40 ms·

Fancy honey might not actually be honey

135 points by elorant 7y ago

rrauenza 7y ago
And your olive oil might not be olive oil. Our daughter is allergic to sunflower oil which is commonly used to adulterate the olive oil. Chips supposedly made with olive oil will sometimes give her a rash. For bottled olive oil we try to buy local California olive oil...,
- tomatotomato37 7y ago
  It's not just might, I think something crazy like 80% of olive oil is adulterated. For whatever reason the olive oil industry has become the target of choice for Mediterranean crime syndicates.
  - r6754dw 7y ago
    Try buying Greek if you can find that. At least the Greek brands of extra virgin olive oil I've bought in Northern Europe look and taste just like the locally product I've enjoyed in Crete. Italian and non-EU brands on the other hand taste totally different - and I don't think it's because of geography.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
      The thing with these suggestions is, they are all anecdotical from a single point in time and (market) space. I remember having read here somewhere, some time ago that maroccan or tunesian olive oil would be very good also, presumably because it isn't under the pressure of massive demand, so less incentive to fraud around it. Since decades this is a topic in consumer testing magazines and public television, and i can't remember anytime they didn't find at least one third fradulent. There are documentations out there, where they travel to Italy, speak with the local farmers, dealers, police and local government to get to root of this problem, and all involved parties (at least on the record) see it as a large problem too. Yet it is persistent.
- jedberg 7y ago
  From what I read before Costco does independent testing and their olive oil is unadulterated. Might be something to look into if you have Costco nearby.
  - pmoriarty 7y ago
    "Costco does independent testing and their olive oil is unadulterated" One of the interesting things I learned from the honey article was that fraudsters have figured out how to work their way around tests, at least for honey. I wouldn't be surprised if they could do the same for olive oil and other food products. It seems like a cat and mouse game. Something not mentioned in the article is that testing labs themselves need to be tested, certified, and audited. There have been some scandals in forensic labs where techs have repeatedly falsified test results for decades. This is probably especially a problem when organized crime is involved. If you are at all interested in food safety, I highly recommend "The Poison Squad", about the foundation of the FDA.[1][2] [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euBoKIm1v6Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euBoKIm1v6Q [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0rKnxm3X7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0rKnxm3X7M
    - zamadatix 7y ago
      If they remove enough to detect it was adulterated then would it trigger the allergic reaction though?
      - pmoriarty 7y ago
        Removal isn't the only thing that happens. Sometimes they add in stuff like pollen. Also, just because they fool the particular testing tools that labs use doesn't mean you as a consumer won't have an adverse reaction to whatever it was they put in to the honey. The problem with adulteration isn't exclusively limited to harmful health effects either. Even if your health would not be adversely affected by the adulterants, you might still want to be certain you're getting is genuine. Let's say you bought corn syrup while under the impression that it was honey. It might not harm your health any more than any other corn syrup would, but you've still been defrauded, and what you got might not have the same health benefits that honey has (assuming honey has such benefits). Your purchasing decisions could have an ecological impact too. Effectively subsidizing the growing of corn by mistakenly buying corn syrup will have different ecological consequences than subsidizing the establishment of more bee colonies by buying genuine honey. That's not to mention the ethical issues of being conned in to giving money to fraudsters versus giving it to honest business people.
- raducu 7y ago
  The romans had an intricate system that prevented oil fraud, they could track and amphora back to the farm it originated in, and every step along the way. We should be able to do the same with modern technology and severely penalize individuals who commit fraud.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    We have even better systems in place than the Romans did. They're just not used unless there's a health emergency (e.g. E. coli in the food).
- amlozano 7y ago
  I used to trust the California Olive Ranch brand for olive oil, but lately noticed they started labeling their some of their bottles as imported and accidentally bought some. It tastes fine, but if I recall correctly the problems with olive oil usually come from imports where laws and regulation rules change from country to country. Luckily I live close to a real olive mill, but there really is no way to know. Plus you have people arguing the vast majority of olive oil sold in the USA is "authentic" for some measure of authentic, which is really hard to discern: https://www.aboutoliveoil.org/the-facts-about-uc-davis-olive-centers-olive-oil-report https://www.aboutoliveoil.org/the-facts-about-uc-davis-olive... This feels like another one of those areas where as a consumer following the research and knowing what products are good to buy is almost a full time job.
  - colanderman 7y ago
    FWIW, they were probably forced to import to meet demand due to the poor California olive crop last year.
    - hoopleheaded 7y ago
      After I noticed the change I went to the website to see what it was about and this is exactly what happened.
- pacomerh 7y ago
  Right, doesn't it need to say "extra virgin olive oil" to actually be pure?. Otherwise it could be a blend
  - kcolford 7y ago
    Extra virgin only means it has been subject to the least amount of filtering standard to the industry. This gives it the most flavour of the olive oils.
- tasogare 7y ago
  I'm friend with a Tunisian in the country we both live. One day he was really happy, because a fellow countryman brought him a jar of olive oil. I didn't understand, why the hassle of travelling half the world with a product available in any supermarket? He explain, then let me taste it. After that I understood... it's was incredibly tasty. With the industrialization of food we (as a society) forgot the real taste of raw aliments and artisanal intermediate products.
- kcolford 7y ago
  I read somewhere that the distinction of Kalamata olive oil is reserved only for oil that comes from Kalamata, Greece. It's high end, but honestly the flavour is absolutely worth it. Furthermore, higher end products are usually less likely to be tampered with in a race to the bottom.
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    Is there a risk of counterfeits though as you get into the higher end?
