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Here's a very straightforward guide to buying honey. If you see honey at a supermarket, no you don't, that's sugar syrup. If you see honey online, no you don't,

• School-Cotton 2y ago
  How do you know this? Is there actual reporting on what percentage of honey in supermarkets is adulterated, rather than just anecdotal reports that at least some is?
  • pbronez 2y ago
    From the article: An EU investigation published last year found 46% of imported sampled products were suspected to be fraudulent, including all 10 from the UK. Samples used in October by the UK branch of the Honey Authenticity Network for a novel form of DNA testing found that 24 out of 25 jars from big UK retailers were suspicious.
    • trimethylpurine 2y ago
      Some part of the verbiage here is unscientific. We're in need of a percentage of suspicion that applies to a percentage of jars and whether that percentage of suspicion is based on the presence or absence of certain adulterants. Otherwise these percentages give more ambiguity than insight about the products.
    • buran77 2y ago
      Also: > Regulators in the UK have not published detailed results of official tests, but rejected claims of significant fraud. If I remember correctly this was already the situation in Germany already decades ago. At least half of the honey on the German market was (to use the term from the present article) adulterated as EU investigations at the time showed. The investigators was even hidden camera footage with importers admitting they knew this was the case. Then a lot of lobbying money moved around between importers, distributors, and local authorities, and the honey kept flowing. The labs that did the testing were good for far more delicate work so it wasn't a matter of precision and accuracy, more a matter of Germans loving their honey. Stopping the flow of cheap, even if adulterated honey from China and at the time I think also Ukraine would be a big hit to the industry's wallet. I bet all those involved just told themselves "sweet is sweet" and went about their profit making business.
    • secondcoming 2y ago
      It's extremely common for honey sold in the UK to be labelled as a 'blend of EU and non-EU honey', or similar. There's no doubt in my mind that what this really means is that they've no real idea where the honey comes from. On the rare occasion I do buy honey it's usually Scottish Heather Honey, which is as delicious as it is expensive.
      • Marazan 2y ago
        Yeah as soon as I see 'blend of EU and non-EU honey' then I'm noping out of there as it just means disguised sugar syrup. Actual location authenticated honey costs actual real money.
  • skylurk 2y ago
    Honey supply chains are opaque and global, plus the incentives to cheat are clearly there and it's hard to definitively prove a batch was not adulterated. I'd say it's fair to be suspicious. That said, this old article seems to think its not as common a problem as you would expect: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2011/11/25/142659547/relax-folks-it-really-is-honey-after-all https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2011/11/25/142659547/re...
    • throwup238 2y ago
      > "Consumers don't tend to like crystallized honey," says Jill Clark, vice president for sales and marketing at Dutch Gold. "It's very funny. In Canada, there's a lot of creamed honey sold, and people are very accustomed to honey crystallizing. Same in Europe. But the U.S. consumer is very used to a liquid product, and as soon as they see those first granules of crystallization, we get the phone calls: 'Something's wrong with my honey!'" Anecdotal but everything in that NPR article rings true to me. American consumers are used to the bear shaped bottles with purified honey that’s barely distinguishable from sugar syrup and could easily be adulterated but the raw honey I usually buy is so obviously honey from the taste and texture that I have a hard time believing any of it is adulterated. If honey producers were really that good at artificially replicating flavor profiles, they’d be far ahead of the rest of the food science industry.
      • highcountess 2y ago
        Are you sure what you believe is unadulterated honey because you are familiar with the taste, is not just adulterated and you are just so accustomed to fake honey that you confuse the two? I say that because basically all the honey I’ve ever bought in a store has always tasted flat and lacked flavor depth that has long made me wonder about its authority compared to known hive honey.
