That gourmet luxury blend...
That gourmet luxury blend...
I was permanently banned from the Reddit sub without recourse for posting this despite not breaking any rules. I'm slowly making the migration over thanks to such encouragement.
269 comments
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They say on the bottle that it's a blend so I don't think this is that infuriating. Though if I saw "Texas Honey Blend" I'd assume it's cut with crude oil.
Welcome to the Fediverse!
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It’s a blend of honey and high fructose corn syrup, what in the ever living fuck is high fructose corn syrup doing in honey? Oh, making more profits by cutting it.
Death to high fructose corn syrup
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I can see it being useful if you’re making candy. Different sugars crystallize differently, so it’s not uncommon to mix corn syrup and sugar to get the right ratio.
But they’re also making “pancake syrup” that is corn syrup dyed and flavored to approximate maple syrup which is a crime against nature.
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What in the hell? You think this is ok? A honey blend implies a blend of.....wait for it..... different HONEY.
Not a blend of super cheap and super unhealthy syrup.
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It seems not to be as well known as I thought, but most commercial honey sold in the US is not actually honey:
But the honey industry is hiding a secret. There’s a high chance that your store-bought honey is fake. While fake honey usually includes some amount of real honey, it is often mixed with other corn, rice, or sugar cane syrup to reduce its cost. These fillers are far cheaper than raw honey and are used to produce more honey, quicker. In fact, up to 76% of honey sold in the US is not really honey, at least not entirely.
There were a bunch of stories about this several years ago after a minor controversy, but it didn’t stay in the news long, so I guess it fell out of public consciousness.
If you want real honey, you’ll want to buy from small, local dealers.
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If it was a bunch of different honeys they would have listed the types on the front of the bottle, I'm sure. The word "Texas" heavily implies that it's made out of something terrible.
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Maybe just me personally, but if they're gonna put "blend" on the bottle I'd be more inclined to assume it's intended as a selling point rather than a begrudging legal requirement.
Many thanks.
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If they're gonna put "blend" on the bottle I'd assume it was honey from different kinds of flowers mixed together, not honey mixed with something else!
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Plus, it says “made with real honey”. That plus it being a blend should have raised an eyebrow to investigate further.
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Only in America.
OK maybe not, but at least here it's illegal to label it honey if it isn't 100% pure honey. that goes for all of EU, where it's illegal to add sugar, according to the EU honey directive.
The result is that you buy either Honey or Syrup, you know what you get, and you get what you pay for.Edit:
Apparently it's illegal in USA too, whether adding the word "blend" makes it legal IDK. It is sort of a warning sign but still misleading.
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The result is that you buy either Honey or Syrup, you know what you get, and you get what you pay for.
You would think so, but the EU did an investigation back in 2022 and found that almost half of all honey imported into the EU is (illegally) blended with sugar syrup. If you're buying honey labeled as a blend of EU and non-EU honey (which is almost all honey available on supermarket shelves) there's a large chance you're buying a sugar blend.
Current officially sanctioned honey tests are not capable of detecting fake honey. New testing methodology has been agreed upon as a result, but it will take a few years until those are internationally recognised.
If you want to be certain that what you're buying is real honey, the only real option is to buy directly from a local producer.
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Where I am in all supermarkets I know of, honey at least used to be labeled by country of origin, usually Poland or Hungary, maybe it's not the case anymore, it's been a while since I checked.
Still there's a difference between the legality in USA of selling Honey and Sirup labeled as Honey blend, which is clearly illegal in EU. If there is any amount of sugar added, it is sirup. It can only LEGALLY be called honey if it's actually pure honey.
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You have to label the honey with the ingredients it is blended with as well in the US. So for this it would need to be "Blend of Honey and High Fructose Corn Syrup".
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You have to label the honey with the ingredients it is blended with as well in the US.
Nonono, that's a huge difference, in EU it's ILLEGAL to call it honey at all, you cannot call it honey blend either. And it's not enough to label that there is sugar added. If you add any amount of sugar it's not honey but sirup.
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It doesn’t have to be in the name, just in the ingredients list. In this case it is, so it’s perfectly above-board for the US.
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Yup we have the fun loopholes of adding something like "blend" means it can be 1% honey and it's legal. Same things with why things at our stores say "cheesy" or "chocolatey". Neither one of those need to have cheese or chocolate. It's a marketing game for them. Come up with a name that sounds like it's fun for the consumer but really is a massive loophole they can jump through.
