11 ms·

The Science Behind Honey’s Eternal Shelf Life (2013)

178 points by sndean 10y ago

Kristine1975 10y ago
Article is from 2013 and some of the links in it are dead, unfortunately. Nevertheless, really interesting.
- brillenfux 10y ago
  Conclusion: Internet is not made of honey.
- leoc 10y ago
  Here's a working link for Medihoney: http://outside-us.dermasciences.com/medihoney http://outside-us.dermasciences.com/medihoney . (Warning, photos of some big and nasty skin uclers.)
annnnd 10y ago
> If you buy your honey from the supermarket, that little plastic bottle of golden nectar has been heated, strained and processed so that it contains zero particulates, meaning that there’s nothing in the liquid for molecules to crystallize on, and your supermarket honey will look the same for almost forever. If you buy your honey from a small-scale vendor, however, certain particulates might remain, from pollen to enzymes. With these particulates, the honey might crystallize, but don’t worry–if it’s sealed, it’s not spoiled and won’t be for quite some time. I heard a different story. If you add sugar to honey (which some vendors, small and especially large, do) then it won't crystallize. There might be other reasons for honey being always in liquid state (linked article talks about filtering), but I am quite sure that small vendors in my area don't use special filtering methods - more likely they add sugar to make extra money. Am I off the track to be always looking for honey that crystallizes?
- mrweasel 10y ago
  >more likely they add sugar to make extra money That's actually illegal to sell as honey in many countries. It's known as "false honey" here, it's typically something Chinese producers will do. Either that or just have the bees convert sugar water to "honey". It's also the reason why local and smaller bee-keepers (like myself) aren't having any problems selling our honey. I have more people wanting to buy my honey than I can supply, because they trust that what I sell or give them is real honey. How liquid the honey is, is mostly down to the flowers the bees visited. Rape seed honey will crystallise in the hive, if you don't extract it quickly enough. The flowers in my neighbourhood will yield honey that pretty much refuses to crystallise. Interestingly enough, due to Danish regulations, the minute I put honey in a jar to sell, it's required to have an expiration date 1 year and 6 months into the future.
  - eru 10y ago
    But of course, customers are free to disregard that date, I assume?
    - krzrak 10y ago
      Yes, but you are not able to sell it when it's past the due date (but this may be not a problem for mrweasel).
    - Xylakant 10y ago
      There's two kinds of expiration date. There's the "this product may not be sold (and should probably not be used) after this date) which for example applies to minced meat and other perishable goods that spoil in dangerous ways. Be super-careful if you use products of that kind after the date. (Verfallsdatum in german) Then there's the "best before" date which is the date that the vendor guarantees that the product tastes and behaves as expected. After that date, self-raising flour may not raise as expected and you'll get a brick instead of a cake. Or condiments may not add any taste, leaving you with a bland mass of meat instead of a spicy chili. (Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum in german) You as a customer are free to disregard both kinds of expiry dates, the difference is that the first kind indicates a danger to your health, while the second kind mostly indicates a danger to the taste and texture of your food.
- delsarto 10y ago
