp2662@reddit
Pretty sure you could use honey to rip a good wad of pubes out. And not even on purpose.
Fredpillow1995@reddit
Poor Winnie.
Amazing_Fox_7840@reddit
I was fine with their consenting relationship until the bit about shit. Too far.
the_uk_hotman@reddit
Get a squeezing bottle so much easier
segagamer@reddit
No, get a glass jar - it's atleast more likely to get recycled.
april8r@reddit
Right! We go through tons of honey!
Programmer-Severe@reddit
Fair enough! 🤣
uggyy@reddit
You know that honey is one of the only foods with no expiry date. Pure honey stored properly doesn't go off.
Lampshadevictory@reddit
Only a few days ago someone pointed out that bottled water has an expiry date. (Apparently the plastics in the bottle leech into the water).
Queasy-Airport2776@reddit
It always leeches in due to the heat, sun etc
chapatsea@reddit
A bit like 10,000 year old glacial water with a sell by date......
cybertonto72@reddit
That's the container and not the water
bondinchas@reddit
True. They found some honey in an Egyptian tomb, and it was still edible.
uggyy@reddit
Yup. Amazing to think.
Mysterious_Handle_71@reddit
The crystals taste good too!!!
No_Doughnut3257@reddit
I have a system of buying local honey whenever/wherever I see it at Markets/indy delis etc.
Works quite well as I get through a jar every few weeks. I’ve also got a fake honey on the go at all times too for smoothies and stuff where the taste gets a bit lost so doesn’t matter as much.
Love a bit of honey me. It’s one of those foods that every time I have some I’m like ‘holy fuck this stuff tastes absolutely amazing’. Strawberries also give me this reaction. Honey on strawberries and yogurt is god tier.
craggsy@reddit
How do you know the local honey is real honey?
No_Doughnut3257@reddit
You can often speak to the producer in person, I carry a lie detector test for this very purpose.
60percentsexpanther@reddit
You should really carry a spectrometer and well, just to be sure.
craggsy@reddit
My favourite fact is the most fraudulent honey is local English organic honey, because you can't produce organic honey in the UK due to regulations
No_Doughnut3257@reddit
I think what you are referring to is the labelling of raw honey as organic, as producers have no control over where the bees collect the nectar from. This is why it’s generally called local honey and not organic honey.
craggsy@reddit
You see it all the time in local food markets, someone selling their organic honey that they produced, not realising the regulations and truly believing its organic
No_Doughnut3257@reddit
The regulation is over the labelling. It’s not like local producers are attempting to game the system for profit during production like supermarkets do, which is what the fake honey scandal is about.
craggsy@reddit
But supermarkets aren't gaming the system, the amount of test points between hive and shop makes it so hard, the studies are normally released by groups with the agenda of "Asian honey is bad"
No_Doughnut3257@reddit
If a supermarket uses honey blended from numerous countries (let alone hives) from inside and outside the UK then the opportunity for the product to be adulterated increases. That’s literally the basis of the scandal.
In contrast I can buy honey from someone who made it in their garden, albeit labelled local instead of organic, which has zero impact on my decision.
If you prefer supermarket honey that’s fine dude.
craggsy@reddit
But the scandal is based on ignorance, the supermarket honey isn't blended until it gets to the factory in the UK, its tested at multiple points before that, including EU and UK ports, the manufacturers in the UK have trusted farms they buy from and can trace the honey back to those farms, samples are taken from the farms by the manufacturers themselves and tested in approved labs in the UK.
The other problem is the idea that cheap honey must be fake, whereas its cheap because due to its size, China can produce honey all year around and can just produce barrel after barrel
No_Doughnut3257@reddit
I mean, it’s not based on ignorance it’s based on investigative journalism.
I’m not sure what skin you have in the game (shill for Big Honey?) but trying to convince me the mass production process you describe is preferable to me buying local is simply not going to happen today, and probably not ever.
Also I don’t see how blanket bashing local producers for an entirely different issue helps your cause.
Regardless, I’m going to duck out now, enjoy the rest of your weekend.
craggsy@reddit
I just have a passion for food fraud through working in food manufacturing and it annoys me that honey gets all the attention where there is no fraud vs herbs and spices that have so much food fraud, some of which is dangerous to health.
Also I'm not bashing for buying local, I'm saying that it's bad to believe that there is a difference in local vs supermarket
Also the investigative journalism is always based on what various lobby groups tell them, same with the whole food industry
pblive@reddit
Half an hour, a chair and some cable ties
cybertonto72@reddit
I actually don't like the taste of fresh strawberries, they need to be over rip to be anywhere near sweet for me.
No_Doughnut3257@reddit
Yep. Yellow sticker gang LETS GO
R4vendarksky@reddit
High quality yoghurt, home made granola, drizzle with local honey and a few expensive and fresh blue berries and strawberries.
I have this for breakfast every day and every day I love it. It’s so healthy and good for you and fucking delicious plus it feels like I’m giving myself a hotel m/restaurant breakfast treat every morning.
Sure it costs a bit and requires some effort but it’s 100% worth it in my book
Aggressive_Chuck@reddit
But I want it in a squeezy bottle.
hyper-casual@reddit
It tastes so much better too.
My grandad was a farm manager and the entire area had various farms and produce. The farmers used to just trade things and when he brought home a jar of home with a barely legible handwritten label on it you knew you were in for a treat.
DrFriedGold@reddit
I don't have a local apiary. Just Tesco.
I don't eat honey except for sauce for home made crispy chilli beef. The fake honey is good enough for that.
Purrtymeow04@reddit
I think M&S have real honey
The_Growl@reddit
Holland and Barrett too. I like Black Bee honey, lovely tang to it.
inevitablelizard@reddit
They do, I've seen British stuff and also foreign stuff but with just a single country listed like Romania. Still European, and if just one country is listed that means they have control over the supply chain and know where they're buying from. Which means it will be genuine.
The issue I think is because these blends are where stuff is bought from all over the place somewhere abroad and mixed together and it's easier for fake to creep in. Where you can't trace a single jar to any particular country.
inevitablelizard@reddit
The issue for some is finding it. If nowhere local sells it you have to order it and pay not only the higher price of the jar but also a delivery cost on top of that.
I was lucky to find a local farm shop that sold Northern English honey. It makes me so sad that cheap shit fake stuff is all most people can reliably get, and that people have got used to it. Like a shifting baseline syndrome.
Top-Cat-a@reddit
Can confim: Bought a local jar of honey, it did last ages - about 4 hrs.
Uvanimor@reddit
Not really, only Manuka honey is expensive because some dipshits believe it has healing properties…
It’s just honey… tastes good though.
Williamishere69@reddit
Okay, but manuka honey is actually really good for wounds. Obviously not on its own and you do need to have antibiotics or other medications if the doctor says so, dont put it on post-op wounds, ask your doctor if its definitrly okay, etc, etc. You can also use it on eczema, but Ive not tried that personally so I dont actually know how useful it is with severe eczema (again, ask your doctor if its okay to apply typically because different eczema types react differently to everything..)
Also, don't use the ones from the supermarket to put on wounds. You still need medical grade manuka honey.
And, yeah, ingesting it doesnt really help much. It can help with a sore throat, and its really good with that (but basically all decent honey can help).
Its also really good for a placebo effect. If you believe it works well for a cold or the flu, and it ends up working well because of the placebo effect, then great! Its better to feel, well, better than to feel like shit. But, this does depend on if you can afford the fancy manuka honey (just get normal honey!).
Uvanimor@reddit
No, it’s not. It’s just tasty sugar and that’s ok.
There is no impartial scientific evidence to state otherwise.
If your doctor is talking to you about honey, get another fucking doctor.
Williamishere69@reddit
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6613335/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8386265/
https://www.mdpi.com/2392-7674/10/1/15
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353773618_Role_of_Honey_in_Advanced_Wound_Care
It is very good. Anecdotally, Ive had experience with it being used in vet practices and it has accelerated wound healing and assisted in helping heal wounds (as Ive said, alongside traditional measurements).
Its not some quackery just because its honey. It genuinely does work.
Uvanimor@reddit
These studies are comparing using manuka honey as a wound dressing compared to generic honey…
Literally what’s the point? What are we doing here? I’m sure there are other wound dressings that are much more effective… use that instead?
Neither of us are medical professionals, but I’m not dumb enough to start reading impartially funded medical articles to justify using a niche variant of honey over another for something it’s not even very good at?
DrFriedGold@reddit
Honey is useful in a survival situation at the very least. I'm still going to the pharmacy aisle in Tesco for wounds instead of jams and spreads.
Williamishere69@reddit
Please, read the second and third link I sent.
xp3ayk@reddit
I'd be quite happy buying expensive honey if I could be sure it was honey.
I buy from local beekeepers when I can find them but it's not convenient.
I would love an expensive but legit supermarket option
DrFriedGold@reddit
It's like the Guardian's comment section around here.
cccactus107@reddit
Morrison's/Tesco's Spanish forest honey seems legit to me.
craggsy@reddit
Buy Honey from the supermarket, ignore the scare stories, there is so much regulation around honey and so many producers of honey around the world that honey producers wouldn't risk making fake honey and selling it to the manufacturers. All the big UK manufacturers will have specific producers they buy from, falling out of favour by using fake honey could cost your entire business
Local honey tends to be more fraudulent because it is less regulated
inevitablelizard@reddit
Yep, I got farm shop honey which is £7.95 for a 340g jar, heather honey from the Northern Pennines moorland areas. But it lasts a decent amount of time. I use it for roasting ham and for bakery like making granola bars.
People have got used to food being impossibly cheap, and any correction to what it should be makes people uneasy.
apokrif1@reddit
Expensive crap ≠ real honey.
PhiliaSophiaTruly@reddit
It's safe to assume all 'blends' of honey are laced with sugar syrup to save on costs, only buy single source honey if you want better odds of it being genuine.
So just scan the back of your honey jar for the word blend, if you spot it then it's a jar of syrup.