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Yes I've often seen that clearly misleading advertising is perfectly legal in USA.
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I was permanently banned from the Reddit sub without recourse for posting this
Looks at username
You're sure it wasn't for... other reasons?
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I am very worried about these rules
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Maybe, but reddit also bans anyone who isn't a bot.
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Update: It was because I triggered bot detection for not pandering in enough comment sections.
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Do you mean... not pandering to the majority who wish you wouldn't copulate with canines?
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To be fair 3 lemmy communities have banned me exclusively for my username.
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Makes me think of this video
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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Honey is a commonly faked food. At least they label it so you can avoid it.
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At least they label it so you can avoid it.
But they call it honey blend, which implies it's a blend of honey from different sources.
This would absolutely be deemed misleading advertising here.-
In the USA, it's recommended to label it as "Honey with corn syrup" (PDF: https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/PDF---Guidance-for-Industry--Proper-Labeling-of-Honey-and-Honey-Products.pdf) but that's just a recommendation, not a law. The FDA should get stricter about this.
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I think that interpretation cuts both ways, where the 'blend' could also imply that the honey is blended with something other than honey.
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I agree. This should be called a honey sauce at best.
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But they call it honey blend
That is illegal as the must label it with what the Honey is blended with. So in this case you'd need to have it labeled "Blended Honey with Corn Syrup" or some variation of that.
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I heard about that. I wouldn't even buy beeswax from Amazon because I heard all the horror stories of even some of the highly rated products being cut with Paraffin, which gives me headaches. I could give you a list.
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And trying to get pure maple syrup and olive oil these days is also a pain, when it shouldn't be.
Maple is often blended, and olive and avacado is straight up fraud most often.
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Depending on where you live, i would recommend checking out the local farmers market in the weekends. I bought iver a gallon of local honey for about $50 last summer and i am only just starting to finish it off.
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Hmm that would be illegal in the EU and UK, where nutritional info and proportion of honey would be required.
Quite tempted to write in though. Anyone else?
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It is also required in America. The FDA requires it except for small business. Also the EU wouldn't even let this have the word "Honey" in the name at all. I'd assume that the retail business above doesn't reach the threshold of 500,000 so can request for an exemption of nutritional labeling.
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A local supermarket chain got a fine because they had "fake cheese" sold in the cheese section. It wasn't labeled as cheese, but it was under a large CHEESE banner. I think it was leftovers from cheese production just mixed up.
I'm ok with not throwing away stuff, but it tasted like sin, even for cheap industrial cheese standard.
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The Dutch consumer program recently showed that most honey in regular retail are made with a special stain of sugar syrup, made in China, that is indistinguishable from real honey using the common tests.
With more modern testing methods it can be sniffed out, but even though this product would be illegal, the same thing happens on large scale in Europe.
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You don't need nutritional info on pure honey, the standard glasses and labels from the German beekeeper's association certainly don't have that info on them, also, you'd need to test batch-wise. They analyse for maximum water and minimum enzyme levels, but not nutritional value that's basically given by the water content, a bit more or less protein or pollen doesn't change the values in a way anyone caring about macros would care about: For those intents and purposes honey is pure sugar.
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And with such an abomination, they would have to state how much honey is in there.
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This would be sold at a farmer’s market or something like that rather than in a super market. Just my guess. They may also have been breaking the rules the whole time and enforcement is lax.
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I live near by this area. I also buy honey from Kelley's regularly, but have never seen this abomination. The honey they sell around here is 100% grade a raw unfiltered. It also has nutrition information on the bottle.
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Wait, why can't you feed it to Children under one?
Some type of bacteria they're not ready to handle yet?
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Remembering bees get fed corn syrup, started reading & wow:
Honey adulteration using HFCS was especially rampant in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it was virtually impossible for regulators to determine that honey had in fact been adulterated (in some cases up to 80%) with HFCS. This practice was so epidemic that the American Beekeeping Federation developed a program of testing suspect honey samples sent in by beekeepers. This was only possible, however, through the efforts of Dr. Jonathon White, who literally came out of retirement to develop a reasonable testing procedure.