        • throwup238 2y ago
          I’ve had raw honey straight from both domesticated and wild hives as it was collected so unless the bees themselves are adulterating it, I think I’ve got an accurate baseline for how honey is supposed to taste. Go out and buy a good manuka or wild Himalayan honey and you’ll quickly learn how to spot the real stuff. The honey I buy isn’t meant to look like filtered golden sugar syrup so adulterating it is practically impossible. That said I buy it from ethnic grocery stores so unless you’re getting the good stuff at Trader Joes YMMV (I like their manuka)
  • Etheryte 2y ago
    There are many studies into this, but this Forbes article [0] is a good example: > Of 123 honey exporters to Europe, 70 are suspected of having adulterated their products, and out of 95 European importers checked, two-thirds are affected by at least one suspect batch. This is only one example, similar stings elsewhere have likewise found bleak results. As the son of a beekeeper I can attest to this, the honey you find at a grocery store and what actually comes out of a hive are very different things. Even if you boil natural honey you still don't get the texture and consistency they have at the store. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2023/03/24/half-of-the-honey-in-european-markets-is-fake-alerts-eu-investigation/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2023/03/24/hal...
    • RHSeeger 2y ago
      > Of 123 honey exporters to Europe, 70 are suspected of having adulterated their products That sounds better than the rates I saw of good/bad extra virgin olive oil, and you can most certainly find good EVOO at a grocery store; you just need to know what brands to look for. Is there any reason to believe it isn't the same with honey? If not, then that's a pretty far cry from "If you see honey at a supermarket, no you don't, that's sugar syrup".
      • WhiteDawn 2y ago
        And similar to olive oil. Once you taste the real deal, it's very easy to identify the fake/watered down stuff by taste alone.
    • mft_ 2y ago
      > similar stings :)
    • sholladay 2y ago
      Agreed that fresh honey and store honey are very different. You would think that, given how different they are, it would be easy to detect the fake honey. But apparent lyrics not.
  • tharkun__ 2y ago
    And he is definitely globally wrong anyway. Our local supermarket sells honey from a local beekeeper that we've also bought honey from directly before. Only that one local supermarket has their honey and it's closer to us than driving to the beekeeper. And yes it has a nice looking but plain label on the jar. He is probably mostly right about large quantity, imported honey tho.
    • vinnymac 2y ago
      I think as a guide for buying honey his advice is valuable, although a bit dramatic, and it won’t apply to every country or region. As someone who is a beekeeper and owns a farm, you can be much more certain what you’re getting is honey where I am from when it’s being purchased from the back of a van from some random person with some glass jars, than you can at any supermarket. Hi it’s me I am the random person with the glass jars :)
• pfortuny 2y ago
  Are you talking about a specific country or anywhere (in the West, I assume)?
  • phatfish 2y ago
    What I had heard was that anything that isn't "single source" likely has sugar syrup added. this includes all major brands. I wouldn't even trust the expensive "organic" versions of big brands. Apparently exported Chinese "honey" is the main offender which gets mixed with other sources. Two of the supermarkets in the UK I shop in have their own brand "Spanish Forest Honey", that claims to be single source from Spain. I have no reason to not trust that it is yet. It is about x2-3 more expensive than the big mainstream brands, darker and tastes stronger. The Spanish producers could be adding sugar syrup as well I suppose, but aside from hunting down honey from farmers markets it's the best option I have.
    • secondcoming 2y ago
      Sainburys has Scottish Heather Honey. According to the label it's 100% Scottish honey.
    • Marazan 2y ago
      Interesting you appear to be getting downvoted for presumably accurately stating that China is the majority source of fake honey. It was such a known problem that China had to start laundering its honey, I believe at one point Singapore suddenly became one of the world's latest exporters or "honey"
• c2h5oh 2y ago
  Better yet befriend a beekeeper. You gain a friend and honey.
  • cgh 2y ago
    Yeah, one of my best friends is a beekeeper and we get our honey from him. This led to an uptick in honey consumption around here and perhaps not unrelatedly, I got my first ever cavity about six months ago.
  • codetrotter 2y ago
    Cut out the middleman. Become friend with the bees. You gain a hive mind as friend, and honey! :D
    • ponector 2y ago
      Bit to get honey would mean to rob your hive friend.
      • Snacklive 2y ago
        Na dude, they are chill. They produce more under your friendship so you can keep a little. If they think the relationship is going toxic they just leave. It's awesome
        • spookie 2y ago
          Yeah, it's basically this. Most wouldn't survive winter.
          • notyourwork 2y ago
            How do they survive winter? Do they hibernate, go south or stay?
