Today’s mass produced honey is often void of real pollen, according to an investigation by Food Safety News. The World Health Organization and honey manufacturing experts agree that honey should contain true microscopic particles of pollen to be considered real.

To put it simply: Honey void of pollen is an artificial, nutrition-void, watered-down scam.

Mass produced honey derived from ultra filtering technique

Most mass produced honey nowadays use a honey making technique derived from the Chinese, who, for years, have illegally dumped tons of their honey in the US market. This technique makes use of an ultra filtering procedure that heats honey to high temperatures, forcing the natural substance at high pressure through extremely small filters to remove pollen.

Food Safety News began an investigation into several outlets that sold foreign honey, after hearing about the proliferation of “fake honey” in supermarket shelves. They purchased 60 different containers of honey from 10 different states. They then sent the honey samples to Vaughn Bryant, a premier melissopalynologist (an expert on pollen) and professor at Texas A&M University. His findings showed, on average:

• 100 percent of Winnie the Pooh sold in Walmart stores had all pollen removed.
• 100 percent of honey from individual packets from KFC and McDonald’s had all pollen removed.
• 77 percent of honey from big box stores like Costco, Sam’s Club, and Target had no traced of pollen.
• 100 percent of honey from drugstores like Walgreen’s and CVS Pharmacy had all the pollen filtered out.
• He did find out, however, that honey purchased from co-ops, farmers markets and stores like Trader Joe’s contained the full amount of original pollen.

Ultra infiltration process deprives honey of nutritional value

Removing pollen from honey makes no sense at all, according to Mark Jensen, president of the American Honey Producers Association. “I don’t know of any US producer that would want to do that. Elimination of all pollen can only be achieved by ultra-filtering and this filtration process does nothing but cost money and diminish the quality of the honey,” he added.

Jensen further claimed that pollen-void honey is most likely Chinese honey that has entered the country illegally.

Richard Adee, who produces 7 million pounds of honey each year from multiple states, said, “It’s no secret to anyone in the business that the only reason all the pollen is filtered out is to hide where it initially came from and the fact is that in almost all cases, that is China.”

According to Adee, real honey is valued by consumers for its flavor and nutritional value — something that’s definitely lost during the ultra filtration process.

Much of the honey sold in the US is imported from Asian countries. Two hundred and eight million pounds of honey have been imported over the past 18 months, and 60 percent of that comes from Asian countries that typically launder honey illegally for China.

Some US manufacturers have even discovered, through independent testing, that most Asian honey is watered down with high-fructose corn syrup and a variety of chemical sweeteners and antibiotics.

Given the above findings, it thus becomes of utmost importance for us to seek out local, trustworthy suppliers who keep honey’s nutritional form pure and free from harmful ingredients. After all, it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

Source used:

NaturalNews.com

FoodSafetyNews.com

Science.NaturalNews.com