  This actually discussed in Cooks Illustrated this month (issue 141 pg 28). They say to add a small amount of corn syrup to honey to stop crystalization. To quote some bits "honey crystalizes when moisture evaporates and individual sugar molecules interlock ... corn syrup never crystalizes because it contains fragments of glucose chains" So it seems like adding sugar (sucrose) doesn't do anything to stop crystalizing, but glucose does?
  - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
    I think this is correct; small amounts of glucose are generally added to foods where it is important to avoid crystallisation or coarse crystals, like in fudge, caramel, hard candies etc.
- SixSigma 10y ago
  > If you buy your honey from the supermarket, that little plastic bottle will de-plasticize and crumble to plastic pieces
  - jackhack 10y ago
    And meanwhile leach God-knows-what into your otherwise pure food. No thanks. Glass containers for me, please.
- outworlder 10y ago
  > If you buy your honey from a small-scale vendor, however, certain particulates might remain, from pollen to enzymes. Yes. Which is also a problem for people with allergies. My wife has serious bee (and pollen!) allergies, so having some honey touch her skin is a good test for how "industrialized" the honey actually is.
krzrak 10y ago
Idea for luxurious and expensive food (for people, who have too much money): thousand years old honey.
- Kristine1975 10y ago
  Is it actually possible to verify that the "1000 yo" honey is actually 1000 years old? Because if not I'm totally relabeling honey I bought at the supermarket and disrupting the luxury food sector.
  - gruez 10y ago
    Not really "disrupting". More like fraud.
    - Kristine1975 10y ago
      Disrupting is all about challenging antiquated regulations :-)
    - MichaelBurge 10y ago
      Other ways to disrupt established business are to visit their parking lot and slash everyone's tires, cut power and internet to their company buildings, slander them on public television, drive by their building and honk a really loud horn, find their business partners and spread false rumors, DDoS their website, make false tips to the SEC that they're scamming investors, etc. That's the image that appears in my head whenever I hear about some startup disrupting an industry; like they're a criminal with poor impulse control.
      - legulere 10y ago
        Disregarding all regulations to be cheaper than all competitors certainly is missing from your list.
    - tehrei 10y ago
      Not really. Just label it as "Vintage Honey", write "Experience the taste of honey taken from Egyptian tombs" and add in very tiny letters at the bottom "From 2016 harvest". As long as you don't claim it's actually taken from an Egyptian tomb, you can just spin it however you like. If you want to be somewhat more honest, make sure the bees only drink nectar from flowers that would have been grown during the time of the pharaohs.
hamilyon2 10y ago
Actally honey begins to contain a lot of HMF carcinogen after a while. Hotter the conditions faster it becomes poisonous. Just look at highly cited research on the theme https://scholar.google.ru/scholar?q=honey+hmf&btnG=&hl=ru&as_sdt=0%2C5 https://scholar.google.ru/scholar?q=honey+hmf&btnG=&hl=ru&as...
- bluefinity 10y ago
  HMF doesn't seem to be carcinogenic: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21462333 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21462333
  - anpill 10y ago
    As a layman, I noticed the abstract said that "caramel colors" need to be evaluated further? why would that be? Also, would honey classify as this "caramel" color or does the coloring here refer to something else besides the color of the food?