- cyphar 7y ago
  If you want a quick way to test if your olive oil is actually extra virgin olive oil, get a green laser. When it passes through sufficiently pure olive oil the laser will change colour and become red, and then become green again when it passes out of the oil. Obviously make sure you practice responsible laser safety, even for a cheap low-wattage laser.
  - LeifCarrotson 7y ago
    Fascinating! I was skeptical at first how the monochromatic light would "turn red", but on investigation olive oil is flourescent! https://www.physicscentral.com/experiment/physicsathome/fluorescent-oil.cfm https://www.physicscentral.com/experiment/physicsathome/fluo... I was looking around with a 532nm green laser pointer the other day, and found that it was almost totally attenuated when aimed at the red (cheap/fake) nectar in my hummingbird feeder. Further experimentation revealed that orange Gatorade was similarly super-absorbent, while beer was pretty transparent to the green light. Just bought some Tonda Iblea DOP-certified oil and will be interested to try this! It's subjectively delicious, curious if it's objectively flourescent (and if my everyday supermarket olive oil is not).
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jedberg 7y ago
So you’re telling me the “crazy hippies” who demand to buy only local honey from local farms were actually right? That it is actually better for you? Guess I’ll have to start finding local honey.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  > That it is actually better for you? Nutritionally, honey isn't that different from sucrose, so no. It's like the HFCS vs sucrose argument; they're basically the same, and you're still eating sugar. I do actually buy local farm honey, though. It's incredible how you can see and taste difference in monofloral honey.
  - wyxuan 7y ago
    Mind explaining how it tastes different? I'm curious as to what the difference is.
    - magicalhippo 7y ago
      Think of the difference between a Vienna sausage, bratwurst and chorizo. Consistency, smell, flavor varies a lot, same for the honey depending on what the bees "ate".
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- NikolaeVarius 7y ago
  Honey is mostly sugar, there isn't anything "better" about it.
  - jsilence 7y ago
    Honey contains traces of pollen. If consuming honey from your region, it might help against hay fever.
- 7y ago
airstrike 7y ago
As an immigrant, I see most if not the entirety of the US food industry as a deadly practical joke. We're all stuffing our face with sugar, dairy, fatty red meat and processed food and nobody really seems to care. Most of the so-called healthy alternatives aren't healthy at all. Just look at what are called "protein bars" at your local market and check how much sugar those have, to name one example.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  > a deadly practical joke In a macro sense, Americans have bad diets, don't exercise enough, and are easy to market to, but in a micro sense, food bought here is extremely safe.
  - vezycash 7y ago
    >Extremely safe I.e. Won't kill you directly
    - sam_lowry_ 7y ago
      Won't kill you immediately.
- jniedrauer 7y ago
  > Just look at what are called "protein bars" at your local market and check how much sugar those have Something to bear in mind here is that products designed for athletes won't be healthy for people who aren't training at high volume. The metabolic pathway for sugar is very different when taken during or after training.
  - airstrike 7y ago
    Sure, but Luna Bar Protein isn't designed for athletes...
yborg 7y ago
Another downside of globalization, it has become cheap and easy to move food items across the world, so Vietnamese sugar syrup can be sold here as "honey" and it becomes a race to the bottom - actual honey producers either go out of business or have to do the same thing. Then a free trade advocate will point to how much the consumer price of "honey" has declined to show how well it works. This should be straight up regulated, the FDA apparently has no source origin or testing requirements for honey, unless someone actually is sickened by a batch it's all caveat emptor and this stuff is all labeled "raw", "pure" or even "organic" and it takes an NMR machine to know differently. I do find it surprising that the one sample out of four that wasn't obviously adulterated was the brand from Wal-Mart.
- i_am_nomad 7y ago
  That the Wal-Mart sample wasn’t adulterated isn’t surprising at all. Wal-Mart is notoriously bossy and intrusive to its suppliers; it’s sometimes said that if you sell to Wal-Mart, they end up knowing your business better than you do.
- metaphor 7y ago
  > so Vietnamese sugar syrup can be sold here as "honey" Come again?[1][2] > it takes an NMR machine to know differently Does it really?[3] [1] https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/PDF---Guidance-for-Industry--Proper-Labeling-of-Honey-and-Honey-Products.pdf https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/PDF---Guidance-for-... [2] https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_108.html https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_108.html [3] http://www.aoacofficialmethod.org/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=700 http://www.aoacofficialmethod.org/index.php?main_page=produc...
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    From [2]: "Divisions may detain, without physical examination, the specified products from the firms listed in the Red List of this import alert." Presumably they're not detaining every batch? The fact that the import alert has been in place for 7 years suggests -- unless there's further clarifying data about numbers of stops and such -- that it's still a problem, that fake "honey" is being imported? Per [3], https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17386484 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17386484 "Study and validity of 13C stable carbon isotopic ratio analysis by mass spectrometry and 2H site-specific natural isotopic fractionation by nuclear magnetic resonance isotopic measurements to characterize and control the authenticity of honey." it looks like they use SNIF-NMR and SCIRA-MS (magnetic resonance and mass-spectroscopy) in determining authenticity of honey? This, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328029044_Authenticity_and_geographic_origin_of_global_honeys_determined_using_carbon_isotope_ratios_and_trace_elements https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328029044_Authentic..., is quite intersting on the topic. I wasn't prepared to spend $15 to buy AOAC Official Method 991.41 but the above ResearchGate linked study suggested "honey" could have up to 7% corn syrup and still pass that test. Later (p.8) they summarise: >"While the study showed that some 73% of commercial honeys analysed were classified as pure according to AOAC criteria10,11,16 and previous studies8,12,13,15,17–20 it is entirely possible this overestimated the actual number of pure honeys. This is because honey is sometimes