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Not all honey is created equal: do you know what’s in YOUR honey?

Organic Rainforest Honey
Organic Rainforest Honey

Do you know what’s in YOUR jar of honey that’s in your pantry?

Chances are, you just went to the store and purchased whatever honey was on the shelf and brought it home, without bothering to worry about what is actually in that cute plastic bear squeeze bottle.

And since honey is one food that doesn’t spoil, chances are that you’ve had that same jar of honey for a few years — and doesn’t it look just as crystal clear now as it did when you first purchased it?

Well, you can thank the honey bottlers for that.

Because it ends up that not all honey is what its advertised to be, because the bottlers believe that honey consumers want that clear, unadulterated look in their honey jar.  But in order to get that look, honey bottlers are PROCESSING HONEY THROUGH ULTRA-FILTERS TO REMOVE CONTAMINENTS… including pollen.

And why is pollen important?  Because that’s where you can tell where the honey that you’re eating came from.  Without the pollen, that honey could have come from practically anywhere, including places that the FDA or the World Health Organization have deemed not appropriate for being sold.  For example, some Chinese honey contains illegal antibiotics.

According to the researchers, some of the brands or store-brand honeys that did not contain that trackable pollen include:

  • Archer Farms Orange Blossom Honey
  • Busy Bee Pure Clover Honey
  • CVS Honey
  • HT Traders Tupelo Honey
  • Kroger Pure Clover Honey
  • Winnie the Pooh Pure Clover
  • …and the list goes on

All in all, 76% of the samples from grocery stores tested didn’t contain any pollen, and 100% of those honeys from drugstores didn’t either.  You know those small honey packets from McDonald’s or other restaurants?  No pollen.

They did find that honey from farmers markets, natural stores, and Trader Joes all contained the expected pollen.   They said that to increase your chances of getting honey that contains pollen, you should buy organic.  Of the organic honeys tested, 71% contained pollen.

Aside from being able to track where the honey came from, some consumers view ingesting honey with pollen in it as a way to avoid or minimize allergies, while food snobs like to know exactly what it is they’re eating, believing that honey is one of the most natural foods available – if its kept in its pure form, that is.

So it should come as no surprise that some states (Florida, California, others) have adopted more stringent honey labelling guidelines.

As a consumer, you expect that what’s in the jar is what the label says.  And if you’re buying “honey”, you should be getting exactly that – pollen and all.