            • dghlsakjg 2y ago
• bena 2y ago
  Nope, he just bought from the store, repackaged, then resold with a markup as it is cheaper to do so
• lttlrck 2y ago
  Buy from a bee keeper if you care that much. The "cash only old dude with a stand" filter will fail.
• yumraj 2y ago
  Now old dudes will buy supermarket honey and unlabeled jars. Unverifiable provenance in both cases..
  • araneae 2y ago
    If you /really/ want to be sure, buy comb honey. Impossible to fake.
    • bagels 2y ago
      Can't fake honeycomb be made and placed in to jars of fake honey?
      • pfannkuchen 2y ago
        I think the market is probably too small to put the money into figuring out how to fake it convincingly. Also the market leans towards enthusiasts who detect fakes more readily than the average honey normie. If it ever becomes mainstream this will definitely happen.
      • dredmorbius 2y ago
        Cost/reward is likely sufficient disincentive.] This is shades of "if you can fake sincerity you can fake anything": <https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/12/05/fake-honesty/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/12/05/fake-honesty/> (Uncertain origin, though often attributed to Groucho Marx, George Burns, Jean Giraudoux, Celeste Holm, Ed Nelson, Samuel Goldwyn, Daniel Schorr, Joe Franklin, and/or Anonymous.)
    • yumraj 2y ago
      I've seen it but never dared to buy. What do you do with the honey comb, eat it? Does it taste waxy?
      • Anon_troll 2y ago
        The comb walls are basically like chewing gum. It does not have much taste.
• deleted 2y ago
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• Aurornis 2y ago
  This isn’t true at all in the United States at least. Sugar syrup or even honey adulterated with sugar syrup behaves differently. I’ve had some cheap generic brand bottles that flowed too easily, dissolved too quickly, and never crystallized. Probably sugar syrup. But I haven’t seen this once since over a decade ago in my college days when I shopped at some questionable neighborhood supermarkets. Everything I’ve bought from local supermarkets and chains like Costco has felt, looked, flowed, tasted, and crystallized like real honey. You should probably be more suspicious about those roadside shops, too. With the rise of “farmers’ markets” as a side hustle you can no longer tell what’s what just by the fact that they’re operating out of a stand and taking cash. Around here, a lot of the “farmers’ market” and even roadside stand operators are reselling products they get from other entrepreneurs who sell them the produce, honey, and other goods. There’s a group of people here who have roadside stands with signs spray painted by hand to look like mom and pop DIY operations, which tricks people until they realize those exact signs are in 100s of locations across the state. It’s just another business preying on people’s lack of trust in institutions but implicit trust in anything that feels mom and pop, just like your comment implies.
  • bowsamic 2y ago
    My brother in law owns bees and gifts us honey. One is strong, thick, crystallised easily. One is thin and flows very easily, very see through. These things aren’t good indicators of adulteration at all
    • pfannkuchen 2y ago
      Is it like a bloom filter? Crystallizes easily means real? Doesn’t crystallize easily means unknown?
      • sitharus 2y ago
        Unfortunately not. The rate of crystallisation depends on the source of nectar for the honey, I know from experience that clover honey seems to crystallise a lot sooner than Manuka honey. It also depends on the sort of processing done. Commercial honey is pasturised, but local suppliers might not.
• EA-3167 2y ago
  The place I buy honey is run by an older woman in Vermont who owns a lovely apiary. I've visited and seen the process, she's fantastic, her product is delicious, and it's as real as it gets. They're 4th gen family owned, so they really know what they're doing and it's all about the bees, the honey and their reputation. Plus the honey is so delicious. When I visited she gave me this little container of the foam that collects on top of the raw honey. It was delicious, I ate a little spoonful of it every day until it ran out. I don't work for them, I don't get money from them, I'm just an enthusiastic long-term customer. Champlain Valley Apiaries: https://www.champlainvalleyhoney.com/ https://www.champlainvalleyhoney.com/ I cannot recommend them enough.