adulterated using C-3 sugars, such as those from sugar beet7. It is unfortunate that the methods used here cannot detect this form of adulteration61. Consequently, detection of adulteration of this nature remains a challenge7.In addition to C-3 sugars, other adulterants in honey are difficult to detect due to the development of new and more sophisticated practices and lack of officially accepted analytical techniques. The use of EA-IRMS (Elemental Analysis - Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry) is the only official detection method for addition of C-4 sugar in honey42. This study also relied on a number of AOAC criteria10,11,16 to determine if honey samples were pure. As shown in Table 1, 65% (17 of 26) of samples classified as adulterated did not meet the δ13Ch-p and the C-4 sugar criteria; 9 samples also failed to meet the relevant criterion for δ13Choney<−23.5‰10. While the C-4 sugar criterion is considered robust and has broad application, the AOAC 998.1211 method does identify that a small percentage of genuine pure honeys fall outside of the accepted criterion for non-adulterated honey (≤7%)." (ibid)
predictmktegirl 7y ago
I'm not sure globalization is very effective for economic growth when we're unable to enforce consistent rule-sets. If that growth is just regulatory arbitrage, we're only exchanging capital for fragile optimizations instead of production efficiency. Things seemed to be working pretty well when countries made good-faith efforts to not undermine the rules for local maximization. New actors have since entered the system who don't seem to mind playing the game exploitatatively even if it destabilizes the long-term equilibrium. Ironically, these players are often described as having "multi-generational thinking" but I won't name names. To normalize the playing field, investments are needed to fund port-of-entry enforcement, quality control, and authenticity, among other things. Tariffs are the most sensible tax to fund these kinds of expenditures, which brings us back to square one. In fact, I think tariffs are probably a good quantitative measure of how egregiously another country violates it's trading partner's standards at the margins.
NicoJuicy 7y ago
There's a company nearby that we joke has 6 billion workers for them. They do a lot of testing if it's actual honey and most of the fake honey comes from China.
PaulHoule 7y ago
I know the honey I eat is real because it comes from the bees that live downstream of my driveway. My beekeeper tells me they have the best flavor of any of his hives, probably because it is in the middle of a complex beaver habitat.
- bjelkeman-again 7y ago
  Our bees get their nectar from from the many nearby gardens. It is really very interesting how much it influences the taste to have nectar from cherries, apples, pears, spring flowers etc. Most of our neighbours say we have the best tasting honey.
ivanhoe 7y ago
I only buy honey that has crystallized a bit. AFAIK only natural honey does this. It's insane that people don't like this, so sellers are heating the honey to stop the crystallization.
- raducu 7y ago
  I can confirm, that's my brother in laws advice and he's a beekeeper. I also buy directly from trusted beekeepers when he's out of honey.
- pacomerh 7y ago
  yes indeed. This happens to the one I buy "BLOOM" which says its pure RAW Honey, and in the ingredients that's all it is "raw honey".
- toast0 7y ago
  It's harder to use honey that's crystallized, because it doesn't flow out the spout of the bear shapped bottle. It's not hard to warm it up yourself, but it's an extra step you need to do.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  I have a jar of honey that stays a soft solid around room temp, sort of like coconut oil does. I assume that's crystallized honey? Or maybe it was just adulterated with coconut oil. It comes in a wide-mouth jar so it's at least easy to scoop out.
  - rolph 7y ago
    honey can have natural source maltose and that will make a honey crystallize like you describe. these are often sold as creamed or whipped honey, and are often stirred to promote crystallization. A honey lacking maltose will crystallize into large hard crystals that have to be melted .
    - nkrisc 7y ago
      Ah, thank you. That will help me research it more.
uranium 7y ago
While the adulteration problems appear to be real, this reporter goes out of their way to exaggerate the problem. They diss Whole Foods honey for not being raw, when it's...not labeled as raw. Whole Foods certainly does sell some honey labeled as raw, but you pay more for it.
- kevinpet 7y ago
  Headline: "might not actually be honey" Article: "adulterated" with no mention of degree It seems likely the whole article was a part of the strategy of the class action lawsuits mentioned near the end. Extremely exaggerated rhetoric, little in the way of verifiable claims.
raducu 7y ago
My father in law and my brother in law keep bees. My brother in law told me about a disgusting practice where firms imported honey from China, filtered it, then added local honey and then exported the honey as bio-honey. Sometimes I wonder if we could develop hardware tools to test for psychopathy or just low empathy and just hot-iron-brand these disgusting individuals.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  You're complaining about "low empathy" and you're in favor of branding humans? Yikes!
  - raducu 7y ago
    I could have added that disclaimer myself. Having an empathy and wanting to keep the 95% of population safe from all the people who don't have an empathy by branding and preventing the sociopaths, psychopaths and pathological narcissists from masquerading as political leaders, CEOs, lovers and so on are not incompatible. In fact, it s documented that groups of 2-3 men, throughout world tribes, routinely killed and still kill those excessively violent individuals -- that gut reaction is what has helped us survive as a species. In todays anonymous society, these individuals are free to run wild and cause unspeakable damage to the population at large.
    - chaps 7y ago
      You sound exactly like the kind of person you'd like to see branded. You first.
      - gaius__baltar 7y ago
        Mean words on the internet are rather different from violence, one would think.
        chaps 7y ago
        Er... they're suggesting that we brand sociopaths and basically ends it at that. I'll pass on a world where having a bad day could lead to enforced disfigurement.
moomin 7y ago
I could be wrong about this but... from a European perspective this strikes me as an American problem. It’d be interesting to see if the same problems applied to European honey.
- mprev 7y ago
  One example: https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/food-safety/tesco-honey-test-not-fit-for-purpose-say-food-safety-experts/599902.article https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/food-safety/tesco-honey-test-not...
  - cbzbc 7y ago
    I suppose the key there was that it was withdrawn after this was found out (and own brand supermarket stuff is often the cheapest variant if a product with all the corner cutting that implies)