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I'm okay with the product itself existing. I mean blah blah Americans put corn syrup in everything sure, you're allowed to buy honey and you're allowed to buy corn syrup, you're allowed to mix them in your own kitchen, I'm okay with this substance being allowed on the store shelf.
"Honey Blend" strikes me as one of those FDA required weasel phrases like "processed whey product" or "beef-related substance". You don't usually see the word "blend" on a honey bear bottle, says something's up.
The ingredients are plainly listed.
The nutrition facts are not; you'd have to lick a stamp to learn them, which I hope isn't legal.
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Nutritional facts aren't as strictly controlled for small businesses/side businesses.
https://www.fdareader.com/blog/2018/12/11/exemption-from-food-labeling-requirements%EF%BB%BF
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It doesn't seem to be legal in this particular case, however IANAL and may have missed something. What is concerning is that it does seem to be legal in a whole slew of cases that have some pretty big loopholes if that is what you happen to be looking for.
https://foodlabelmaker.com/blog/labeling-regulations/food-sales-without-nutrition-facts/
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ITT:
Americans: I'm so used to being lied to about literally everything that this doesn't seem that bad.
Smh...
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I guess this is pretty American of me, but it's called "honey blend" for a reason.
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Clearly, and nothing personal here and I'm sure this honey company are good people, but my comment was more addressed at the larger societal issues of being an American (which I am) and how we're constantly lied to and how we've normalized that 100%. So that small things like this don't seem worth calling out. This particular label is not that bad, but in other countries, as others have said here, the label would be even clearer. Europeans don't have to read between the lines with phrases like, "Made with..." to know that's not the same as "100% made with ...". That's all.
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Just like American blended whiskey is a little bit of whiskey, neutral grain spirits, and caramel coloring.
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It isn't that bad.
It says "made with real honey", which is a pretty big clue that it isn't real honey.
It says "texas honey blend", again indicating that it's honey blended with something.
And, as for "gourmet" it's in a plastic bear-shaped container, it's not a luxury item.
If people want to buy stuff made from high fructose corn syrup, shouldn't they be allowed to do it? How much more obvious does it need to be that this isn't pure honey?
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You sir are on the right side of the IQ bell curve. We need packaging that people on the left side of the bell curve can understand.
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As other people said, in the EU with "honey blend" you'd expect a blend of different types of honey, as it wouldn't be allowed to be call honey unless it was pure honey. Having to decipher "made with real honey" to mean "its not real honey" is just fucking odd. Flip it over and look at the ingredients and its just a list? Why no percentages?
Gourmet stuff comes in all sorts of weird packaging and shitty stuff comes in fancy packaging, so having to assume it is corn syrup because it's in a bear shape is also weird.
No rules for food labelling is wild.
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Okay, this is the line that should not be crossed, we should evict Texas.
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*eject
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This is fine, they’re telling you what’s in the bottle. I mean I don’t agree with messing up honey with corn syrup and the fact that the bottle sort of leads you to think you’re getting just honey, but that’s par for the course in a lot of processed food packaging at least in the US.
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Yea, and no, that should be better regulated. Let's not settle for something bad just because. In France this is better regulated, but still some brands play cat and mouse, finding corner cases to circumvent the rules. Honey is subject to this very frequently too.
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I don’t disagree. I think how blatantly misleading packaging and labeling many foods are in the US is and it’s BS. From the meaninglessness of “organic” to “100% natural”, they don’t really tell the consumer what that means.
However, strictly in the context of the US and our food labeling laws, the honey in the image is ok, even if we understand it has some fuckery about it.
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You might say that Reddit is mostly just high fructose corn syrup, while Lemmy is pure, responsibly sourced honey.
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Also the murder hornets.
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This reminds me of KFC and how they switch from "Honey" to "Honey Sauce".
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On-brand for a company the wants to hide the fact that the F stands for 'fried.'
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I got a shock random permaban in one of my preferred niche subs from someone obviously having a bad day and projecting it outwardly. It made me sit up and ask why I was putting up with so much nonsense and abandoned reddit that very moment. I had been dipping my toes into Lemmy but this made me dive in head first.
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It happens here too. There are certain people. They are indecent. And they want to control the conversation.
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Yeah. The rest of us are just indecent and happy to let the conversation go whatever way it goes.