Further reading: https://www.ukri.org/news/new-technology-will-help-prevent-the-sale-of-adulterated-honey/
DrFabulous0@reddit
There's nowt wrong with syrup, I like syrup, but it isn't honey. I wish the labelling were more honest, I know real honey is expensive, and that's ok if I know what I'm buying.
eerst@reddit
What is "sugar syrup." HFCS? Agave? Fructose? Glucose? Sucrose? It's good that you like "syrup" but it's worth knowing that that isn't a thing unto itself anymore so than "fruit beverage" isn't a single specific thing.
adamh02@reddit
Sugar syrup should be water and sugar.
Formal_Evidence_4094@reddit
Okay Mr Big Brain Science guy
adamh02@reddit
wellrod@reddit
This is the thing, if almond milk was forced to rebrand to almond drink why cant honey (blended) be rebranded to honey syrup or the likes?
neanderbeast@reddit
It's only right to call it nut juice.
jtr99@reddit
Yes officer, this comment here.
Nervous-Deal-9271@reddit
Previous-Ad7618@reddit
dåddy?
bondinchas@reddit
Once you've seen it, you can't unsee it.
Spoiler: Don't look at the pouring milk, look at the orange thing.
Appropriate-Sound169@reddit
Omg 🤣🤣🤣
iLikeBread9@reddit
Because there's no large group of honey producers pushing for this change. Also because big companies like Rowse have big legal teams that will challenge it.
segagamer@reddit
I got put off all of those Almont/Oat/Whatever milks and when back to dairy the moment I realised that the vast majority of them were actually oil mixed with a bit of nut milk. After discovering that, I can really feel it in the milks texture.
MayonnaiseOW@reddit
Can you name some of the brands that are mostly oil mixed with a bit of nut milk?
I have been drinking them for about 15 years and have yet to encounter an alternative milk that doesn't have water as the first ingredient.
Would love to know which ones are mostly oil so I can look into this further!
segagamer@reddit
Maybe mostly is an exaggeration. But a good chunk of it is - as in more than the actual ingredient. I was drinking Oatly at the time, and when I looked at other brands and other nuts it was mostly the same. So I went back to cow.
RVFIO@reddit
Oatly Barita (the fattiest one) has 3.0g of fat /100ml so 3%, if we assume all of that is from the oil the it’s still not a huge amount IMO. You’re talking about a thimble’s worth, certainly not “a good chunk”.
bondinchas@reddit
It's actually "bee spit", as the bees take the nectar into their first stomach, and regurgitate it into the comb on the hive. But I don't think that name would be commercially successful!
Tumtitums@reddit
Exactly the same thing applies to fruit juices some cannot be called fruit juice as they have stupid amount of water diluting the fruit juice
Saotik@reddit
Because the motivation for those was protecting an influential industry, not protecting the consumer. There's not a strong apiarist lobby, so there's unfortunately little motivation to protect them, their product, or consumers who want to buy it.
ToddleWaddle@reddit
This one from Aldi says produce of Spain on the back. But it is suspiciously cheap: https://www.aldi.co.uk/product/specially-selected-spanish-forest-squeezy-honey-000000000337079003
ohnoyoudontlikeme@reddit
I've had that, it's not proper.
ToddleWaddle@reddit
How can you tell for sure?
ohnoyoudontlikeme@reddit
The taste.
The_Growl@reddit
Real honey has a floral essence, and a pleasant sweetness to it. The fake stuff is like golden syrup. It’s also quite expensive, at least £5 a jar.
welliedude@reddit
Yeah discovered this recently. We got a jar from a local butcher that sold locally sourced honey. Opened the jar and wow does it smell of floral and pollen.
ohnoyoudontlikeme@reddit
Exactly. I've got some wet wipe asking for proof lmao
RisKQuay@reddit
I swear to god it was good honey up until recently. All of a sudden it's become sweeter, runnier, and flavourless - despite still claiming to be single origin. I'm hoping it's just a bad batch, but... my hopes are not high.
WildTomato9@reddit
You do get bad batches of honey sometimes
cybertonto72@reddit
It is a very seasonal product. And local flowering patterns affect honey texture and flavour a lot.
craggsy@reddit
And your proof is?
ohnoyoudontlikeme@reddit
That it doesn't taste like real honey. Sorry, I haven't got the scientific paper for you.
EpicEpicnessTheEpic@reddit
Just checked the Sainsbury's honey I use and the ingredients say "100% honey" but does say blended from a variety of sources, some non-EU.
Whilst I would hope that Trading Standards laws here would ensure it is only honey, I can't imagine the eventual manufacturer tests their supplies for purity.
snakeoildriller@reddit
And further still.. "a blend of non-EU honeys" might mean Chinese honey
inevitablelizard@reddit
Why I'm absolutely shocked to my core that China would sell fake produce.
maxf_33@reddit
Making sure you pick honey from a SINGLE origin is a good start. You will find out that this blend of EU and non EU garbage is everywhere.
RisingDeadMan0@reddit
every single UK sample was contaminated... its craazy
MacSamildanach@reddit
The most recent findings showed that up to 96% of honey sold in UK stores is 'fake' (or at least, adulterated). Quite scary, really.
I get mine from a local beekeeper. I also bought some beeswax blocks from her recently for a wood polish I was making - she'd never mentioned she sold it, but I needed some, and since I get my honey from her I asked. And she did.
It's surprisingly easy to get local honey. At worst, you just look for hand-written signs when you're driving.
craggsy@reddit
The source for that seems to be a group who advocate for only using local honey.
I'd also add that nobody is testing local honey for sugar syrups and supermarket honey goes through extensive testing throughout the entire process
folkkingdude@reddit
Plenty of local beekeepers send their honey off for testing. The source for that is sound if you want to look into the science of it. The “extensive testing” of supermarket honey you’re taking about is imaginary. The reason they advocate buying locally is because you’re much more likely to get real honey, rather than sugar syrup.
PsychologicalClock28@reddit
I’m a beekeeper and I get mine tested to see what is in there. (There a free scheme i sign up for each year) Although I don’t sell it, just give it away.
inevitablelizard@reddit
I can believe the group doing this may have targeted shops they already suspected to have this problem, so the 96% claim should be viewed with caution. There could be a selection bias if they've targeted the cheaper supermarkets but not M&S for example.
However there's enough evidence to prove this is a major problem, of honey being bulked up with sugar syrup to sell it cheaper, but dishonestly marketing it as honey, and any level of this problem should be viewed as unacceptable and requiring action.
And there is some reporting from abroad suggesting companies in China deliberately try to create mixes to fool the supermarket testing. And I don't think that claim was linked to this UK group, it was from investigative journalists who went out there.
craggsy@reddit
What you need to remember is due to its size, China is the largest producer of honey, something like 25% of the world's honey comes from China, which will naturally make it cheaper, they'll always be groups trying to discredit it and yes, you'll always find some people trying to produce fake, but they are quickly dropped by the manufacturers and the message passed through the various networks and its not in the levels the media claims it to be
deletethewife@reddit
You have to read the label at the back, should say 100% raw honey.
eldeem@reddit
This is untrue, there is no legal definition to the term ‘raw honey’ on UK packaging. There is, in fact, a lot of regulation about just using the word ‘honey’ which should stop the mislabelling, but it continues.
deletethewife@reddit
You have to look for single sourced honey that’s not blended with sweeteners.
folkkingdude@reddit
Wrong again, because if it’s got sweeteners in it, it isn’t honey. There’s nothing on the packaging that proves what’s in it. Buy from a beekeeper you trusts really the only option.
eldeem@reddit
Totally, avoid anything blended with sweeteners or ‘honey flavour syrups’. In English law, to be called honey you can’t blend it with anything except other honey, but this is super difficult to police at a country-wide level.
For OP, as others have said, local is almost always the route to go if you want the highest confidence. If you don’t know of anyone personally, then the BBKA have a map of all their member organisations. Start with your local one and they’ll usually be able to tell you who’s got stock to sell and when it’s usually available.
ishaani-kaur@reddit
Expiry date. Real honey doesn't expire.
merdeauxfraises@reddit
Turn the hat upside down. If the air bubble floats upwards very quickly, it’s fake. The bubble should take several seconds (10’) to each the top.
tar-mirime@reddit
I bought a bottle in Tesco once and knew as soon as I opened it that it wasn't honey because it smelt nothing like honey. That was a bit of a giveaway. That might have been a particularly bad batch, I don't know as I've not bought Tesco own brand honey since.
Monstrrbleu@reddit
You can't tell by chemical analysis because they dilute real honey with glucose and fructose syrups in the exact ratio that the honey has. And hungry is mostly glucose and fructose. However, the other molecules there in tiny amounts are what makes the honey flavour and gives it its antiseptic properties and an the goodness. You can know whether syrups have been added by using NMR. By comparing traces you can see whether it's pure honey or not, and even tell what botanical was the syrup made of if some was added! NMR is also used to check whether the provenance claimed is right, like where the flowers used to make the honey grew!
helloreceiver@reddit
There is another quick (relatively) test you can do, you can run isotope ratio mass spec on the honey. The glucose and fructose from real honey will come from C3 plants, glucose and fructose used to adulterate will come from C4 plants such as maze. The C3 pathway flavours the C12 isotope of carbon over the C13. This means you see more C13 in fake honey than in real honey.
Ok-Dress-341@reddit
https://www.food.gov.uk/research/honey-the-context
Cane sugar (C4), Beet sugar (C3). From starches: corn (maize) syrup (C4), rice syrup (C3),
Might be tricky
RedHal@reddit
While I don't doubt the veracity of your claim for a second, not all of us have a mass spectrometer to hand. Well, not one suitable for this purpose.
helloreceiver@reddit
Fair, but can you put a price on peace of mind when it comes to honey? Yes. £240k approx.
RedHal@reddit
What are we talking here? The Thermo Fisher Neoma MC-ICP-MS? Probably overkill, but fairly compact for its capabilities. Or are you thinking we need the big guns? A Neptune with the Plus upgrade?
Personally I'd† go with an Agilent 8890-gas chromatograph with a multi-purpose sampler operating in headspace mode and a 2.5 mL syringe, coupled to a 5977B-quadrupole mass spectrometer with an inert ion source. Much cheaper and you can use relative prevalence of VOCs.