    - moomin 7y ago
      Yeah, I'd say this supports my hypothesis, in that the article is about whether or not good honey was rejected by the processes in place, not whether bad honey was making it onto shelves despite failing tests.
robbrown451 7y ago
The problem, if it is even a problem, is that 99% of the reason we initially sought out honey no longer exists. We liked it because it was the purest source of sugar that was available. We didn't care that it happened to be bee vomit flavored with a bit of plant sperm, or that we were exploiting the reproductive strategies of flowering plants, we just wanted the sweet. This is similar with maple syrup, which comes from sugar maple trees. We sought it out for the sugar. Now that it is a really, really expensive way to get sugar, we still love it. Nevermind that other trees produce very similar flavors. Ever try birch tablets? They taste a lot like maple, probably just as complex a flavor, but of course they need regular sugar to sweeten them because birch trees make plenty of flavor, but not much in the way of sugar. Still, we seek out pure maple syrup because of tradition. Now that we have far cheaper and purer sources of sugar, we still want honey, but again, more for traditional reasons than anything else. We try to convince ourselves of the benefits, because we really want to keep these traditional foods in our lives. And while we don't want it to be fake, we also can't actually tell the difference if it is. This just lends itself to fraud.
- smt88 7y ago
  Some farmers in places with depleted pollinators have to ship honeybees in to their fields. Harvesting honey from those bees makes that cheaper. Even without that usage, harvesting honey can be harmless to bees and benefit surrounding plant life. That makes it one of the best (if not the best) sources of concentrated sugar from an environmental perspective.
  - robbrown451 7y ago
    From an environmental perspective, sure. But not from an economic perspective. That's great if they can sell it and make money to subsidize the other part of their business (pollination). But if the economics aren't there, that's unrealistic. Remember, honey bees harvest honey as food for themselves during winter. If you take away their honey, then you need to feed them sugar. The most practical thing is to leave the honey for the bees, and make sugar for humans from other sources that are cheaper (can, beats etc). If honey has some amazing benefit for humans that can't be replicated (whether flavor or health), fine, but the fact that so many can't tell the difference tells me that that isn't sustainable.
jerkstate 7y ago
I grew up eating hyper-local honey (from my backyard) and the decline of honeybees is a real tragedy. Luckily I still know folks in my area who keep their own bees and my family can still get enough propolis and filtered honey for now. To us, the health benefits of eating local raw honey seem legit. I have never had allergies - my wife, who grew up in a big city and has terrible springtime allergies, notably improves when she eats local propolis. It also seems to improve sore throats and other minor illness discomfort (although that could be the "Mary Poppins Effect," being a spoonful of sugar) You can buy 10lbs-50lbs at a time and eat it over the course of years. So pay attention to your local classifieds (craigslist, nextdoor, facebook) in late summer and early fall, and buy honey as local as you can get.
StrangeDoctor 7y ago
Did I miss something or is this article a bit light in details? This testing organization claims 70% of honey they tested was adulterated in some way after talking about the most egregious offenders, making you assume it’s all just imported sugar filtered with hydrocarbons with a little honey mixed in. But they also claim just heating up raw honey to make it easier to work with is an offense according to their rules. While I’m all for more transparency or standardization this feels a bit submarine like.
b06tmm 7y ago
I buy my honey locally in south Louisiana, they're usually in generic Mason jars and can be found in places like hardware stores and barber shops, from local bee keepers. What the heck is "fancy" honey? Did not read the article.
m0zg 7y ago
90% of the aticle is spent implying that heating up honey to prevent crystallization somehow makes it "not honey". I'm not sure I follow the logic there.
- James_Henry 7y ago
  It makes it no longer raw honey (depending on your definitions).
  - m0zg 7y ago
    Sure, but it's still _honey_.
    - James_Henry 7y ago
      Yes, but that's not all people care about which is what the article specifically states. It's still honey but not "raw" honey.
LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
Every time i'm reading something like this, i'm wondering where my f-ing Tricorder from Star Trek is. What would it take to get the equivalent of mass spectrometry into a miniaturized clip on module for a smartphone which you could point at anything for a few seconds, and get the results on your app just from the backscatter? I don't care about the means, just the results. Oh, and not as something exotic but massproduced and cheap, so that everyone can afford it, use it casually on a daily basis and make a wide berth around all the fraud that is always out there even before putting it into the shopping cart.
- pontifier 7y ago
  They do exist, they are just expensive. probably the price would come down if there were more demand. It's Probably on its way to a smartphone in 20 years or so if demand justifies it. https://www.spectro.com/products/xrf-spectrometer/xsort-xrf-gun-handheld-analyzer https://www.spectro.com/products/xrf-spectrometer/xsort-xrf-...
  - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
    Oh! Wow. Interesting. But unsuitable for "casual" use. I'd imagine some questions from the manager if i'd were to hold that over some fruits in the supermarket :-) I got these when i did that with a borrowed gammascout maybe 10 to 15 years ago, even with the beeping disabled. Panic, Panic! Don't do that here! What do you think the customers think? Don't come back here! Go, go, out, away! Well, what do I as customer think if that's forbidden?
LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
Anybody remembering the blue honey in france, coming from bees gorging on the trash from a nearby factory producing M&Ms? https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121011-blue-honey-honeybees-animals-science/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121011-blue-... While searching that i learned about another kind of "blue honey", which is also very interesting.
pontifier 7y ago
To me, the most interesting thing in this article was the purification method using aliphatic resin. This seems almost magical in its ability to pull out pesticides and other impurities. I'm interested to see where that goes, as I can see that actually being a selling point rather than something to hide. I'm adding that to my food safety/purification/sterilisation methods list.