178 points by sndean 10y ago

Kristine1975 10y ago

Article is from 2013 and some of the links in it are dead, unfortunately. Nevertheless, really interesting.

brillenfux 10y ago
Conclusion: Internet is not made of honey.
leoc 10y ago
Here's a working link for Medihoney: http://outside-us.dermasciences.com/medihoney http://outside-us.dermasciences.com/medihoney . (Warning, photos of some big and nasty skin uclers.)

annnnd 10y ago

> If you buy your honey from the supermarket, that little plastic bottle of golden nectar has been heated, strained and processed so that it contains zero particulates, meaning that there’s nothing in the liquid for molecules to crystallize on, and your supermarket honey will look the same for almost forever. If you buy your honey from a small-scale vendor, however, certain particulates might remain, from pollen to enzymes. With these particulates, the honey might crystallize, but don’t worry–if it’s sealed, it’s not spoiled and won’t be for quite some time. I heard a different story. If you add sugar to honey (which some vendors, small and especially large, do) then it won't crystallize. There might be other reasons for honey being always in liquid state (linked article talks about filtering), but I am quite sure that small vendors in my area don't use special filtering methods - more likely they add sugar to make extra money. Am I off the track to be always looking for honey that crystallizes?

mrweasel 10y ago
>more likely they add sugar to make extra money That's actually illegal to sell as honey in many countries. It's known as "false honey" here, it's typically something Chinese producers will do. Either that or just have the bees convert sugar water to "honey". It's also the reason why local and smaller bee-keepers (like myself) aren't having any problems selling our honey. I have more people wanting to buy my honey than I can supply, because they trust that what I sell or give them is real honey. How liquid the honey is, is mostly down to the flowers the bees visited. Rape seed honey will crystallise in the hive, if you don't extract it quickly enough. The flowers in my neighbourhood will yield honey that pretty much refuses to crystallise. Interestingly enough, due to Danish regulations, the minute I put honey in a jar to sell, it's required to have an expiration date 1 year and 6 months into the future.
- eru 10y ago
  But of course, customers are free to disregard that date, I assume?
  - krzrak 10y ago
    Yes, but you are not able to sell it when it's past the due date (but this may be not a problem for mrweasel).
  - Xylakant 10y ago
    There's two kinds of expiration date. There's the "this product may not be sold (and should probably not be used) after this date) which for example applies to minced meat and other perishable goods that spoil in dangerous ways. Be super-careful if you use products of that kind after the date. (Verfallsdatum in german) Then there's the "best before" date which is the date that the vendor guarantees that the product tastes and behaves as expected. After that date, self-raising flour may not raise as expected and you'll get a brick instead of a cake. Or condiments may not add any taste, leaving you with a bland mass of meat instead of a spicy chili. (Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum in german) You as a customer are free to disregard both kinds of expiry dates, the difference is that the first kind indicates a danger to your health, while the second kind mostly indicates a danger to the taste and texture of your food.
delsarto 10y ago
This actually discussed in Cooks Illustrated this month (issue 141 pg 28). They say to add a small amount of corn syrup to honey to stop crystalization. To quote some bits "honey crystalizes when moisture evaporates and individual sugar molecules interlock ... corn syrup never crystalizes because it contains fragments of glucose chains" So it seems like adding sugar (sucrose) doesn't do anything to stop crystalizing, but glucose does?
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  I think this is correct; small amounts of glucose are generally added to foods where it is important to avoid crystallisation or coarse crystals, like in fudge, caramel, hard candies etc.
SixSigma 10y ago
> If you buy your honey from the supermarket, that little plastic bottle will de-plasticize and crumble to plastic pieces
- jackhack 10y ago
  And meanwhile leach God-knows-what into your otherwise pure food. No thanks. Glass containers for me, please.
outworlder 10y ago
> If you buy your honey from a small-scale vendor, however, certain particulates might remain, from pollen to enzymes. Yes. Which is also a problem for people with allergies. My wife has serious bee (and pollen!) allergies, so having some honey touch her skin is a good test for how "industrialized" the honey actually is.

krzrak 10y ago

Idea for luxurious and expensive food (for people, who have too much money): thousand years old honey.

Kristine1975 10y ago
Is it actually possible to verify that the "1000 yo" honey is actually 1000 years old? Because if not I'm totally relabeling honey I bought at the supermarket and disrupting the luxury food sector.
- gruez 10y ago
  Not really "disrupting". More like fraud.
  - Kristine1975 10y ago
    Disrupting is all about challenging antiquated regulations :-)
  - MichaelBurge 10y ago
    Other ways to disrupt established business are to visit their parking lot and slash everyone's tires, cut power and internet to their company buildings, slander them on public television, drive by their building and honk a really loud horn, find their business partners and spread false rumors, DDoS their website, make false tips to the SEC that they're scamming investors, etc. That's the image that appears in my head whenever I hear about some startup disrupting an industry; like they're a criminal with poor impulse control.
    - legulere 10y ago
      Disregarding all regulations to be cheaper than all competitors certainly is missing from your list.
  - tehrei 10y ago
    Not really. Just label it as "Vintage Honey", write "Experience the taste of honey taken from Egyptian tombs" and add in very tiny letters at the bottom "From 2016 harvest". As long as you don't claim it's actually taken from an Egyptian tomb, you can just spin it however you like. If you want to be somewhat more honest, make sure the bees only drink nectar from flowers that would have been grown during the time of the pharaohs.

hamilyon2 10y ago

Actally honey begins to contain a lot of HMF carcinogen after a while. Hotter the conditions faster it becomes poisonous. Just look at highly cited research on the theme https://scholar.google.ru/scholar?q=honey+hmf&btnG=&hl=ru&as_sdt=0%2C5 https://scholar.google.ru/scholar?q=honey+hmf&btnG=&hl=ru&as...

bluefinity 10y ago
HMF doesn't seem to be carcinogenic: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21462333 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21462333
- anpill 10y ago
  As a layman, I noticed the abstract said that "caramel colors" need to be evaluated further? why would that be? Also, would honey classify as this "caramel" color or does the coloring here refer to something else besides the color of the food?