† Ah, who am I trying to kid? I got that from here.
helloreceiver@reddit
A Neoma is overkill, those are getting towards the better part of a million. All jokes aside companies do actually sell dedicated packages aimed at honey analysis: https://www.elementar.com/en/honey
RedHal@reddit
Oh cool!
Monstrrbleu@reddit
To be fair a spectrophotometer is easier to get your hands on than an NMR machine 😆
inevitablelizard@reddit
Check the middle aisle of Aldi next time you're shopping, they'll probably have one.
helloreceiver@reddit
I feel the lidl parkside version would be better.
notyourcocoabutter@reddit
Lakeland do a very good counter top model fyi.
RedHal@reddit
Ah, good old Lakeland! Usually I use them for particle accelerators in the 10-20MeV range, but good to hear they've broadened their catalogue.
escapingfromelba@reddit
Radio 4's Food programme did a bit on this. One of the big honey competitions has been dropped as testing cannot spoke the fakes. The chinese even offer a service to add 'components' (can't remember the term) that natural honey would have that the testing looks for.
An_Fear_Glas@reddit
Buy from a bee keeper. Supermarket stuff is literally muck.
OldRancidOrange@reddit
Generally, look where it’s been produced (ideally locally and definitely NOT outside EU) and the price. If you can, buy directly from a local beekeeper.
idcalvin@reddit
Find your local beekeepers and ask where to buy. I used to get mine from local shops (cue the League jokes) but now get it direct from their local contact. £6.50 per jar. Not too bad these days and it's gorgeous.
bondinchas@reddit
Most (not all) real honey will crystallise in time. Honey contains lots of things, including pollen. These larger article encourage the super saturated sugar solution that honey is, to crystallise, usually forminy a separate layer at the bottom of the jar.
Supermarkets, and the general public, prefer plain clear looking honey, so they use very fine filters to remove the larger particles of pollen and then treat it by warming it to dissolve amy sugar crystals that would encourage crystallisation. The problem is, while it looks clear, it's removing much of the micro nutrients in the pollen, removing some of the flavours and smells (because of the warming) and what's left is a fraction of what went in.
Another problem with honey is that commercial beekeepers can feed their bees too much sugar solution. The bees like it because it's easy to fetch, near the hives and consistently available, but the pure sugar solution has none of the pollen and flavours that flowers provide. So even if they haven't added lain sugar to the finished harvested product, much commercial honey has far more plain sugar in it than natural flower sourced honey.
Always go for the jar that has a layer of crystallised honey, it won't have been over processed. (Any processing other than a coarse filter to remove bits of wax and bees legs is overpricessing) You can also find your nearest beekeepers club, and ask them if they have honey for sale, that's by far the best source of good honey.
BearMcBearFace@reddit
Crystallisation isn’t an accurate indicator at all. I’m a beekeeper and have some honey stores that has crystallised, and some two years old which is only just starting to crystallise now.
bondinchas@reddit
I did say most but not all honeys will crystallise. The point being, if it is crystallised, it's more likely to be better honey. I am a beekeeper too.
Crystallisation also depends on the temperature at which it's stored. At around 12C it crystallises fastest. If it's kept much cooler or warmer than that then the process is slower.
Not_a_real_ghost@reddit
Shouldn’t the label clearly tell you the ingredients?
anotheraccount999999@reddit
Buy it from a local farm shop or people with bees :) anything with non eu honey in the label can be syrup.
-TheNormal1-@reddit
If it says the honey is produced from eu/non Eu countries then assume it’s fake. You can buy local honey from bakeries and farm shops. M&S do a single apiary honey as well
ThinIntention1@reddit
Do you have a link to the m& s one?
leofoxx@reddit
That's the one I buy: https://www.ocado.com/products/M-S-Collection-Single-Apiary-Pure-British-Honey/560660011
ThinIntention1@reddit
Thanks
-TheNormal1-@reddit
That’s the one!
Wonderful-Medium7777@reddit
Thank you
BugAdministrative683@reddit
Sainsbury's do a taste the difference British wildflower honey as well. Seems to be one of the only British honeys they do.
M+S also fo a Scottish Heather honey.
-TheNormal1-@reddit
That Sainsbury’s one is set though if that’s what people prefer
callisstaa@reddit
Russian honey is fucking amazing if you can get the proper stuff.
stargasm420@reddit
If any of it is sourced from outside the EU it's probably not pure honey but it might be, brands like rowse that used to be decent honey can no longer be trusted
moose_knuckle01@reddit
Real honey will not dissolve easily in water, fake honey will
Lemmejussay@reddit
If the label says somewhere "made with eu honey" very small on thr back label. If it says anywhere "blend of non-eu honey" or "non-eu" , it'll be brown rice syrup instead.
takesthebiscuit@reddit
Price!
Harvey_Sheldon@reddit
Used to be the case, now they've just jacked up the price of the fakes to match.
Southernbeekeeper@reddit
If you don't buy it from a local beekeeper its probably fake.
Aprilprinces@reddit
Price is a really good indicator: actual honey is pretty pricey To my knowledge the cheapest real one you can buy in Polish shops (I pay about 8 quid for a rather small jar)
As good: If you see: glucose syrup, corn syrup, sugar syrup → not pure honey
And if you already have some at home and not sure: real honey crystalizes over time
A quicker method is taking a teaspoon of honey and dropping it into water - if it sinks and starts dissolving after sometime - it's really honey; if it's starts dissolving on its way to the bottom - fake
In a store: look at the price - anything at £2, 3 or 4 - defo not honey
Gazebo_Warrior@reddit
I buy jars of the supermarket own brand stuff, not value label, just ordinary, probably oy a couple of quid. It crystallises after a while, so I'm not sure if that's a good rule of thumb.
coffeeisaseed@reddit
If it's squeezy, it's not honey. That's what one honey expert in the Guardian said.
AdministrativeShip2@reddit
You test it for the Carbon isotopes (C3/ C4 sugars)
Sugar from nectar is C3. Sugars from other sources like cane, corn and beets are C4.
If the c4 levels are really high, you know that the keeper has done more than put some sugar syrup out to keep the hive alive in the winter.
holdmymandana@reddit
If it’s outside the EU it’s probably bull
Ecstatic_Effective42@reddit
It's the bee's knees.
Quatum_Queef@reddit
God damn it, that made me laugh
FreeAd2458@reddit
I actually buy my honey from a Corsham seller called the bees knees.
OriginalSammy@reddit
Hahaha take my upvote!
Virtual_Opinion_8630@reddit
that's animal cruelty
Lion_Of_Lime_Street@reddit
Unless you have literally purchased it from the bee keeper in person, it is probably essentially syrup.
helloreceiver@reddit
Testing with a technique called IRMS; isotope ratio mass spectrometry.
tilt@reddit
If it’s in a supermarket it’s fake, if it’s from a local market it’s real. That’s the rule of thumb I use, and iirc when they tested a bunch in a lab it held true too
Lyrael9@reddit
It will harden and crystallise in the cold.
BrieflyVerbose@reddit
If it's about £30 for one jar then chances are it's real.
PennyBunPudding@reddit
buy local.
Failing that, only buy "made in UK or made in EU." If it says outside of the EU, it could well be from new zealand or somewhere but it'll highly likely be china.
HauntingCicada2630@reddit
There is no legal food definition for honey and to compound matters it is (apparently) very hard to test for adulteration. (Just what I read a while ago)
Joannelv@reddit
My dad used to work as an environmental health inspector and took a honey producer to court for saying that it was all British honey and it was proven to have honey from other countries, so yes, it can be tested for origin.
HauntingCicada2630@reddit
Check the 5th paragraph, it outlines the problem nicely. It's not quite as clear cut unfortunately.
What is fake honey and how to spot it | Sugar in honey – Just Bee Honey https://share.google/A2E3UewmlzM3lZiBQ
TheHurricaneBawbag@reddit
Is manuka honey from Aldi, real honey or not?
MelloCookiejar@reddit
Also it's quite ironic, they don't sell pure honey either, they mix it with flavourings. Example, the orange one. Instead of it being orange blossom honey, it's pure honey (which flower?) with some sort of orange essence.
DameKumquat@reddit
Most supermarket honey is from bees fed on sugar water, not flowers. So it being adulterated with sugar syrup makes little difference, just cuts out the bees.
When I did a food fraud course, it was mostly only manuka honey that was being fraudulently adulterated (if people are willing to pay £30 for a jar that's identical to a £3 one, what do you expect?), but other honey got a lot of misleading advertising - pictures of flowers on a label don't mean the bees ever saw them!
The main frauds were virgin olive oil (mostly downright slutty), Arabica coffee (lots of robusta in it), and "freshly-squeezed orange juice" - though a lot of pulp wash can be legally included...
hot4belgians@reddit
Where did you do a food fraud course?
DameKumquat@reddit
FutureLearn. Free, or about £35 if you wanted a certificate. It was very good, lots of people involved in the industry and scientists doing NMR, from all over the world chatting online.
hot4belgians@reddit
Oh that's awesome! Thank you.
HauntingCicada2630@reddit
I think the crux is that there is no way of enforcing the legislation due to the difficulties testing for contaminants.
MelloCookiejar@reddit
Yeah. Inly way to be certain is: trusted suppliers. That's it.
Wobblycogs@reddit
I know someone prosecuted for that. I wonder if it's the same person. Everything they are into is shady. If they told me the sun was shining, it'd look up to check.
bondinchas@reddit
Easily tested if the honey contains pollen (which it should) the pollen shows what species of flowers the bees harvested from, and so which country and even region or locality it's from.
If it's been fine filtered to remove the pollen, then it's far more difficult to prove where it's from, but then, it's not so good because there's no pollen flavours.
Southernbeekeeper@reddit
A local beekeeper near me was supposedly taken to court as his "cheshire" honey had a large percentage of eucalyptus in it and it was suggested he had imported honey to blend. However, as you can imagine there are a lot of eucalyptus trees in the UK and you can't exactly stop your bees foraging on things.