135 points by elorant 7y ago

And your olive oil might not be olive oil. Our daughter is allergic to sunflower oil which is commonly used to adulterate the olive oil. Chips supposedly made with olive oil will sometimes give her a rash. For bottled olive oil we try to buy local California olive oil...,

tomatotomato37 7y ago
It's not just might, I think something crazy like 80% of olive oil is adulterated. For whatever reason the olive oil industry has become the target of choice for Mediterranean crime syndicates.
- r6754dw 7y ago
  Try buying Greek if you can find that. At least the Greek brands of extra virgin olive oil I've bought in Northern Europe look and taste just like the locally product I've enjoyed in Crete. Italian and non-EU brands on the other hand taste totally different - and I don't think it's because of geography.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
    The thing with these suggestions is, they are all anecdotical from a single point in time and (market) space. I remember having read here somewhere, some time ago that maroccan or tunesian olive oil would be very good also, presumably because it isn't under the pressure of massive demand, so less incentive to fraud around it. Since decades this is a topic in consumer testing magazines and public television, and i can't remember anytime they didn't find at least one third fradulent. There are documentations out there, where they travel to Italy, speak with the local farmers, dealers, police and local government to get to root of this problem, and all involved parties (at least on the record) see it as a large problem too. Yet it is persistent.
jedberg 7y ago
From what I read before Costco does independent testing and their olive oil is unadulterated. Might be something to look into if you have Costco nearby.
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  "Costco does independent testing and their olive oil is unadulterated" One of the interesting things I learned from the honey article was that fraudsters have figured out how to work their way around tests, at least for honey. I wouldn't be surprised if they could do the same for olive oil and other food products. It seems like a cat and mouse game. Something not mentioned in the article is that testing labs themselves need to be tested, certified, and audited. There have been some scandals in forensic labs where techs have repeatedly falsified test results for decades. This is probably especially a problem when organized crime is involved. If you are at all interested in food safety, I highly recommend "The Poison Squad", about the foundation of the FDA.[1][2] [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euBoKIm1v6Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euBoKIm1v6Q [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0rKnxm3X7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0rKnxm3X7M
  - zamadatix 7y ago
    If they remove enough to detect it was adulterated then would it trigger the allergic reaction though?
    - pmoriarty 7y ago
      Removal isn't the only thing that happens. Sometimes they add in stuff like pollen. Also, just because they fool the particular testing tools that labs use doesn't mean you as a consumer won't have an adverse reaction to whatever it was they put in to the honey. The problem with adulteration isn't exclusively limited to harmful health effects either. Even if your health would not be adversely affected by the adulterants, you might still want to be certain you're getting is genuine. Let's say you bought corn syrup while under the impression that it was honey. It might not harm your health any more than any other corn syrup would, but you've still been defrauded, and what you got might not have the same health benefits that honey has (assuming honey has such benefits). Your purchasing decisions could have an ecological impact too. Effectively subsidizing the growing of corn by mistakenly buying corn syrup will have different ecological consequences than subsidizing the establishment of more bee colonies by buying genuine honey. That's not to mention the ethical issues of being conned in to giving money to fraudsters versus giving it to honest business people.
raducu 7y ago
The romans had an intricate system that prevented oil fraud, they could track and amphora back to the farm it originated in, and every step along the way. We should be able to do the same with modern technology and severely penalize individuals who commit fraud.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  We have even better systems in place than the Romans did. They're just not used unless there's a health emergency (e.g. E. coli in the food).
amlozano 7y ago
I used to trust the California Olive Ranch brand for olive oil, but lately noticed they started labeling their some of their bottles as imported and accidentally bought some. It tastes fine, but if I recall correctly the problems with olive oil usually come from imports where laws and regulation rules change from country to country. Luckily I live close to a real olive mill, but there really is no way to know. Plus you have people arguing the vast majority of olive oil sold in the USA is "authentic" for some measure of authentic, which is really hard to discern: https://www.aboutoliveoil.org/the-facts-about-uc-davis-olive-centers-olive-oil-report https://www.aboutoliveoil.org/the-facts-about-uc-davis-olive... This feels like another one of those areas where as a consumer following the research and knowing what products are good to buy is almost a full time job.
- colanderman 7y ago
  FWIW, they were probably forced to import to meet demand due to the poor California olive crop last year.
  - hoopleheaded 7y ago
    After I noticed the change I went to the website to see what it was about and this is exactly what happened.
pacomerh 7y ago
Right, doesn't it need to say "extra virgin olive oil" to actually be pure?. Otherwise it could be a blend
- kcolford 7y ago
  Extra virgin only means it has been subject to the least amount of filtering standard to the industry. This gives it the most flavour of the olive oils.
tasogare 7y ago
I'm friend with a Tunisian in the country we both live. One day he was really happy, because a fellow countryman brought him a jar of olive oil. I didn't understand, why the hassle of travelling half the world with a product available in any supermarket? He explain, then let me taste it. After that I understood... it's was incredibly tasty. With the industrialization of food we (as a society) forgot the real taste of raw aliments and artisanal intermediate products.
kcolford 7y ago
I read somewhere that the distinction of Kalamata olive oil is reserved only for oil that comes from Kalamata, Greece. It's high end, but honestly the flavour is absolutely worth it. Furthermore, higher end products are usually less likely to be tampered with in a race to the bottom.
- nitrogen 7y ago
  Is there a risk of counterfeits though as you get into the higher end?
cyphar 7y ago
If you want a quick way to test if your olive oil is actually extra virgin olive oil, get a green laser. When it passes through sufficiently pure olive oil the laser will change colour and become red, and then become green again when it passes out of the oil. Obviously make sure you practice responsible laser safety, even for a cheap low-wattage laser.
- LeifCarrotson 7y ago
  Fascinating! I was skeptical at first how the monochromatic light would "turn red", but on investigation olive oil is flourescent! https://www.physicscentral.com/experiment/physicsathome/fluorescent-oil.cfm https://www.physicscentral.com/experiment/physicsathome/fluo... I was looking around with a 532nm green laser pointer the other day, and found that it was almost totally attenuated when aimed at the red (cheap/fake) nectar in my hummingbird feeder. Further experimentation revealed that orange Gatorade was similarly super-absorbent, while beer was pretty transparent to the green light. Just bought some Tonda Iblea DOP-certified oil and will be interested to try this! It's subjectively delicious, curious if it's objectively flourescent (and if my everyday supermarket olive oil is not).