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As a beekeeper of 30 odd years, that hurts
ps welcome
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If you sell at farmer's markets, I appreciate people like you, because it's where we always buy our honey. And we have yet to regret it because it always tastes better than store bought honey. Especially if you like monofloral honey, which I do.
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What is your favourite bee?
Did you know the symbol of my city is a worker bee?
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All text in large print, but you have to write them snail mail for the nutritional information, which is required by law to be printed on the label.
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Not if the business is making under a certain amount each year. Then they can request for an exemption of the nutritional labeling.
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How old is that bottle? I looked at their website and they don't even sell this product.
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This is a good question. The answer is probably "a few years old" at the least. I went hunting for the UPC code on the back label and found this website, which indicates its last recorded scan was some time in 2021. It's likely this product is simply no longer manufactured and sold by them. Probably by virtue of a lack of demand or other considerations.
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I worked a contract job at a honey bottling plant in Mich where they would simply take 55 gallon drums of raw honey from all over the world, dump them into a giant tank, churn it up.... then bottle it. That's was it, nothing more nothing less. At one point in the past they used to add water, but they had stopped when I was installing the new mixing system (it was a patent thing). Makes me shake my head to see companies adding anything else to such a simple operation...
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I'm confused there are no packaging standards in the US. Is the first ingredient the largest? How do you know if there's no percentage given?
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There are some standards. The ingredients are listed in descending order of size (ie the first is the largest).
They can get around this in a few ways (though this isn't really relevant here), such as for example preserves having this ingredient list: blueberries, sugar, corn syrup. Even though the amount of blueberries is technically larger than both sugar and corn syrup, sugar and corn syrup (still basically sugar) can add up to much more than the amount of blueberries. By including multiple types of sugar they can sort of hide the fact that the largest ingredient is some form of sugar
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At least it's labelled. Better than China sneaking sugar syrup into the supply chain without being open about it.
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/mar/26/uk-honey-fails-authenticity-test
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I see no problem here. It's very clearly labeled.
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Times like this I'm glad I have not one but two friends who are backyard beekeepers. They are more than happy to give away the enormous amount of honey they collect each year...
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Would corn syrup stop it from becoming solid? I love honey but budget mind thinks, "buy bulk" and 1 yr later I have like half a quart left to practice my own tar experiment.
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Real honey don't crystalize.
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https://thebeekeepingguy.com/why-does-honey-crystallize-the-science-behind-it/
You are always just a quick search away from educating yourself before you post misinformation.
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I would guess the ban came from an overzealous application of the "no personal info" doxxing rule, because that pic has an address on it which is technically a company address, but there ya go, that's my guess. I was banned once for something similar.
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I was permanently banned from streaming (had thousands of followers at the time) for animal abuse after asking another streamer if they milk their goats, then I was permanently site banned for harassment after arguing with them about it. Don't give me an excuse to get started.
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Welcome to the fediverse!
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Hear hear!
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"Made with..."
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I was told a long time ago that if it says "Made with..", you should always mentally add "very little of..."
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"Based on a true story"...
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At least the ingredients are being honest. It's a massive problem around the world. They even have insanely sophisticated testing machines that are even fooled sometimes.
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I'm seeing the nutritional value thing, but I don't see what the other comments are talking about...
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It's not honey, it's high fructose corn syrup
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Technically since honey is listed first it should be at least mostly honey, as in 51% or more. But it is probably mostly corn syrup and the phrasing is intended to discourage lawsuits that would lead to anyone checking the ratio.
Which is really bad since only needing to be 51% of the thing is a pretty low bar in the first place.
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Look at that, it's a product that is entirely dependent on the idea that no one ever actually reads the label... Sadly this unscrupulous company has probably made a fortune this way
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Adulterated honey is a massive issue around the world; at least these people are being honest about it.
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"At least they shot me in the face, and not in the back of the head!"
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it had me worried for a minute: same bear, same colored label, grocery store brand so it could be from anywhere. I had to check. Nope, not Texas. Whew. (Jk, not corn syrup)
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That is absolutely revolting.
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This is just another day in america, is it not?
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Honey is 95 to 99% a solution of a roughly equal proportion of glucose and fructose with other sugars, pollen etc. making up the remainder. HFCS is a solution of ~50 to 55% fructose with the remainder glucose.
TLDR: honey is essentially HFCS with some pollen and a small amount of other sugars mixed in.