ThinIntention1@reddit
Wow! Would love to learn and know more. How long did the car last? Are you able to share a link or tell us the name
Woffingshire@reddit
Surely it would be quite easy to say that to be called honey it has to be produced by bees.
Like how to call something milk it needs to be produced by cows which is why oat milk isn't allowed to be marketed as milk anymore.
XihuanNi-6784@reddit
The question is at what point does it stop being honey if you add other things to bulk it out. It may be a myth but I believe soft serve ice cream in supermarkets is allowed to be whipped so much it's more air than ice cream, but it's still sold.
folkkingdude@reddit
If you add anything to bulk it out, it isn’t honey per the Honey Regulations
EhDinnaeEvenKen@reddit
Thanks to the tories gutting food labelling standards in 2015, most of what's called "ice cream" here doesn't even contain any actual cream or more than trace amounts of "milk" any more.
Most of it is aerated vegetable oils (mostly palm oil) with xanthan gum for texture, and just enough milk solids added in powder form to meet the now utterly pitiful legal requirements.
I haven't bought any ice cream in this country, that wasn't made in a legit gelateria, for years.
Zestyclose_Sale5688@reddit
What about goat milk?
Woffingshire@reddit
Okay I looked up the actual supreme court ruling and it says the milk must be produced by an animal, not specifically a cow.
But still, proves that we can and do restrict what certain products are called based on how they're produced. Honey 100% can be restricted to only called honey if is from bees.
robinscotland@reddit
Although I rather hope the "cat milk" Sainsbury's sell its not product of cat.
Zestyclose_Sale5688@reddit
Honey is legally:
"the natural sweet substance produced by Apis mellifera bees from the nectar of plants or from secretions of living parts of plants or excretions of plant-sucking insects on the living parts of plants, which the bees collect, transform by combining with specific substances of their own, deposit, dehydrate, store and leave in honeycombs to ripen and mature"
It just isn't being enforced it seems
HauntingCicada2630@reddit
That's because it's nigh on impossible to tell if it's been diluted with sugars from other sources, I do believe.
SatisfactionMoney426@reddit
And sheep's milk ...
mark_b@reddit
And dog's milk. Lasts longer than any other type of milk, dog's milk.
gerrineer@reddit
Why does it last longer?
mark_b@reddit
No bugger'll drink it.
BigMushroomCloud@reddit
Because nobody wants to drink dog's milk?
gerrineer@reddit
Bit its full of marrowbone goodness ..or is that the pot noodle?
meltymcface@reddit
Can still buy cans of coconut milk though.
60svintage@reddit
Easy to test for adulteration.
Sugar syrup dissolves easily in water. Honey sinks and does not dissolve easily in water.
VladamirK@reddit
China has factories pumping out formulations designed to pad out honey and pass adulteration and origin tests. There were reports out recently saying that it was essentially impossible to differentiate the stuff.
princemephtik@reddit
There is:
Plus there are compositional requirements.
In one of the only cases about it it looks as enforcement could be better.
teerbigear@reddit
princemephtik@reddit
Judge sounds like an attention seeker
teerbigear@reddit
I quite like people being interesting, the world is a very boring place.
princemephtik@reddit
Yeah fair enough, suppose we all have to have a bit of fun at work now and again
4oclockinthemorning@reddit
I heard that cheap mass market cider isn't made from fermented apple juice, but just... fermented sugar, I guess, with some kinds of appley or cidery flavouring.
Sad_Introduction8995@reddit
I was gutted when I bought a crate of cider I’d tried on tap and found out what was in it. Sweeteners??!!!
4oclockinthemorning@reddit
Also check the label on soy sauce. Some big brands you get commonly in supermarkets are made from soy extract and a load of fake flavourings and e numbers and crap. It should just be fermented soy. Kikkoman's is commonly stocked and that's real soy sauce.
Wooden_Mushroom_1756@reddit
I despise shitty supermarket soy sauce so I agree with the thrust of your comment, Kikkoman is about as cheap as I’ll go. But all soy sauce is made with soy extract, that’s kind what soy sauce is.
For example the ingredients of Kikkoman are: water, salt, wheat, and soy beans. And the ingredients of Tesco light soy are: water, soy extract (soy beans, wheat, salt). Then a bunch of shitty preservatives, granted. But the term “soy extract” itself isn’t a sign of poor quality.
Sad_Introduction8995@reddit
My dad keeps bees and we just chatted about this today. He says the Chinese stuff uses some kind of syrup made from beet that apparently is hard to distinguish from honey, and they have ways to make it more like honey.
Buy local. It’s expensive, but the cheap stuff is cheap for a reason.
Yakydo@reddit
I met a financial advisor a long time ago.he passed me his business card, it said Bruce Curran BBA. I asked is that a Bachelor's in Biz Admin or the British Bankers Association. He replied, no it's the British Beekeepers association. I did not invest but we became good friends. May he RIP
LordAnchemis@reddit
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/food-standards-labelling-durability-and-composition#honey
Honey composition and labelling is controlled by The Honey (England) Regulations 2015. This legislation lays down reserved descriptions that must be used for:
The regulations lay down detailed specifications honey must comply with in terms of its composition and sets out some general quality criteria for honey.
If you use one of the reserved descriptions (for example, ‘comb honey’ or ‘honeydew honey’), your product must be made according to the defined compositional criteria.
thirdbrother3@reddit
Started buying local honey from a nearby farm shop for this very reason. It may be 7 quid not 3 but it's actually the product I want, and it remains crystal clear in the cupboard. How true it is, but I've heard honey made with local pollen helps with hayfever in your area.
Limitedheadroom@reddit
Only about 30% of the honey sold globally is pure, the other 70% is cut with sugar syrup. It’s a massive international black market. More or less impossible to avoid
jstringer86@reddit
The only way to buy real honey is to find a local supplier. All supermarket honey is fake. People don’t complain enough so there’s no incentive to fix it.
Livid_Zone4260@reddit
put some chilli in it so enabling the use of the even cheaper shit honey,call it hot honey, charge a premium ..RESULT
Electrical-Tea6966@reddit
They are working on it, but in the meantime get your honey locally https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/nov/09/nine-in-ten-honey-samples-from-uk-retailers-fail-authenticity-test
Electrical-Tea6966@reddit
Because there’s not actually a conclusive test to see if it is honey or not, so they can’t enforce anything
JayTheilluminated@reddit
80% of the things in the supermarkets are fake.
nil-pholan@reddit
Buy honey direct from local apiaries, farmer's markets or farm/specialist food shops, not supermarkets. It's more expensive but at least you know it's actually honey.
Expect to pay around £7.50 for a 350g jar.
Dot_Matrix_Glitch@reddit
Maple syrup says hold my beer...
Leftover_Chi@reddit
I don't know why, it's bloody infuriating and it is worrying that it's allowed to be sold as "pure"- it makes you wonder how many other foods are sold to us that are adulterated in some way.
I stopped buying supermarket honey a while ago. The kids were putting it in their porridge or yoghurt. Now I buy organic maple syrup for that because you only need a tiny bit and it keeps in the fridge for ages so it's actually relatively cost effective, I just monitor how much they put on, much to their annoyance 😂
But if I fancy honey I buy local only now, it costs a fortune but I make it last and use it sparingly.
I think this is the way of the world now, use good things well and not very often if you want quality and safety 🤷🏻♀️
SensibleChapess@reddit
Capitalism... Profits are paramount!
Adminisissy@reddit
Same thing with grated cheese with potato startch added. Like, how much potato starch vs cheese, it doesn't say. Doing keto diet and not wanting to eat starch/sugar.
60percentsexpanther@reddit
See Rotten: corruption in the food industry. Netflix 2018. Season 1: Episode 1 "lawyers, guns and honey"
I suspected UK honey was all like this back when that documentary came out. I also suspected our food standards agency wasn't partnering with universities to test it in £1m+ spectrometers like they were in the USA back then. I think we have no accurate data as to the scale of the issue.
Support your local bee keepers and buy honey straight from their farm. Consider keeping bees if you can- they need our help now more than ever.
Shoddy-Monitor1153@reddit
I can't believe they sell treacle not mined in UK treacle mines too
when_music_hits@reddit
Quite likely. Maple syrup and olive oil has been sold for years. Despite the prices for genuine products being so expensive that even locals to the producers wouldn't be able to afford to use it regularly.
quellflynn@reddit
100% of this packaging is recyclable*
COMPANIES LIE
One_Complex6429@reddit
This is a very good question. Also the same should be asked of extra virgin olive oil
TedGetsSnickelfritz@reddit
I buy mine from Black Bee Honey. Supports UK bees and their people.
Frustib@reddit
While we’re on the topic of honey: what’s hot honey?
VladamirK@reddit
Honey with chili powder in. I can recommend hot star honey. Very tasty.
Frustib@reddit
So could I buy a jar of honey and add chilli powder and stir?
Raunien@reddit
Nothing much, what's hot with you?
Alyseeii@reddit
🍯 🤝 🌶️
Adhyskonydh@reddit
You shouldn’t frequent those kinds of websites… 😉
chapatsea@reddit
Watch "Honey wars", flooding the market with fake honey. China especially.
ladymisbehave@reddit
Buy Polish honey. You can find them in supermarkets, already crystallising. In Poland honey has its legal definition. You can get into trouble by faking it. I'm surprised that the UK still doesn't do that.
Frequent-Activity328@reddit
Find a local honey supplier.
Embarrassed_Run7562@reddit
We keep bees and sell our honey.
All of our honey very quickly will crystallise because we add nothing to it and it is completely raw. We used to warm the jars before selling but honestly, I think it just proves we are legit.
Shop bought honey can usually sit in the cupboard and remain that way for months, that’s usually a good indicator that it has had things added etc.
The trouble with honey is that you need to keep water levels below a certain minimum or it can then ferment. Usually adding things in can change this and people don’t test it when this is the case, so you are very likely to be eating fermented disgusting honey if it is cheap.