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jedberg 7y ago

So you’re telling me the “crazy hippies” who demand to buy only local honey from local farms were actually right? That it is actually better for you? Guess I’ll have to start finding local honey.

dehrmann 7y ago
> That it is actually better for you? Nutritionally, honey isn't that different from sucrose, so no. It's like the HFCS vs sucrose argument; they're basically the same, and you're still eating sugar. I do actually buy local farm honey, though. It's incredible how you can see and taste difference in monofloral honey.
- wyxuan 7y ago
  Mind explaining how it tastes different? I'm curious as to what the difference is.
  - magicalhippo 7y ago
    Think of the difference between a Vienna sausage, bratwurst and chorizo. Consistency, smell, flavor varies a lot, same for the honey depending on what the bees "ate".
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
NikolaeVarius 7y ago
Honey is mostly sugar, there isn't anything "better" about it.
- jsilence 7y ago
  Honey contains traces of pollen. If consuming honey from your region, it might help against hay fever.
7y ago

airstrike 7y ago

As an immigrant, I see most if not the entirety of the US food industry as a deadly practical joke. We're all stuffing our face with sugar, dairy, fatty red meat and processed food and nobody really seems to care. Most of the so-called healthy alternatives aren't healthy at all. Just look at what are called "protein bars" at your local market and check how much sugar those have, to name one example.

dehrmann 7y ago
> a deadly practical joke In a macro sense, Americans have bad diets, don't exercise enough, and are easy to market to, but in a micro sense, food bought here is extremely safe.
- vezycash 7y ago
  >Extremely safe I.e. Won't kill you directly
  - sam_lowry_ 7y ago
    Won't kill you immediately.
jniedrauer 7y ago
> Just look at what are called "protein bars" at your local market and check how much sugar those have Something to bear in mind here is that products designed for athletes won't be healthy for people who aren't training at high volume. The metabolic pathway for sugar is very different when taken during or after training.
- airstrike 7y ago
  Sure, but Luna Bar Protein isn't designed for athletes...

yborg 7y ago

Another downside of globalization, it has become cheap and easy to move food items across the world, so Vietnamese sugar syrup can be sold here as "honey" and it becomes a race to the bottom - actual honey producers either go out of business or have to do the same thing. Then a free trade advocate will point to how much the consumer price of "honey" has declined to show how well it works. This should be straight up regulated, the FDA apparently has no source origin or testing requirements for honey, unless someone actually is sickened by a batch it's all caveat emptor and this stuff is all labeled "raw", "pure" or even "organic" and it takes an NMR machine to know differently. I do find it surprising that the one sample out of four that wasn't obviously adulterated was the brand from Wal-Mart.

i_am_nomad 7y ago
That the Wal-Mart sample wasn’t adulterated isn’t surprising at all. Wal-Mart is notoriously bossy and intrusive to its suppliers; it’s sometimes said that if you sell to Wal-Mart, they end up knowing your business better than you do.
metaphor 7y ago
> so Vietnamese sugar syrup can be sold here as "honey" Come again?[1][2] > it takes an NMR machine to know differently Does it really?[3] [1] https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/PDF---Guidance-for-Industry--Proper-Labeling-of-Honey-and-Honey-Products.pdf https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/PDF---Guidance-for-... [2] https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_108.html https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_108.html [3] http://www.aoacofficialmethod.org/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=700 http://www.aoacofficialmethod.org/index.php?main_page=produc...
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  From [2]: "Divisions may detain, without physical examination, the specified products from the firms listed in the Red List of this import alert." Presumably they're not detaining every batch? The fact that the import alert has been in place for 7 years suggests -- unless there's further clarifying data about numbers of stops and such -- that it's still a problem, that fake "honey" is being imported? Per [3], https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17386484 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17386484 "Study and validity of 13C stable carbon isotopic ratio analysis by mass spectrometry and 2H site-specific natural isotopic fractionation by nuclear magnetic resonance isotopic measurements to characterize and control the authenticity of honey." it looks like they use SNIF-NMR and SCIRA-MS (magnetic resonance and mass-spectroscopy) in determining authenticity of honey? This, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328029044_Authenticity_and_geographic_origin_of_global_honeys_determined_using_carbon_isotope_ratios_and_trace_elements https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328029044_Authentic..., is quite intersting on the topic. I wasn't prepared to spend $15 to buy AOAC Official Method 991.41 but the above ResearchGate linked study suggested "honey" could have up to 7% corn syrup and still pass that test. Later (p.8) they summarise: >"While the study showed that some 73% of commercial honeys analysed were classified as pure according to AOAC criteria10,11,16 and previous studies8,12,13,15,17–20 it is entirely possible this overestimated the actual number of pure honeys. This is because honey is sometimes adulterated using C-3 sugars, such as those from sugar beet7. It is unfortunate that the methods used here cannot detect this form of adulteration61. Consequently, detection of adulteration of this nature remains a challenge7.In addition to C-3 sugars, other adulterants in honey are difficult to detect due to the development of new and more sophisticated practices and lack of officially accepted analytical techniques. The use of EA-IRMS (Elemental Analysis - Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry) is the only official detection method for addition of C-4 sugar in honey42. This study also relied on a number of AOAC criteria10,11,16 to determine if honey samples were pure. As shown in Table 1, 65% (17 of 26) of samples classified as adulterated did not meet the δ13Ch-p and the C-4 sugar criteria; 9 samples also failed to meet the relevant criterion for δ13Choney<−23.5‰10. While the C-4 sugar criterion is considered robust and has broad application, the AOAC 998.1211 method does identify that a small percentage of genuine pure honeys fall outside of the accepted criterion for non-adulterated honey (≤7%)." (ibid)