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The other things in honey is what makes the difference. Good honey is a magical thing. But it wouldn't be mixed with anything else. A marker of high quality honey is being single source and single season (similar to single malt whisky).
HFCS has uses - many. But it's not a good substitute for honey if the honey flavour is important. This product is the cheapest honey mixed together and then added to HFCS to push the price down and make the low quality honey more tolerable in taste. There's a market for it only because honey is so expensive.
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People are downvoting a simple, literal fact.
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All my honey at home is 80-85% sugar. Internet confirms this number. I'm not seeing facts here.
Secondly, the comment implies that dilution doesn't make a difference because the concentration is already low. Soda is also 20% syrup and 80% water. How do you think it'll taste if you make it 10% syrup and 90% water?
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all economy of the Empire (aka USA) is a SCAM
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Into fairy tales of old empires
People don't belive anyome
ELYSIUM, Tanks(translated)
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ITT: a bunch of stolen bee vomit fetishists. Why pay so much money for something weird, gross, and every bit as unhealthy as sugar and corn syrup? Maple syrup (while also unhealthy) tastes way better. And date sugar, whole blended dates, or molasses are healthier alternatives.
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Oh, look, it’s a walking vegan cliché. People like you are why people hate vegans. Save your anger for actual animal abuse.
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Oh look, typical carnist cliché is getting offended because someone criticized the weird shit you do.
I didn't see anyone else pointing out how bizarre it is to fetishize bee puke.
And people hate vegans because most people want to believe they're at least "pretty good people", and the very presence of a vegan challenges that belief. If you're offended, maybe it's time to look in the mirror.
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Healthy and unhealthy are composite binary terms that aren't useful. Specific, contextualized terms are more useful and allow for people to make better choices for the situation.
Maple syrup has considerable benefits as an alternative to HFCS. First, it's glycemic index is lower which results in a decrease in blood glucose levels. On top of that, it appears that it promotes insulation secretion.
Maple syrup is particularly rich in abscisic acid. This acid presents a strong defense against diabetes and metabolic syndrome because it promotes the excretion of insulin from pancreatic cells and boosts fat cells' sensitivity to insulin.
As a whole, in order to reduce ones propensity to diabetes, reduce sugar intake. Then, if further steps are needed and reduction is no longer an option, find appropriate substitutes. From the abstract:
This review presents detailed information about the nutritional, organoleptic, and pharmacological properties of maple syrup. Studies carried out on animal models and a limited number of human models emphasize the potential benefits of maple syrup as a substitute for refined sugars, indicating that it could contribute to improved metabolic health when used in moderation. However, further medical and nutritional health studies based on human health assessments are needed to better understand the mechanisms of action of the various components of maple syrup and its potential therapeutic properties to demonstrate a stronger justification for its consumption relative to refined sugars. In addition, we compare maple syrup and common sweeteners to provide a further critical perspective on the potential nutritional and health benefits of maple syrup.
And the final sentence:
More studies are needed to better understand how much maple syrup could be ingested, as part of a regular diet, to promote these pharmacological properties without triggering obesity or weight-related disorders.
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I could get into the complexities of when and where maple syrup may be more or less harmful, but that's a bit of effort for a nested lemmy thread that's been downvoted so far as to not matter. Point is, in the context of western industrialized societies, the majority of people would see benefits from abstaining from refined sources of sweeteners, including maple. There might be some unique compounds in it, but when you look at the percentages of what's in the stuff, it's basically 98% just sugar.
Also I would suggest reading Marion Nestle's, Food Politics. It gives an inside view of the corruption in nutrition science. One of the things she said that stuck with me was when she said that she gets suspicious any time anyone is doing studies on a single food item.
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The notion that you can steal from bees is unhinged lmao
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What's unhinged is people who think they have the right to confine, torture, exploit, rape, murder, and devour the flesh and/or secretions of other animals just because they're different.
Yeah I get that bugs are easy to dismiss because they're tiny, often obnoxious and treated like a nuisance, and less intelligent than other animals. But we're still talking about living beings who have their own subjective experience of life, individuality, and their own agenda. Like all animals they came into this life with us, not for us.
Commodifying living beings is unhinged. And even ignoring the moral side of things, having a preference for bee vomit is unhinged.
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269 comments