Try the BBKA (British Beekeepers Association) website and you can input your postcode and it will show you nearby beekeepers and if they sell honey (providing they have registered etc)
Reasonable-Delay4740@reddit
'ferment' Yummy?
d1dek@reddit
How much do you sell a jar for? Just wondering what the cost of real local honey is.
Embarrassed_Run7562@reddit
We are £3.50 for 150g jar, but we often get told we aren’t charging enough.
People will always charge differing amounts, depends on their yield etc I think. We just at least try to make a bit of profit
ThrowAway1001023@reddit
That is a really good price! There is a beekeeper local to me that sells theirs at £9 for a 150g jar
inevitablelizard@reddit
I've bought Northern Pennines honey from a farm shop for £7.95 per 340g jar. Which is basically exactly the same as you're pricing it, and also is actually slightly on the cheaper side compared to other British honey I've seen.
Do you sell out of all of it?
Embarrassed_Run7562@reddit
Nice to hear some similar pricing! We are always unsure and try to be somewhat in the middle range!
Yes we always sell out and quite quickly too, we do also supply 3 butchers/farm shops nearby which helps!!
Trident_True@reddit
Damn my closest place is like 2 hours away in the middle of nowhere. Do you know if these BBKA sellers ship their honey or is that not profitable enough?
inevitablelizard@reddit
Are you looking at just where your local association is, or looking in detail at each local group's sellers list? Because while the group may be based in a certain town, some of them have members selling honey who are more spread out. Though a lot of them just have phone numbers and no website or even email.
Trident_True@reddit
Ah ok, will take a closer look
inevitablelizard@reddit
Failing that, see if there are any farm shops anywhere near you, look around on google maps or something. If they have a website they don't always specify what they stock, but worth looking into. Farm shops will sometimes stock at least reasonably local honey - I've bought Northern Pennines honey from a Yorkshire one for example.
bobdvb@reddit
We have a local producer who makes good honey.
But I've gained a taste for Greek chestnut honey which is from the mountains of Greece. It's very dark and quite thick with an amazingly deep flavour. Look up Helmos chestnut honey online, it's worth a try and having compared that to stuff straight from the beekeepers in Greece, it's definitely original.
Southernbeekeeper@reddit
Just go in Facebook, search for your local towns beekeepers association.
Embarrassed_Run7562@reddit
Some might, I am not sure! Might just be worth an ask around to see if anyone is willing!
NorthernScrub@reddit
I've not long watched a video by a young lad who was mucking around with making "runny" honey. Super interesting stuff, nothing added to it but a dollop of seed crystal from the same honey.
EavisAintDead@reddit
This is a great video on soft set honey - could be a solution to your crystallisation issues but it’s not without a bit of work. Soft set honey goes for £7+ near me though
Embarrassed_Run7562@reddit
We love soft set honey!
But as this is just a hobby and we both work full time jobs (that include weekends etc) we just don’t have the time, which is a shame but it is what it is!
I do find most people don’t mind the set stuff, in fact we have a couple of people that buy it and are miffed when it comes runny😂
EavisAintDead@reddit
This is where you need to take it from a hobby to becoming a bee empire. Think big! If you’re very lucky you wouldn’t come to hate bee keeping
Embarrassed_Run7562@reddit
I would love nothing more than I hand my notice in at my NHS job and play full time with bees!
We are in an area (Cotswolds ish) where beekeeping is very popular and there is competition galore! We branched to Hot Honey this year to stay trendy though so who knows!
EavisAintDead@reddit
Have you thought about weaponising your bees to take out the neighbouring competition? I’ve heard hostile takeovers are all the rage in the business world and maybe it would work in the buzzness world
Embarrassed_Run7562@reddit
Hahaha! What a thought, giving the bees mini nukes and AK-47s
GiveSleppYourBones@reddit
I buy honey from a local producer and it's solid pretty much immediately. It's lovely in a cup of tea.
Ouryve@reddit
I used to make a banana and honey cake and at some point it suddenly stopped baking properly and just stayed wet and raw. This was the point when I learnt that honey isn't necessarily honey and the brand I'd been using for years had obviously declined in purity.
Embarrassed_Run7562@reddit
Banana and honey cake sound bloody amazing though!!
laserdisckallax@reddit
Buy local honey
No_Communication5538@reddit
… and your evidence is?
SteveBusecmi01@reddit
Local bee man told us that if you put a little of it in a jar of cold water and swirl it around and it dissolves quickly it’s fake
tall_building@reddit
I cant believe its not honey
Fragrant_Ad3224@reddit
Its easy (at least where I live) to buy real honey. Just get it from local farm shops or similar and check the source on the label. Never ever ever buy honey that is blended or has 'china' somewhere on the label.
StrangerWest2756@reddit
There is evidence behind the concern.
Honey is one of the most commonly adulterated foods, and an EU coordinated action found 46% of sampled imports were suspicious of not complying with the Honey Directive. The problem is that honey fraud is genuinely hard to police well, because testing methods are still contested and there is no single agreed method that catches every type of syrup adulteration. So part of the answer is not “they’re allowing obvious fake honey,” but that regulation and testing have lagged behind a complicated fraud problem.
Figure8712@reddit
This is not good enough to make sense. If anyone was selling another fraud product of any sort, e.g. milk labeled "MILK" saying "Ingredients: 100% milk"...but it was just a bottle of water it would be immediately discontinued and likely never make it to the shops to begin with.
Testing is a basic requirement to ensure our food is not full of lies. Yet here honey has been discovered as full of lies, with proof, big news story, basically every brand...and it's fine? Why is it fine?! Why is proof not enough to do anything about it?
No one is answering this question, everyone is shrugging 'yeah it's fake lmao go buy local'. If all the milk in every shop was just water would people say "yeah whatever go buy local"?
abz_eng@reddit
Crisis Report has a video
12 to avoid
it says 5 to actually get
but only list 3 so did the other two fail?
reverandglass@reddit
Rowse Blended Honey, Tesco clear honey were 2 I just spot checked on Tesco's website. Both proudly talk about bees and how honey can crystalize and the ingredients section contains nothing but the nutritional information.
It's pretty concerning that there's nothing to indicate it's not pure.
autumnlight01@reddit
I used to think I didn't like honey and then I tried some from a small local producer and it's DELICIOUS.
It's like a completely different product.
thricedice88@reddit
It's rice syrup of Chinese origin, there was a big scandal involving a German company fudging inspection documentation to allow the sale of adulterated honey on the EU market, technically it's still illegal, but china just transship via third countries and those countries become the point of origin.
Subsyxx@reddit
Just how Cadburys can sell "chocolate" that isn't actually chocolate.
magical_matey@reddit
Just wait until you find out about the vinegar you get from the chippy
philip30001@reddit
The goc is too inept to actually make a meaningful change.
But the issue is way more than just honey. (I dont know the difference between real and fake honey)
Theres tons of bad in food but at least we dont have US chicken...yet
ThatsJustHowIFeeeeel@reddit
What gets me is there is NEVER an ingredients label.
I bought some supermarket honey recently for quite cheap, so was naturally dubious. (It was pancake day and it was all I could get at the time).
I’m aware it’s most likely cut with syrup, I just wanted to know by HOW MUCH.
Like I was expecting an ingredients list and to say something like “sugar, water, glycerin, honey 20%, flavourings”.
Like why does bottles of “honey” get a pass from letting us know wtf is in it?!
No_Doubt_About_That@reddit
Or M&S “select farms” which could be anywhere
Safe-Salad9667@reddit
Buy from a local beekeeper then you'll get the proper beer puke rather than chemicals from some industrial waste.
Iron-Dragon@reddit
The real reason - the advisors for the government are also working for Rowse which pack over 90% of the honey for supermarkets in this country
We beekeepers know there’s a real issue with this in this country but the government is advised by the same people that are working for the importers It’s so bad that last year at one of the large food importing fairs in France there’s footage of two beekeepers talking to a company that make the syrups that are used and they even have a special cheap version for import to the uk market as our tests are known to be the worst in Europe
The government was asked about the new tests that have been developed in Australia and Germany to verify it and they came back with - on it’s not scientific so we they aren’t reliable despite evidence to back the tests up - most of the uk supermarket honey fails the blind tests
Source - beekeeper and have had a lot of discussions regarding this and have seen the evidence (it’s available if you do quick searches)
The_Blip@reddit
Anything 'vanilla' almost certainly won't have any vanilla in it. At best it might have touched real vanilla at some point, otherwise it just contains a chemical vanilla also contains.
Most truffle stuff is the same too. At best, it contains summer truffles. Most commonly, it contains a chemical that truffle contains.
XihuanNi-6784@reddit
In situations like this though one has to consider whether this is actually bad. Stuff like truffles are incredibly hard to cultivate and we'd either need to totally destroy nature, or price them so high no normal person could afford it. I actually lean towards 'degrowth' so I'm not saying we should do this, but that's the rationale. If we want things at the scale and price point we're used to these days, many things are going to be flavoured or produced in this way.
Aggressive_Chuck@reddit
Just call it something else.
The_Blip@reddit
I don't necessarily think it's inherently a bad thing. I think packaging could (and probably should) be clearer; maybe 'truffle flavoured' and 'vanilla flavoured' rather than outright saying it's either of them. The synthetic/essence of versions are certainly more accessible and have a kind of flavour somewhat like the original. I personally don't mind their mere existence and availability.
But as someone who enjoys food on (I'm really trying to not sound pretentious) a deeper level, it's kind of frustrating at the lack of availability of REAL food stuff of this sort of thing. The prominence of the imitation stuff makes finding the real stuff needlessly difficult. If some place uses real vanilla, they can't really stand out from the 'fake' vanilla products equally labelled vanilla. You go to a restaurant for something truffled and it's a complete gamble if you're going to get the real deal or synthetic oil.
It's frustrating talking to people about it too. Like, you'll talk to someone who's eaten something with truffle oil in it and they'll act like they've tasted winter truffles. I don't blame them or anything, but it takes an amount of education that's just hard to disseminate. Vanilla has already fell victim to this: people assume vanilla is the boring flavour. It's so prominent it's left the food industry and has become common parlance for 'bland' or 'common'. The food industry has had to invent new terms to distinguish the real stuff from the imitation, it's a losing battle.
