Sorry honey, but a lot of honey isn't honey at all

08 October 2015 - 02:18 By Andrea Burgener

Our thinking around food is indescribably nonsensical. Well of course it is. How could it not be when the food chain is invisible to almost every one of us? I - an example of this madness - go out of my way to source grass-fed beef and free-range chicken, and get upset about pork that's conventionally reared. But do I wear leather shoes? Yes. Do I know what farms the leather comes from? Of course not. I'm as illogical as the hordes of Birkenstock-shod vegetarians.The leather-free vegetarians in turn, who scorn those wearing bits of cow on their feet, are seen as hopelessly messed up by vegans, who know well that industrial dairy offers pretty much the same horror for cows as industrial beef farming. It's a fraught food world, where only Enid Blyton grade innocence is bliss.Even honey, the last outpost of the health conscious (barring vegans of course) turns out to be a complicated mess. Tests show that the majority of honey on supermarket shelves contains virtually none of its original health-giving properties. There are various reasons for, and degrees of, corruption: most commonly there is pasteurising the honey to stop crystallisation, which immediately removes health-giving properties; some sources say there is ''ultra-filtering" to remove the pollen, and worst of all, there's a lot of honey out there which is hardly honey at all.It's a mix of high fructose corn syrup and flavouring, mixed in with some honey to keep things very slightly kosher.And it's not only humans who are chowing down on this high fructose corn syrup.Bees on many large-scale honey farms are also fed the syrup. The same stuff that goes into fizzy drinks. Crazy but true. It's now thought that this is partially to blame for the current number of bee deaths. Colony Collapse Disorder is thought to be caused by a perfect storm of factors: modern bees are already negatively affected by insecticides and fungicides, among other things, and it's suspected that feeding them processed ''dead" syrup rather than leaving them their own nutrient-rich honey to feast on during winter, further lowers their immunity. It's pretty damn difficult to know what you're buying.Real honey can look light or dark, and when newly made can be clear or cloudy, really thick or pourable. The only solution is to head for a small health shop or go to a farmers' market. It's generally the smaller guys who are both making it properly and letting their bees eat honey rather than crud. So small is (generally) good. Evidence of crystallisation helps too (pasteurised honeys will never crystallize, though some raw honeys take much longer than others to do this).When you find good stuff, buy lots. Honey is self-preserving, and the jars in your larder will certainly outlive you...

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