Today we live on a world where you never seem to know for sure who to believe. Our food is no exception. Labels abound with wording that leads you to believe certain things, but are you being mislead? A recent revelation at our house demonstrates the extent to which this is a problem.
Honey.. one of the simplest foods in the market, right? There are really only two choices.. raw or not. Simple, direct, believable. Raw honey means it has not been heated enough to alter it or kill the enzymes and nutrition... not raw means it has been heated enough to kill everything and render it a simple sweetener with no other food value.
But wait....
Our family relies a lot on honey. We as a family use no sugar at all, shying away form even foods that have sugar as a content. this is a huge commitment as you can imagine, as sugar exists in virtually every food in the supermarket today. We see huge advantages to this lifestyle and diet choice, but hat is subject of a separate blog post. For now let me simply assure you that being totally sugar free is a huge issue for our family.
What does this have to do with honey? Well, have you ever seen a honey jar list sugar as an ingredient? Probably not. Therefore it is safe to assume that honey is just .. well.. honey.. without sugar? unfortunately .. NOT TRUE.
We recently realized that the "raw natural honey" we have been buying in the store is not natural, nor true 100% honey. Why? Commercial honey producers routinely follow a process whereby they steal all of the honey from a hive, and feed with liquid or powdered sugar to keep the bees alive until they can make more honey. This is done, as most agriculture mistakes, in the seeking of higher profits. Unfortunately is has a severe side effect.... Some of the sugar ends up in the honey. Think about it.. honey is made from nectar and pollen that is collected by the bees, mixed and "fermented" in sealed blocks within the honeycomb. Feeding sugar instead of pollen or nectar means the honey produced is going to contain traces of sugar, which has been verified to be the case.
Another negative aspect is this.. sugar is by no means as complex a food as honey, so when you feed sugar for extended periods to bees you necessarily weaken them through bad nutrition. Imaging a child eating ice cream 3 times a day.. will they be healthy? Since honey is a created food from collected and ingested food sources.. doesn't it make sense that the health of the bees and nutritional value of the honey also depend on the fundamental food source?
Personally I as appalled when we realized that even a local brand, labelled as "raw and natural" honey was nothing of the sort. The beekeeper routinely feeds sugar after stealing all the honey to increase his personal profits. So.. in my own understanding that means that he has chosen to take higher profits at my family's health risk, but practices that he is hiding behind nice words on labels. "natural" obviousness does not mean to him "as in nature" because in nature bees never eat sugar. We personally find this unacceptable, and will no longer buy honey in the store.
It is sad to realize that what we assume to be the case in food is not, once again. This is one of the motivating factors to our operation of little sprouts farm in a completely open environment. we encourage everyone to KNOW OUR FARMER.. your food producer, personally. Dont trust what a marketing person puts on the label.. talk to the guy that produces it. Ask him every question about how it is produces, what justifies his calling a food "natural". If all consumers would hold the people behind hte labels accountable, labels would have meaning, or at least be unnecessary. .
Honey.. one of the simplest foods in the market, right? There are really only two choices.. raw or not. Simple, direct, believable. Raw honey means it has not been heated enough to alter it or kill the enzymes and nutrition... not raw means it has been heated enough to kill everything and render it a simple sweetener with no other food value.
But wait....
Our family relies a lot on honey. We as a family use no sugar at all, shying away form even foods that have sugar as a content. this is a huge commitment as you can imagine, as sugar exists in virtually every food in the supermarket today. We see huge advantages to this lifestyle and diet choice, but hat is subject of a separate blog post. For now let me simply assure you that being totally sugar free is a huge issue for our family.
What does this have to do with honey? Well, have you ever seen a honey jar list sugar as an ingredient? Probably not. Therefore it is safe to assume that honey is just .. well.. honey.. without sugar? unfortunately .. NOT TRUE.
We recently realized that the "raw natural honey" we have been buying in the store is not natural, nor true 100% honey. Why? Commercial honey producers routinely follow a process whereby they steal all of the honey from a hive, and feed with liquid or powdered sugar to keep the bees alive until they can make more honey. This is done, as most agriculture mistakes, in the seeking of higher profits. Unfortunately is has a severe side effect.... Some of the sugar ends up in the honey. Think about it.. honey is made from nectar and pollen that is collected by the bees, mixed and "fermented" in sealed blocks within the honeycomb. Feeding sugar instead of pollen or nectar means the honey produced is going to contain traces of sugar, which has been verified to be the case.
Another negative aspect is this.. sugar is by no means as complex a food as honey, so when you feed sugar for extended periods to bees you necessarily weaken them through bad nutrition. Imaging a child eating ice cream 3 times a day.. will they be healthy? Since honey is a created food from collected and ingested food sources.. doesn't it make sense that the health of the bees and nutritional value of the honey also depend on the fundamental food source?
Personally I as appalled when we realized that even a local brand, labelled as "raw and natural" honey was nothing of the sort. The beekeeper routinely feeds sugar after stealing all the honey to increase his personal profits. So.. in my own understanding that means that he has chosen to take higher profits at my family's health risk, but practices that he is hiding behind nice words on labels. "natural" obviousness does not mean to him "as in nature" because in nature bees never eat sugar. We personally find this unacceptable, and will no longer buy honey in the store.
It is sad to realize that what we assume to be the case in food is not, once again. This is one of the motivating factors to our operation of little sprouts farm in a completely open environment. we encourage everyone to KNOW OUR FARMER.. your food producer, personally. Dont trust what a marketing person puts on the label.. talk to the guy that produces it. Ask him every question about how it is produces, what justifies his calling a food "natural". If all consumers would hold the people behind hte labels accountable, labels would have meaning, or at least be unnecessary. .
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