predictmktegirl 7y ago

I'm not sure globalization is very effective for economic growth when we're unable to enforce consistent rule-sets. If that growth is just regulatory arbitrage, we're only exchanging capital for fragile optimizations instead of production efficiency. Things seemed to be working pretty well when countries made good-faith efforts to not undermine the rules for local maximization. New actors have since entered the system who don't seem to mind playing the game exploitatatively even if it destabilizes the long-term equilibrium. Ironically, these players are often described as having "multi-generational thinking" but I won't name names. To normalize the playing field, investments are needed to fund port-of-entry enforcement, quality control, and authenticity, among other things. Tariffs are the most sensible tax to fund these kinds of expenditures, which brings us back to square one. In fact, I think tariffs are probably a good quantitative measure of how egregiously another country violates it's trading partner's standards at the margins.

NicoJuicy 7y ago

There's a company nearby that we joke has 6 billion workers for them. They do a lot of testing if it's actual honey and most of the fake honey comes from China.

PaulHoule 7y ago

I know the honey I eat is real because it comes from the bees that live downstream of my driveway. My beekeeper tells me they have the best flavor of any of his hives, probably because it is in the middle of a complex beaver habitat.

bjelkeman-again 7y ago
Our bees get their nectar from from the many nearby gardens. It is really very interesting how much it influences the taste to have nectar from cherries, apples, pears, spring flowers etc. Most of our neighbours say we have the best tasting honey.

ivanhoe 7y ago

I only buy honey that has crystallized a bit. AFAIK only natural honey does this. It's insane that people don't like this, so sellers are heating the honey to stop the crystallization.

raducu 7y ago
I can confirm, that's my brother in laws advice and he's a beekeeper. I also buy directly from trusted beekeepers when he's out of honey.
pacomerh 7y ago
yes indeed. This happens to the one I buy "BLOOM" which says its pure RAW Honey, and in the ingredients that's all it is "raw honey".
toast0 7y ago
It's harder to use honey that's crystallized, because it doesn't flow out the spout of the bear shapped bottle. It's not hard to warm it up yourself, but it's an extra step you need to do.
nkrisc 7y ago
I have a jar of honey that stays a soft solid around room temp, sort of like coconut oil does. I assume that's crystallized honey? Or maybe it was just adulterated with coconut oil. It comes in a wide-mouth jar so it's at least easy to scoop out.
- rolph 7y ago
  honey can have natural source maltose and that will make a honey crystallize like you describe. these are often sold as creamed or whipped honey, and are often stirred to promote crystallization. A honey lacking maltose will crystallize into large hard crystals that have to be melted .
  - nkrisc 7y ago
    Ah, thank you. That will help me research it more.

uranium 7y ago

While the adulteration problems appear to be real, this reporter goes out of their way to exaggerate the problem. They diss Whole Foods honey for not being raw, when it's...not labeled as raw. Whole Foods certainly does sell some honey labeled as raw, but you pay more for it.

kevinpet 7y ago
Headline: "might not actually be honey" Article: "adulterated" with no mention of degree It seems likely the whole article was a part of the strategy of the class action lawsuits mentioned near the end. Extremely exaggerated rhetoric, little in the way of verifiable claims.

raducu 7y ago

My father in law and my brother in law keep bees. My brother in law told me about a disgusting practice where firms imported honey from China, filtered it, then added local honey and then exported the honey as bio-honey. Sometimes I wonder if we could develop hardware tools to test for psychopathy or just low empathy and just hot-iron-brand these disgusting individuals.

jessaustin 7y ago
You're complaining about "low empathy" and you're in favor of branding humans? Yikes!
- raducu 7y ago
  I could have added that disclaimer myself. Having an empathy and wanting to keep the 95% of population safe from all the people who don't have an empathy by branding and preventing the sociopaths, psychopaths and pathological narcissists from masquerading as political leaders, CEOs, lovers and so on are not incompatible. In fact, it s documented that groups of 2-3 men, throughout world tribes, routinely killed and still kill those excessively violent individuals -- that gut reaction is what has helped us survive as a species. In todays anonymous society, these individuals are free to run wild and cause unspeakable damage to the population at large.
  - chaps 7y ago
    You sound exactly like the kind of person you'd like to see branded. You first.
    - gaius__baltar 7y ago
      Mean words on the internet are rather different from violence, one would think.
      - chaps 7y ago
        Er... they're suggesting that we brand sociopaths and basically ends it at that. I'll pass on a world where having a bad day could lead to enforced disfigurement.

moomin 7y ago

I could be wrong about this but... from a European perspective this strikes me as an American problem. It’d be interesting to see if the same problems applied to European honey.

mprev 7y ago
One example: https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/food-safety/tesco-honey-test-not-fit-for-purpose-say-food-safety-experts/599902.article https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/food-safety/tesco-honey-test-not...
- cbzbc 7y ago
  I suppose the key there was that it was withdrawn after this was found out (and own brand supermarket stuff is often the cheapest variant if a product with all the corner cutting that implies)
  - moomin 7y ago
    Yeah, I'd say this supports my hypothesis, in that the article is about whether or not good honey was rejected by the processes in place, not whether bad honey was making it onto shelves despite failing tests.