  • Mtinie 2y ago
    My mom discovered Champlain Valley about 10 years ago, so now every time she visits (we’re in VA, she’s from CA), she sends an order with a two pound jar ahead so she has a honey she likes in our pantry. I don’t complain at all, because it means we have excellent honey to consume once she leaves :)
    • EA-3167 2y ago
      Your mother sounds great; it's funny too because I was also introduced to this by my mother! She's an avid tea drinker, and loves honey in her tea. Meanwhile I have Greek yogurt most mornings, and with addition of really good honey it becomes unbeatable. I guess the point my mother would claim is, "Listen to your mother, she knows best." Heh
• elorant 2y ago
  I regularly buy honey from the supermarket from a long established Greek brand and it’s as good as any honey I get from local markets, if not better.
• jart 2y ago
  But all the honey labels say the only ingredient is honey. We've always been able to assume that with things like jams, or any other food, when manufacturers adulterate it with things like corn syrup, or even mild poisons, they proudly say so on the label. To not do so is fraud. How can people just claim that an entire industry is committing fraud??? Even this article doesn't mention anything about proof, just suspicions. Why can't they prove it? To make these kind of claims without proof is arguably worse than fraud. This would all be outrageous if it's true, since it becomes impossible to make any rational choices as consumers if the food system has gone fraudulent.
  • _3u10 2y ago
    That’s because honey is sugar syrup with a liberal sprinkling of marketing. The sugar syrup they are blending it with doesn’t have the right marketing and is therefore not honey.
    • jart 2y ago
      No, it's not. Honey is defined by the USDA as being flower nectar that's been processed by bees[1]. Artificial honey can not be called honey[2]. If they're mixing it with high fructose corn syrup, then there should be a way to scientifically determine that. [1] https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Extracted_Honey_Inspection_Instructions%5B1%5D.pdf https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Extracted... [2] https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Extracted_Honey_Standard%5B1%5D.pdf https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/Extracted...
      • ryandrake 2y ago
        Oh, the USDA publishes a rule! Surely everyone will follow that and the problem is solved. Unfortunately we get the behavior that we let people get away with. Regulators are asleep, courts let companies weasel their way around everything, and reality doesn't care about published rules and standards.
        • 2y ago
• _yb2s 2y ago
  All of the honey I buy at grocery stores crystalizes almost immediately… sugar syrup won’t do that. I usually buy something that appears to be directly from a local farm with a name and address I recognize, and is in a regular mason jar with no fancy branding.
• deadbabe 2y ago
  So I’ve never had real honey? Why doesn’t someone just sell the stuff the small dude sells in a store?
  • bongodongobob 2y ago
    They do, parent is full of shit. Too much Instagram probably.
    • deadbabe 2y ago
      There seems to be a lot of gatekeeping where if people buy something too easily it’s made clear they are not getting the “real” thing. Why?
  • bluGill 2y ago
    They do sell it in stores, but there is no clear way you can know if you are getting the real stuff or fake - the labels look the same.
• reaperducer 2y ago
  If you see honey at a supermarket, no you don't, that's sugar syrup. I get my honey from a local beekeeper who delivers to my door. He welcomes people to tour his farm to see how it's produced. He also sells his honey in the local chain supermarkets. Your broad generalization is false.
  • dghlsakjg 2y ago
    His point is that there is no reliable way to differentiate between real honey and adulterated product for the average consumer in store. If 1/3 of the honey in the store is fake, but you don’t know which 1/3 is fake, then what is the point of buying any honey at that store? If you need advice about where to buy pure honey because you don’t personally know the farmer then, “treat everything at the grocery store as suspect” is fine advice. If you have personally toured an apiary, know the keeper, and happen to know that he sells at a few grocery stores as well, you don’t need the advice, and your addition isn’t helpful since the end result is the same: the average person can’t trust the honey at their large grocery store, and they should find a local beekeeper.
• liontwist 2y ago
  The "down to earth local grower" is a form of marketing that appeals to you. It's not a guarantee of quality, and probably more variable. Many vendors at farmer's markets just buy and relabel stuff, because producing goods efficiently enough to make a profit is actually hard.
  • Etheryte 2y ago
    I'm pretty sure my own father is not masquerading as a beekeeper to market his honey to me. You're right though that it alone doesn't pay the bills, but it does definitely help.
