The health benefits of real honey is staggering. Aside from spreading it on your bread and sweetening your coffee, real honey from bees going from flower to flower, gathering nectar and pollen, has many health and medical benefits.
Honey is anabolic, medicinal, antiseptic, anti-cancer, gentle on blood sugar, most liver-friendly, an ideal brain fuel, has exceptional wound care ability. (Ruth Tan, www-benefits-of-honey.com)
That is why there is a big demand for pure honey.
Notice, that I use the words True and Real and Pure.
Aside from olive oil and milk, honey is one of the most adulterated products available. Many sellers and food manufacturers are guilty of adding sugar syrup to increase the volume of what they sell. Sometimes there is hardly any honey in it, if any at all, and is made mostly of sugar syrup.
I am always on the lookout for pure honey. It is a product that is never absent in our kitchen shelf, if I can help it. I found the brand Amamio in a reputable store along Rizal boulevard. The label and good packaging attracted me. It said “Pure Raw Forest Honey” from wild bees of Mindanao. This was packed in Nasipit, Agusan del Norte. That part of Mindanao must still have lots of forest left, I thought to myself. I bought one to try. Later, I bought two more because my local honey source was out of stock.
But within a month, I noticed ad after ad coming up on Instagram and on Facebook, and also in Shopee and Lazada selling the same brand, Amamio. These ads attracted hundreds of comments and orders daily.
How can this be? Raw forest honey from wild bees generally come from Apis Dorsata, the giant Asian honeybee which cannot be cultivated.
The local name is Putyukan which, if disturbed, can sometimes be deadly, so it is difficult to harvest. Honey hunters smoke them out, and most of the time if not done carefully, will destroy the hive.
I became suspicious at the seemingly-endless supply these sellers promising “raw wild honey” are offering.
I contacted the only bee expert I know, who could analyze the honey sample I sent him. Evert Jan Robberts has been involved with Philippine bee-keeping since 1987. He has a diploma in Tropical Apiculture (Cardiff University), and is a consultant for tropical bee-keeping and pollen identification. He is also president of the Netherlands Expertise Center for Tropical Apicultureal Resources (NECTAR). He lives and manages an organic farm in Sinacaban, Misamis Occidental.
After a thorough analysis in a three page paper, Evert concluded: This product should not be marketed as honey.
To be doubly sure, Evert had the rare opportunity to send a sample to Holland for further testing.
Dr. Jacob Kerkvliet, director of the Dutch FDA before he retired, analyzed three branded samples of honey sent to him in his laboratory. He sent back a thorough report.
Honey sample #1 was Amamio honey. Pollen is present in very low quantity, suggesting that some honey may have been added. His conclusion: Based on the research conducted, it can be concluded the sample is definitely not honey.
Honey sample #2 is Green Honey from Surigao del Sur. It has a synthetic coloring for green, which was both yellow and blue.
Honey sample #3 also from the same source in Surigao del Norte, described as “raw wild black honey”, had activated charcoal as coloring.
All three are either invert sugar syrup or glucose syrup, and all three definitely cannot be called honey.
This is not about the honey sellers offering their pails of honey with bee hives in it, or those selling in Tanduay flat bottles, vending them where they can.
This is about branded products mostly sold in the e-platforms, even in Lazada or Shopee, or directly through Instagram or Facebook. These sellers even have ads informing the customer how to test for pure honey. They tout their FDA or DOST certificates which test for parameters that have little to do with the purity of the honey content.
A news article had been published: 80 % of store-bought honey impure, DoST-FNRI finds out. (Manila Bulletin, Dec.13, 2020 by Dhel Nazario).
Researchers have disclosed that the honey products contain syrups from sugar cane and corn. They contained as much as 95 percent C4 sugar syrup.
Where are the health benefits from the questionable honey being sold? Non altogether! And this fraudulent practice continues. Right before our very noses, customers continue to be fooled every day.
Sellers of honey depend on the honey hunters on the other end. This is a matter of TRUST.
The temptation to adulterate, to create a honey- looking and -tasting product to satisfy the growing demand for honey is great. Many a time, seller do not realize that their sources are just fooling them.
As in the case of Bio Dynamis in Kidapawan in Mindanao, that trusted their source until a customer had their honey tested. Biodynamis came up with a statement, and are now investigating the matter.
Some sellers though are manufacturing their own honey. Their so-called honey is too uniform — done according to a formula. The color and taste of true honey comes from the pollen of flowers in the area.
Aside from the Apis Dorsata honey bee, we have the local Leguan, the Apis Cerana which can be actually taken into captivity and nurtured in colonies.
Another is the stingless bee, the Kiwot, which is a great pollinator.
The Italian bee, Apis millefera, is the most common honey bee that can be colonized. They produce the most honey.
What can happen though is that big producers of honey worldwide feed their bees exclusively sugar which makes the bees lazy to go and collect nectar. This feeding can happen in winters or rainy days but can continue even in summer for many reasons. Sugar-fed bees will also only give you the benefits of normal sugar, instead of the benefits of true honey.
This honey issue is now in the hands of the consumer group Consumer Advocates Inc. that has contacted the Department of Trade & Industry in Negros Oriental to look into the matter, and to act accordingly.
The issue is false labelling.
As far as CAI is concerned these sugared products can continue to be offered to the public but with truth in their label, like honey-flavored sugar syrup?
These man-made syrups touted as honey, and selling for lots of money, is creating a bad image — which affects the trade of the honest honey sellers.
It also is detrimental to the health of people who may think the product is real honey.
You may have been wanting to order online for honey for Christmas. Bee very careful. Bee informed. Bee vigilant!
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Author’s email: [email protected]