But like I said; I don't think the imitation stuff should be gone. They still have value. I have and enjoy immitation stuff, like strawberry flavoured stuff. I just think it should be clear to people that they're not getting the OG stuff. I think informed consumers are a good thing, and that it would help businesses making the real stuff stand out, and that would help people discover the real stuff.
Idk, I know it's not a major problem in the world. It's just something I'm passionate about and am sad is often misconstrued.
jobblejosh@reddit
To be clear, there's usually a distinction on the ingredients and description.
'Vanilla flavoured' means that there's some sort of vanilla flavouring added. 'Vanilla flavour' means something slightly different.
Anything that says it contains 'natural vanilla flavourings' likely means that the vanilla essential oils/Vanillin have been extracted from vanilla plants and turned into a flavouring agent.
'Artificial vanilla flavouring' or 'artificial vanilla' or if something's vanilla flavoured and contains 'natural and artificial flavourings' means it's synthetic Vanillin, which makes up about 90% of the detectable flavour of natural vanilla anyway.
It's the same with chocolate.
'Chocolate' vs 'Chocolate-coated' vs 'Chocolatey coating' vs 'Chocolatey Topping' vs 'Chocolate-flavoured' all mean different things, with Chocolate being the best and Chocolate Flavoured being the worst in terms of actual cocoa content.
I also refuse to buy anything that suggests white chocolate but is actually described as 'White coating' or 'Snowy enrobed'. That just means they're too cheap to use cocoa butter and instead they've just made a stabilised sugar and fat paste and flavoured it with vanilla.
DameKumquat@reddit
'Flavoured' means the actual item was used to flavour the food. 'Flavour' means some chemical that's also in the item was used. Though a minuscule amount of genuine strawberry plus a lot of esters may taste less impressive than a bunch of varied flavour molecules.
Trying to decide labels and guess from the order how much of key ingredients may actually be in a product is a good reason to go back to the classic advice: "Eat food. Mainly plants." - as opposed to manufactured products.
The_Blip@reddit
The infuriating asepct is something can simply be "x y", with x being the ingredient, and y being some sort of food, and having x not be x.
For simplicity's sake, take 'vanilla ice cream'. I'll go to M&S, a generally well respected supermarket chain, and peruse their offerings: "Cornish Vanilla Dairy Ice Cream", Vanilla Extract · Vanilla Flavouring and no real vanilla; "Cornish Clotted Cream Vanilla Dairy Ice Cream", Vanilla Extract · Natural Vanilla Flavouring, no real vanilla; "Vanilla Greek Style Frozen Yogurt" (idk why this came up in my results, but sure:) Vanilla Extract, no real vanilla; "Collection West Country Madagascan Vanilla Luxury Ice Cream", Madagascan Vanilla Extract · Ground Madagascan Vanilla Pod, so contains actual real vanilla!! but also unknown amounts which are supplemented by 'extract'. Also note that the description does not describe it as such, instead it says, "Expertly crafted from rich West Country milk and cream, this Collection ice cream is a luxurious choice. It's infused with Madagascan vanilla for a traditional taste."
Idk man. I just want my vanilla ice cream to have vanilla in it without caveats. I know most people don't care, but I wish they were at least aware of a difference. All the distinctions you're describing and that I know of are education that the vaste majority of people aren't aware of. When something says, "natural vanilla" on it, they don't realise that it's simply that the food contains some solution that has contacted vanilla, and thus 'extracted' the flavour of.
I wouldn't have a problem with all this shit if I didn't have to face the real life consequences of its co fusion. I've had eaten 'truffle' oiled food which was advertised as simply truffle. I've had difficulties finding real vanilla foods. I've had family members disappointed at 'vanilla' food.
Sometimes we want the good stuff. I feel like the truth is obfuscated from us because the real deal is too expensive for the bottom line to admit, and that they can more easily sell an imitation, and that we're lied to for the sake of prudence. I resent that fact of life.
inevitablelizard@reddit
Agree with a lot of this. I don't mind the cheaper versions of products existing, but they need to be distinguished from the real ones so there's fair consumer choice.
My example would be some companies like Bulmer's selling "cider" which has been made from concentrate apple juice instead of fresh squeezed apple juice, which to my mind shouldn't legally be called cider. I wouldn't necessarily stop them selling a cheaper product but they should be calling it something else.
UnbrokenRyan@reddit
Yeah it’s such a hard thing to balance. I do think there should be more measures put in place to make sure the wider public know what they’re consuming. But if a natural ingredient can be safely synthesised without going through the inherently wasteful process of cultivation, that feels like a positive thing.
Raunien@reddit
We actually have fairly strict labelling laws around that sort of thing. Flavour means that the food tastes of something but does not contain it, while flavoured means that the food contains the specified ingredient. This will usually be found in slightly smaller text below the name of the product, or if not, near the ingredients list.
miuipixel@reddit
The biggest brands are fake they just have the flavour and the scent
UK has a lot of loopholes and businesses take advantage of that
Satansrideordie@reddit
Much like wasabi
forestboy1@reddit
Have you seen the price of real honey?
SoggyWotsits@reddit
Well worth it considering the effort that goes into making it!
inevitablelizard@reddit
It's what honey is supposed to cost. People have become accustomed to unsustainably cheap produce in some categories.
I buy £8 a jar local honey, which felt steep at first. But then I used to spend probably twice that a month on McDonald's for example. I gave that up ages ago, so splashing out on things like real honey felt justified.
No_Doughnut3257@reddit
From about 4-5 quid?
XihuanNi-6784@reddit
Yeah, for a tiny little jar.
MiserableAttention38@reddit
I don't know why but I treat honey as a luxury item and buy from artesanal sources. That word of mouth local farm with an honesty box for payment is unlikely to be faking the honey. Plus you can pick it as cloudy or set as you like, clearly a natural product ❤️
april8r@reddit
Another food where this happens is ice cream. The ice cream here is diabolical. In the U.S. you can’t call something “ice cream” unless it meets certain milk fat/milk solid levels. Otherwise it has to be called “frozen dairy dessert”. The UK has no minimum requirements and “ice cream” and it doesn’t even have to contain any amount of milk. “Dairy ice cream” does need to contain some amount of milk fat but it’s half the requirement in the U.S.
The first time I had a Wippy it was immediately recognizable to me as frozen cool whip which is a dessert topping in the U.S. kind of like whipped cream except it’s mostly made with oil, corn syrup and very VERY little milk.
Raunien@reddit
It's crazy that the US has a better food standard than us. Obviously, we beat them at pretty much everything else, but come on. Ice cream. We can't let them beat us there!
april8r@reddit
Hah I was just as shocked as you when I moved here. Another thing - not food related - is injectables (and other cosmetic procedures). The first time I got Botox I just assumed that the person I picked was a medical professional since I didn’t think there was any way it was less regulated here. Then I found out she wasn’t and I was so spooked. Then I found out basically anyone off the street can just inject Botox and fillers with no certifications or training! There also seems to be lesser training/certification standards for things like nail techs and eye lash techs which seems so dangerous.
Raunien@reddit
I'm getting conflicting information. Some sources say that injection must be carried out by a trained medical professional, while others say that there's absolutely zero legal professional requirements. Botox is prescription only, and that prescription obviously has to come from a registered medical professional such as a doctor, but I'm very confused about the rest of it.
april8r@reddit
Yeah I recently heard the thing about Botox being prescription only and thought that was weird because I know the first person I got it from here is definitly NOT a medical professional (she was bragging about it on Instagram). But since then I started going to my dentist. Fillers though are completely unregulated as far as I know.
inevitablelizard@reddit
Ugh, you're telling me the US has us beat on food standards for this particular example? This problem must be solved with great haste.
april8r@reddit
Yes, this may be the only example and I agree!
xp3ayk@reddit
But at least you can look at the ingredients and see it's full of shite.
The honey ingredients just say honey
april8r@reddit
Yeah, that’s true and it’s not exactly the same but I do think there should be some minimum amount of cream/milk in ice cream. The label might say it has milk but then the amount is minuscule.
ZestyMonstera@reddit
No one thinks Mr whippy is gelato, you get a Mr whippy because you want a Mr whippy. There are plenty of ice cream shops about that sell gelato or Cornish ice cream or many of the other regional ice creams that we have.
XihuanNi-6784@reddit
Yeah. The telling thing is to let a tub of cheap to medium price point supermarket ice cream melt. You get two layers: one is white foam, and the other is like oil/watery stuff. It's disgusting and clearly not real ice cream.
april8r@reddit
That’s a good tip. I’ve noticed that there is also something weird about the texture. It’s just way too light. Almost like air with very little flavor.
MJ-Franklin@reddit
They've been selling us poison under the name of food for how many years now?!
Mindless_Owl_1239@reddit
Nowhere sells real Wasabi either.
Adorable_Pressure958@reddit
It's all a plot by Big Vegan to deny us our daily sweet fix! 😉
Historical-Cow7943@reddit
The City of London is the World's capital for money laundering. Our supermarkets are the World centre for honey laundering.
peachypeach13610@reddit
It’s literally lab made honey. This isn’t unique to the UK btw, most of supermarkets honey in Germany are lab made too, zero involvement of bees.
SacredandBound_@reddit
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002qh1k?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile
The Food Programme looked at this a few weeks ago. Recommended.
MyOverture@reddit
It’s less that it’s allowed to be sold, and more that the forgers are constantly finding new ways of evading detection. You’ll always get lazy companies who don’t bother testing as thoroughly as they could
If in doubt, buy British
Warm_Perception_9319@reddit
Pretty sure the high level of fructose in syrup gave me gout. which wasn't fun. cut the cheap/fake honey out and it went. was a blend of uk and eu honey when i started buying it. changed to a blend of non-eu honey late in the autumn. then came join pain. fun, not!
Raunien@reddit
Honey is also mostly fructose
DameKumquat@reddit
If bees excrete the stuff, it's called honey even if the bees have never met a flower and are just fed sugar water.
