VOILA boutique

rosh hashanah

continued from page 20

European Women's Clothing

A Way of Life

395 Hamilton Row
Birmingham
248.385.1313

Tuesday to Saturday
10.30 - 5.30 pm

Honey, Don’t
Be Fooled

www.voiladesigns.biz

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22

September 21 • 2017

jn

N

ot everything sold in a
honey jar is honey. Real
honey has pollen, which
the bees collected from flowers
in the neighborhood of their hive.
Plenty of stores sell something that
looks like honey.
If the sample has no pollen at
all, it has been ultrafiltered or it
might not even contain honey at
all. It might, for example, consist of
corn syrup with a dash of flavor-
ing. In the United States, the Food
and Drug Administration maintains
that any ultrafiltered product can
no longer be considered honey; but
the FDA does not inspect honey.
Who protects the consumer? The
German research company Intertek,
smaller concerns in other countries
and laboratories in universities
around the world employ sophis-
ticated chemists to authenticate
samples of honey and identify the
cheats.
But millions of dollars in profit
tempt producers to keep cheating.
Honey costs more than corn syrup.
China, Vietnam and India produce
ultrafiltered, often adulterated,
sometimes contaminated, honey for
wholesale prices approaching 30
cents a pound. The United States

imposes a high tariff on these
products, but smugglers find ways
to avoid tariffs.
Think spy novels: My informant,
a local chemist who inspects honey
professionally, asked me not to
use his name or mention where he
works.
The bad news: A publication
called Food Safety News in 2011
asked a Texas A&M University
chemist, Vaughn Bryant, to check
samples of honey purchased at 60
stores. He found that 76 percent
of the samples had no pollen. No
“honey” from drugstores had pol-
len; so, too, no “honey” in single-
service packages. Three quarters of
the honey from supermarkets and
chain stores had no pollen.
My informant says people went
to jail for the fraud uncovered in
2011, but the fraud continues. He
confirms that “honey is the third
most faked commodity in the
world.”
The good news: Honey pur-
chased at health-food stores, from
small producers or from local farm
stands all turned out to be the real
thing. Do your shopping at those
sources. •