robbrown451 7y ago

The problem, if it is even a problem, is that 99% of the reason we initially sought out honey no longer exists. We liked it because it was the purest source of sugar that was available. We didn't care that it happened to be bee vomit flavored with a bit of plant sperm, or that we were exploiting the reproductive strategies of flowering plants, we just wanted the sweet. This is similar with maple syrup, which comes from sugar maple trees. We sought it out for the sugar. Now that it is a really, really expensive way to get sugar, we still love it. Nevermind that other trees produce very similar flavors. Ever try birch tablets? They taste a lot like maple, probably just as complex a flavor, but of course they need regular sugar to sweeten them because birch trees make plenty of flavor, but not much in the way of sugar. Still, we seek out pure maple syrup because of tradition. Now that we have far cheaper and purer sources of sugar, we still want honey, but again, more for traditional reasons than anything else. We try to convince ourselves of the benefits, because we really want to keep these traditional foods in our lives. And while we don't want it to be fake, we also can't actually tell the difference if it is. This just lends itself to fraud.

smt88 7y ago
Some farmers in places with depleted pollinators have to ship honeybees in to their fields. Harvesting honey from those bees makes that cheaper. Even without that usage, harvesting honey can be harmless to bees and benefit surrounding plant life. That makes it one of the best (if not the best) sources of concentrated sugar from an environmental perspective.
- robbrown451 7y ago
  From an environmental perspective, sure. But not from an economic perspective. That's great if they can sell it and make money to subsidize the other part of their business (pollination). But if the economics aren't there, that's unrealistic. Remember, honey bees harvest honey as food for themselves during winter. If you take away their honey, then you need to feed them sugar. The most practical thing is to leave the honey for the bees, and make sugar for humans from other sources that are cheaper (can, beats etc). If honey has some amazing benefit for humans that can't be replicated (whether flavor or health), fine, but the fact that so many can't tell the difference tells me that that isn't sustainable.

jerkstate 7y ago

I grew up eating hyper-local honey (from my backyard) and the decline of honeybees is a real tragedy. Luckily I still know folks in my area who keep their own bees and my family can still get enough propolis and filtered honey for now. To us, the health benefits of eating local raw honey seem legit. I have never had allergies - my wife, who grew up in a big city and has terrible springtime allergies, notably improves when she eats local propolis. It also seems to improve sore throats and other minor illness discomfort (although that could be the "Mary Poppins Effect," being a spoonful of sugar) You can buy 10lbs-50lbs at a time and eat it over the course of years. So pay attention to your local classifieds (craigslist, nextdoor, facebook) in late summer and early fall, and buy honey as local as you can get.

StrangeDoctor 7y ago

Did I miss something or is this article a bit light in details? This testing organization claims 70% of honey they tested was adulterated in some way after talking about the most egregious offenders, making you assume it’s all just imported sugar filtered with hydrocarbons with a little honey mixed in. But they also claim just heating up raw honey to make it easier to work with is an offense according to their rules. While I’m all for more transparency or standardization this feels a bit submarine like.

b06tmm 7y ago

I buy my honey locally in south Louisiana, they're usually in generic Mason jars and can be found in places like hardware stores and barber shops, from local bee keepers. What the heck is "fancy" honey? Did not read the article.

m0zg 7y ago

90% of the aticle is spent implying that heating up honey to prevent crystallization somehow makes it "not honey". I'm not sure I follow the logic there.

James_Henry 7y ago
It makes it no longer raw honey (depending on your definitions).
- m0zg 7y ago
  Sure, but it's still _honey_.
  - James_Henry 7y ago
    Yes, but that's not all people care about which is what the article specifically states. It's still honey but not "raw" honey.

LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago

Every time i'm reading something like this, i'm wondering where my f-ing Tricorder from Star Trek is. What would it take to get the equivalent of mass spectrometry into a miniaturized clip on module for a smartphone which you could point at anything for a few seconds, and get the results on your app just from the backscatter? I don't care about the means, just the results. Oh, and not as something exotic but massproduced and cheap, so that everyone can afford it, use it casually on a daily basis and make a wide berth around all the fraud that is always out there even before putting it into the shopping cart.

pontifier 7y ago
They do exist, they are just expensive. probably the price would come down if there were more demand. It's Probably on its way to a smartphone in 20 years or so if demand justifies it. https://www.spectro.com/products/xrf-spectrometer/xsort-xrf-gun-handheld-analyzer https://www.spectro.com/products/xrf-spectrometer/xsort-xrf-...
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
  Oh! Wow. Interesting. But unsuitable for "casual" use. I'd imagine some questions from the manager if i'd were to hold that over some fruits in the supermarket :-) I got these when i did that with a borrowed gammascout maybe 10 to 15 years ago, even with the beeping disabled. Panic, Panic! Don't do that here! What do you think the customers think? Don't come back here! Go, go, out, away! Well, what do I as customer think if that's forbidden?

LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago

Anybody remembering the blue honey in france, coming from bees gorging on the trash from a nearby factory producing M&Ms? https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121011-blue-honey-honeybees-animals-science/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121011-blue-... While searching that i learned about another kind of "blue honey", which is also very interesting.

pontifier 7y ago

To me, the most interesting thing in this article was the purification method using aliphatic resin. This seems almost magical in its ability to pull out pesticides and other impurities. I'm interested to see where that goes, as I can see that actually being a selling point rather than something to hide. I'm adding that to my food safety/purification/sterilisation methods list.