If you think only stuff derived from flower nectar should be called honey, feel free to lobby for legislation changes but it's probably easiest to pay more for flower honey.
Raunien@reddit
They didn't mention what the bees have been eating, they said that the honey has been adulterated.
dick_piana@reddit
Because it would cost £10 per bottle otherwise rather than £1.50.
Tofru@reddit
Well worth it
Rowdy_Roddy_2022@reddit
I was gifted some genuinely local honey from a local beekeeper.
I couldn't tell the difference between it and Rowse, other than the fact one cost about four times as much as the other.
Tofru@reddit
Well you're tongue doesn't work. I can
Smug010@reddit
I pay £6 for a jar that lasts at least 2 months. I buy from a local producer at the market. He even has different varieties that you can taste before buying. Its well worth it.
Damage2Damage@reddit
But they could also label the fake stuff as "Vegan Honey" and charge £10 for it
Ok_Deer1956@reddit
It's shocking that there's no proper legal definition for honey, which basically leaves the door wide open for this. I'd love to know how to spot the real stuff, but if testing is that difficult, it feels like we're just guessing. This definitely makes you wonder what other everyday foods are being faked right under our noses.
Nellyt97@reddit
And this is why I only buy local honey
gradual_insemination@reddit
Worker Bee worklaw. Finally my speciality. Bees like breaks too.
I don't see maple trees doing half as much WORK, yet you expect bees to produce just as sweet-a honey, on more work and less money. No sorry - no sir! Those bees should be fairly represented and bee breaks should be included in pricing if you want the full raw honey deal you were used to...
Otherwise, get used to candy hony instead
Kaioxygen@reddit
Not only that but it’s being bulked up with sugar water. You’d be surprised how little of it is actually honey.
Cheeselover710@reddit
I also find most of the veggies, herbs and fruit I buy are from Africa or Spain or other countries.
craggsy@reddit
Because its not fake honey, the honey market is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the food world due to all the media, in fact every time a media story comes out about fake honey, all the honey producers need to prove their honey is real, so they end up proving it once every 3 months or so. Its just classic media scaring against anything that isn't British
A couple of fun honey facts, chinese honey producers are nomadic and will spend the season driving from South China to North China stopping for a few days at a time to allow the bees to get nectar from those areas before moving on.
The most fraudulent honey is actually anything labelled "English Organic Honey" that you buy at your local market, because due to regulations, you can't actually produce Organic honey in the UK.
I work in the food industry and have attended a few food fraud conferences where honey is always discussed
The_Sh3r1ff@reddit
Olive oil is another
turbo_dude@reddit
The price is usually a good determiner.
Low quality “honey” is always cheap and often in a squeeze plastic bottle.
High quality stuff is not cheap and usually in a glass jar.
neo101b@reddit
Just find your own.
storm_of_the_night@reddit
Like others have said, there is no legal food definition for the term honey. The majority of the honey found in supermarkets will be a blend of EU and Non-EU honey. Which means is almost certainly been cut with an unknown percentage of sugar syrup. Honey is a natural product that variation in its composition both seasonally and year on year. A lof of honey found in the supermarkets is manufactured for its colour, viscosity, taste and price. Keeping bees is expensive and it's not economically viable to sell a jar of honey for the price I see in the supermarket. I sell my honey locally for £5 a jar (225g), and that breaks even for the cost of my equipment, but doesn't account for all the time I spent cleaning, preparing and caring for my bees. Most regions have a local beekeepers association , so I would recommend reaching out to their club secretary, who can then put you in touch with local Beekeepers. Prices vary and I know someone near me who sells his honey for £10 a jar (225g), twice the price of mine. All my honey is sold word of mouth and I always sell out. As long as it pays for itself I am happy.
FitConfection50@reddit
It should really be regulated properly, aside from anything else it undermines Beekeepers who aren't basically selling golden syrup pretending it's honey.
People expect honey to cost a couple of quid a jar but it's not commercially viable to produce real honey at that price point.
Super-Nuntendo@reddit
That's the problem with going cheap by importing from China. You don't really know what it's made of, and they can (and do) lie about things.
Fake safety certificates, still use lead paint, rubber in baby milk formula to bulk it out, asbestos in children's play sand. They don't care, it's all about doing things as cheap as possible.
NeverTooLate227@reddit
The only safe way to make sure your honey is not polluted with anything nasty is to buy locally produced honey. This often means, in Britain anyway, going out into the countryside and finding farm shops and even stalls by the side of the road that sell honey. And usually it's not cheap either, so the overall cost can be quite expensive, but it's worth it IMHO.
I've noticed that Marks & Spencer sell honey from specific places, e.g. Scotland, which sounds as if it's genuine honey, but can anyone else confirm?
ohmyblahblah@reddit
If it says a blend of eu and non eu honey then it's got done god knows what from China in it. About that. Single origin country stuff is about the best your can hope for. And it will be about twice the price.
It should have a deeper flavour too
arabidopsis@reddit
Because there's not enough bees in the world to produce the amount of honey consumers want at a cheap price.
Same goes with vaccines - not enough chickens in the world to produce the required eggs to make vaccines, and why avian flu would be horrific.
Lachiexyz@reddit
We were just in Belgium this week, and I bought some honey from the supermarket while I was there. It is hands down so much better than the sugary mess we get in the UK.
UK brands often tell on themselves by selling "runny honey" like it's a desirable trait rather than a flaw that comes from diluting proper honey with adulterants.
Personally, I prefer buying pure honey from markets or farm shops when the opportunity arises. I also acknowledge that's a very pricey option.
SoggyWotsits@reddit
It’s not necessarily fake honey, it’s just blended with honey from elsewhere. You can find real honey easily online, or even better find a local beekeeper.
Half the problem is people looking for the cheapest supermarket products they can find, then being surprised when they aren’t pure/natural/organic/the quality they expect.
Also, just read the label. Since 2024 the labels have to state whether the honey is blended, and whether it’s EU or non EU honey used.
TylerChurka@reddit
actual honey costs about 22 euro per 900gr in producing countries in southern europe , importing it to the uk the price would skyrocket at about 10 to 15 pound per 300gr , anything you pay less than that you can be sure as hell it aint honey.
SoggyWotsits@reddit
It’s not always quite that expensive. The trouble is, people expect to get it for £3 a jar in Aldi or Tesco.
Michaelleahcim00@reddit
I knew it was fake, it gives me headaches when I eat it (no joke).
Iamthe0c3an2@reddit
Because its cheap or are you appalled that it isn’t labelled accordingly?
I have access to farmers markets that sell real honey but I’d rather spend 75p than £3 to be brutally honest.
But I’d rather they do label the cheap stuff as blended or something.
BoomSatsuma@reddit
Ignorance is bliss to the supermarket.
If they bothered to look further into the supply chain they’d see it.
APiousCultist@reddit
Unless the research is backed by food scientists, I'm a little dubious on how bulletproof all this 'fake honey' evidence is. Like when I've seen videos saying how some sugar in American Coke or something isn't what it's supposed to be, when in reality the sugar just undergoes a conversion in response to the acid.
But beyond that, supermarkets just sell what they're given, and food standards only test so much. Fake honey is at least less troubling than the horse meat that our food was full of.
darybrain@reddit
I've only ever bought honey from local farms or grocers because it is supposed to be better for you apparently. Never bought from a supermarket. Is fake honey made from AI bees?
thing_on_a_spring@reddit
In what way is it 'fake honey'?
They say its blended from EU and non-EU honeys, which would include China.
Yeah it'd be nice if it was all collected by artisan beekeepers in the UK. You can buy that if you want, but it'll be expensive. Welcome to globalism
abyssal-isopod86@reddit
I got some greek honey in my cupboard my friend brought back with her from an beekeeper near where she was staying in a cottage on holiday.
It's fookin amazing!
jamtea@reddit
The enshitification of Britain continues.
ProperGrape@reddit
Wait till you learn about "no sugar" label
Vequihellin@reddit
It tends to be a little pricy (more than supermarket but less than Manuka) but I tend to buy my honey from local craft markets. Leythorne Honey Bee farm produces local honey (which is great for hay-fever season) and it's lovely. I think I paid £6/£7 a jar. Which isn't cheap, but I'd rather buy locally.
NaniFarRoad@reddit
I would love to try Manuka to see what's so good about it, but the price puts me off. Without a comparison point, how would I know I was eating the genuine item?
Vequihellin@reddit
A relative visited New Zealand and bought proper Manuka honey back as gifts. She was so excited to gift it to us. It was the +15 whatever-it-is and she was waxing lyrical about it. I personally found it incredibly bitter with a weird metallic aftertaste. I was surprised and disappointed. It's been sitting in the back of the cupboard ever since. I don't have the heart to throw it away but I don't like it at all. My jar of local honey from the bee farm up the road is much nicer and we use it in all sorts of things. It has a really distinct 'Honey' flavour that we really like.
tefster@reddit
Local honey as a cure for hayfever is unfortunately urban folklore. But it is way nicer than most shop bought garbage blended honey, and its a good way of supporting beekeepers.
Source: Beekeeper and lecturer
Vequihellin@reddit
I mean, I was buying local to support Leythorne and because it's better quality than the supermarket stuff. The hay-fever thing was a negligible consideration. They rescue swarms and stuff too and I'm always down to support our local pollinators.
LeatherAdvantage8250@reddit
There's quite a lot that UK supermarkets are allowed to mislabel that wouldn't fly in proper countries. Ice cream comes to mind, I remember being super disappointed with the food standards when I first moved and it's not like I came from a culinary paradise.
neilm1000@reddit
Yeah, ice cream made with 'non milk fat' used to be made with chicken fat.
LeatherAdvantage8250@reddit
Yup, half of the 'ice cream' sold in supermarkets still couldn't be sold in countries where consumers are prioritised over corporations, because they don't even contain milk or cream.
XihuanNi-6784@reddit
Likely because it's not actually dangerous. Unless proven otherwise I expect that it does pass food safety standards, it's just not honey, it's some sort of syrup with colouring added. It's still scandalous, but I wouldn't assume that it's dangerous just because it's not the real deal. This would be like assuming all the palm oil chocolate is secretly toxic. It's not automatically dangerous just because it's not what you expect it to be.