    • dingnuts 2y ago
      same experience. Bee keeping is a fairly accessible hobby, actually, and the honey is very good, although you wind up with far too much of it I do prefer my dad's to buying "local" stuff at the supermarket but I'm not sure I believe all the uncited claims in this thread about everything on the shelf there being fake
  • weitendorf 2y ago
    This is true but there are varying degrees of “buying and relabeling” stuff. At its worst yes they could be going to a wholesaler or supermarket or restaurant supply store and just reselling those goods. What I suspect is more common and isn’t as bad is that someone operates as a consumer brand/storefront for several small scale local farms. Given the variety of produce sold at so many of the farmers’ markets stalls in CA, and that most of it does indeed seem artisanal (ie not the kind you’d see in a grocery store), locally growable, and in-season I’m pretty sure this is commonplace. There’s just no way a “down to earth local grower” could farm 15+ different kinds of crops at the scale required to operate one or more farmer’s market stalls multiple days a week, and operate the stalls. You’d need a big operation for that to not be a logistical nightmare. That said, if a vendor is just selling one or two things that keep well (like honey) it seems totally feasible that they’re truly a “down to earth local grower” although that also means they’re “possibly a complete amateur/fraud”
  • slt2021 2y ago
• Spivak 2y ago
  On the complete opposite end, if you go to a supermassive grocery store and buy their store brand then you'll be getting real honey simply because they have deep pockets and a massive target on their backs if they're committing fraud.
• bpodgursky 2y ago
  The supermarkets around here sell local honey. Same product as at the farmers' market, but more convenient.
• doctorpangloss 2y ago
  I have a Flow Hive in an urban environment, and to me, my honey - it’s harvested by a clever cell, and it isn’t harvested by scraping comb, so it is very clean and homogenous - is indistinguishable from most industrially distributed honey. So I feel like your criteria would mean I’d be accused of adulteration. Can people see and taste the differences between (a) sugar syrup and (b) dehydrated flower nectar and liquid sugars? Certainly in the case of small scale harvesting in a traditional hive: it will be have ground up comb, dead bee parts and gas that, in my opinion, adds little. Sometimes bees get into stuff like a cherry syrup factory and they barf out blue food coloring into the cells which dehydrate and become blue honey, which you can also see. Do people physiologically interact with something in the honey other than its sugar? Like is there something missing from sugar syrup? One clinically proven difference is that honey is an effective antibiotic on wounds whereas sugar syrup is not. Of course besides antibiotics in the honey, the bee barfs out other stuff that gets in there that can affect the development of bees, and trace amounts of pollen and bee poop get in it too, but I don’t think any of that interacts with us. It’s a complex problem. You can easily read more about it, bees are well studied animals. For most culinary purposes you don’t want weird solids, moisture, gas and contaminants like that, so industrial honey suits people better anyway. But if you are applying it to a wound you want bee produced honey without comb, which readily exists in the medical supply chain. It is not accurate to say that the small town seller is the only source, or even the best source, of “real honey.”
• bud_davis 2y ago
  I buy my honey from an old man, who parks off of Beach street, off of I-30, most saturdays. He drives a 30 year old van, falling apart, and places his goods on a plywood table. Most of the honey is in canning jars, with a home printed label. The claim is it is sourced locally, and there are significant variations in color and taste over the year. Is he scamming me and buying fake honey on Amazon and re-packaging it to look artisinal? Maybe. But I am convinced it is the real deal.
• greatgib 2y ago
  I would easily say that the old dude with a small stand in the market is the most suspicious. Most of them are frauds tricking tourists and co by the "local artisanal" aspect. In the same way that it is now very hard to find a Christmas market selling authentic artisanal products. And in 2024, if he does not accept cash, it might probably because he is happy to not declare all his incomes. That is a bad sign if you expect such a guy to be honest to not mess with his honey!
• randomcarbloke 2y ago
  in america yes that is a good rule of thumb >said the UK should require importers to label the country of origin on all honey, including blends It actually does require that, it must specify country of origin and whether it is a blend, if it's a blend then it contains syrup and possibly antibiotics. Buy single origin which in europe is certainly available, in the UK avoid anything that has the line "a blend of EU and non-EU honey", you should be buying UK honey anyway if you're UK-based, it is better and not blended (except where fraud has been committed as in the article).