Figure8712@reddit
This logic does not hold up at all.
We have label standards for all food. You can't just label a bottle "milk" and it's actually just a bottle you filled with water, maybe with extra white colouring and some added flavour. And then just say "well it's not dangerous so I can call it anything i want."
We have strict label standards for so many things. Can't say chocolate without certain percentage cocoa solids etc etc.
Why does honey get to be fake when most other things are held accountable? Fake milk, dangerous or not, would be immediately pulled from shelves and if they even dreamt of getting back they would need to say 'artificial milk drink' or something. Why is the fake honey not being taken down and amended?
heypresto2k@reddit
Just buy local.
DenormalHuman@reddit
So, where / how did you recently learn this thing that trading standards are apparently allowing?
xp3ayk@reddit
Apparently olive oil is often fake. I think because of the mafia?
itsnobigthing@reddit
We all need our own bees. It’s the only way.
thelordwest@reddit
As others have said it's mostly fake syrup, and it's allowed because it's expensive to test for, and most consumers don't know.
The Honey Authentication Network is a great resource on this: https://www.honeyap.org/
The Guardian wrote an article describing how they sent 25 jars off for testing and 24 of them were adulterated: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/nov/09/nine-in-ten-honey-samples-from-uk-retailers-fail-authenticity-test
HuckleberryPee@reddit
Pure honey is really nothing special for health. It is essentially just pure sugar, and is treated the same way in the body as sugar syrups are.
There is no real evidence that local honey cures or improves pollen allergies.
Local British honey is not great either as domestic honeybee hives will outcompete our wild local pollinators for nectar sources.
Eat honey as a treat and luxury, not as an essential sweetener. Consider dates as an actually healthy sweetener alternative.
Fowl_Eye@reddit
Actual honey would cost a maximum of £9 for a big jar. Check around your local area for honey sellers, Best place to find some is at your local markets. Or googling "honey makers near me" might find some results. It's how I found my own honey to buy.
FreeAd2458@reddit
Anyone know if its better to buy from a single source i see some small sellers say the honey is from various Apiaries in my region. I feel that its better if I buy from a smaller seller that jars their own honey?
Mysterious_Handle_71@reddit
How to tell if your honey is pure honey… Pure honey will sink in water, and doesn’t dissolve easily unless using boiling water. Blended honeys, aka fancy syrup, will dissolve pretty quickly ❤️❤️❤️
Guardian_Of_Spoons@reddit
Honey is also chiral.
Pielover19x@reddit
Does anyone know if set honey is artificial like cheap honey?
Time-Caterpillar4103@reddit
There are varying blends that you can buy. Believe Rowse used to be 3107 but it’s been awhile since I bought it for food manufacturing. I did get a cheaper one aswell that was a lot runnier that started with a 5 code. Lamex was the sole supplier into Rowse ages ago but that may have changed now.
143Emanate34Elaborat@reddit
Not seen anyone link this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G5HrM757N4
I told a friend of mine about this with honey a couple of years ago, and it blew his mind about it.
WhiteMagicVodoo@reddit
cuz it is not easy to check if it s genuine or not. these are the reasons:
- expensive analysis to tests it
- by mean fake honey, actually it is not fake honey. it is not like sugar, syrup mix etc.
- by fake honey it means, bees are fed by sugar, syrup etc which is the cheapest way to make honey
does it really make much difference? not indeed. honey itself is a total exaggerated food.
Downtown-Chemical673@reddit
I know the video you watched lol
Haunting-Button-4281@reddit
Read labels on the product, there cannot possibly be anymore more legislation for what needs to displayed on a product. The problem is people cant be arsed to read it or take reaponsibility for what they put in their own mouths.
XihuanNi-6784@reddit
Yep.
ohnoyoudontlikeme@reddit
Even the stuff in co-op is Chinese sugar syrup. There's some gear in aldi advertised as being traceable at the minute and again it's "a blend of EU and non EU honeys".
My parents brought me some proper stuff back from abroad, it's night and day different.
neilm1000@reddit
The Co-op isn't anything special, I know people think it's more ethical or something but it stopped being like that years ago.
ohnoyoudontlikeme@reddit
I meant more that it's so expensive, but yeah that too
neilm1000@reddit
Oh I see, yes the coop is pricey.
MapOfIllHealth@reddit
I was curious if this was still the case in my adopted country because Aussies are very proud of their honey products. Sad to know that around 20% of honey products here are also “adulterated” as Google puts it.
How is there no law in place that requires this to be made clear on the packaging?
MaxromekWroc@reddit
My advice is finding a local supplier or your local polish shop. A quite good indicator is also crystalization - nearly all jars you get from a polish shop will have crystallized honey in it.
Sezyluv85@reddit
Buy local
Practical-Command634@reddit
If the honey costs less than a tenner it's probably not real honey
Goldf_sh4@reddit
Ffs we can't even trust the honey now.
geeered@reddit
Because the reality is there's probably little difference to you?
The issue with fake honey is more that it's not filled with all kinds of shit - but that's unlikely to be doing much beneficial to you anyway.
Aromatic_Pea_4249@reddit
One of my friends has bees so she supplies me with honey. I know it's real, I've seen her collecting it!
MaximumTop6714@reddit
I get a jar from the local butchers that’s from a local hive, £6.50. Lasts about 2-3 months in my house. Worth every penny.
Ordoferrum@reddit
I had some local honey from a butchers the other day. It was so good compared to supermarket cheap stuff it was gone in less than a week lmao.
whatatwit@reddit
I read something disheartening the other day that was presented as good news. Scientists have found a way to supplement the artificial pollen they feed the bees. So, I’d missed the original story that we now feed bees like we feed farm animals instead of relying on them foraging. So what does that mean for the authenticity of honey?
Engineered yeast provides rare but essential pollen sterols for honeybees
Smithstar89@reddit
You know how I can't believe it's not honey isn't really honey? I found some i dont believe its not honey. But I think they're the same, because I can't believe, right, that i can't believe it's not honey isn't the same as I don't believe it's not honey. And I do believe, right, that i can't believe it's not honey is actually honey, yet I do believe that i don't believe its not honey, right... is not actually honey.
jimicus@reddit
I've no idea what you're talking about. But I'm sure God does.
Benjammin123@reddit
Yeah I recently discovered this, apparently it’s mainly corn syrup mixed with some honey. The next cheapest jar I could find in Sainsbury’s today was £7, their own taste the difference is slightly cheaper but none in stock.
I looked up local honey sellers and that seems a cheaper option.
Not sure how true this is but I also heard that if you suffer from bad hay fever, eating the local honey will cure that.
slip_cougan@reddit
If it's blended, then it will have been heavily processed and will have a very low pollen content. Supermarket honey has very few health benefits.
Doug__Quaid@reddit
I kid on I'm healthy when I just wack a load of cheap honey in my Greek yoghurt
Rude-Possibility4682@reddit
But is it Greek style yoghurt with blended honey 😀
Virtual_Opinion_8630@reddit
It tastes amazing though
Zounds90@reddit
Food counterfeiting is actually a big problem and happens in success too.
GooseMan1515@reddit
Because customers don't want to be forced to pay £10 a jar for real honey when they just want something runny and honey flavoured on their toast.
Frankifile@reddit
I buy honey from the Latin honey shop, it’s expensive, but the taste and consistency is so completely different from supermarket honey. And it does have real health benefits.
fake_cheese@reddit
Get the good stuff and use sparingly, in the end any honey is a free sugar that's never going to be a big part of a healthy diet.
"While honey varies slightly in nutritional content depending on the flowers used to make it, it’s primarily a source of sugar and calories with minimal additional nutrients such as fibre, protein, fat, vitamins, or minerals."
https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/nutrition/ask-the-expert/is-honey-good-for-you
acripaul@reddit
They make the honey, we make the money
Desperate-Oil9397@reddit
I watched a documentary on this subject and apparently there’s not enough bees in the world to produce the amount of honey which is sold
TipsyPhippsy@reddit
Pure honey doesn't expire really either, it will last longer than your life (if you don't eat it)
Zealousideal-Call458@reddit
Why you still buying honey. Get a hive.
tiorzol@reddit
Why you still earning money. Get a printer.
Veenkoira00@reddit
Don't buy "non-EU" unless it's a local known beekeeper.
EntirelyRandom1590@reddit
You seem to set the expectation that all EU/UK honey is "pure" when that's potentially not true.
The only real way of testing it it's honey and not syrup is by checking for pollen. If there's an absence of pollen it might be due to faking, but theres a bunch of other reasons too.
Firstly, farmed bees in the UK are often fed sugar in various forms. This happens in winter and also the June Gap, the period between spring and summer flowers. This is a side effect of honey being taken from the bees and reducing their stores.
There's also the fact pollen increases the chance of crystallisation. Which when you're shipping honey is a very realistic possibility due to vibration and temperature changes.
There's no clear legal definition of honey, so it's widely abused.
MotherofTinyPlants@reddit
Isn’t this more or less the plot of Bee Movie?
deletethewife@reddit
Yeah this probably my son shops at the farm shop.
randomlyalex@reddit
Any and or most honey that are clear or runny or cheap, are probably not your definition of "real".
Crystallised local honey is a good bet to have the health benefits you've been told honey has.
It's sourced locally, much like your beef and chicken is just cheap and basic in the same supermarket.
iffyClyro@reddit
Where did you learn this information?
Behold_SV@reddit
Price…I get it of polish shops
_arch_tech@reddit
Its the same with Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar from Modena.
Best_Designer9596@reddit
It’s basically sugar syrup
72dk72@reddit
Read through label it will tell you.
AutoModerator@reddit
Please help keep AskUK welcoming!
When replying to submission/post please make genuine efforts to answer the question given. Please no jokes, judgements, etc. If a post is marked 'Serious Answers Only' you may receive a ban for violating this rule.
Don't be a dick to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on.
This is a strictly no-politics subreddit!
Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.