I was permanently banned from the Reddit sub without recourse for posting this despite not breaking any rules. I’m slowly making the migration over thanks to such encouragement.
You must log in or register to comment.
How old is that bottle? I looked at their website and they don’t even sell this product.
This is a good question. The answer is probably “a few years old” at the least. I went hunting for the UPC code on the back label and found this website, which indicates its last recorded scan was some time in 2021. It’s likely this product is simply no longer manufactured and sold by them. Probably by virtue of a lack of demand or other considerations.
They say on the bottle that it’s a blend so I don’t think this is that infuriating. Though if I saw “Texas Honey Blend” I’d assume it’s cut with crude oil.
Welcome to the Fediverse!
What in the hell? You think this is ok? A honey blend implies a blend of…wait for it… different HONEY.
Not a blend of super cheap and super unhealthy syrup.
It seems not to be as well known as I thought, but most commercial honey sold in the US is not actually honey:
But the honey industry is hiding a secret. There’s a high chance that your store-bought honey is fake. While fake honey usually includes some amount of real honey, it is often mixed with other corn, rice, or sugar cane syrup to reduce its cost. These fillers are far cheaper than raw honey and are used to produce more honey, quicker. In fact, up to 76% of honey sold in the US is not really honey, at least not entirely.
There were a bunch of stories about this several years ago after a minor controversy, but it didn’t stay in the news long, so I guess it fell out of public consciousness.
If you want real honey, you’ll want to buy from small, local dealers.
If it was a bunch of different honeys they would have listed the types on the front of the bottle, I’m sure. The word “Texas” heavily implies that it’s made out of something terrible.
I have news for you if you think there is a health difference between a teaspoon of corn syrup and a teaspoon of honey. They are both packed full of sugar
You are being downvoted but HFCS and honey are almost exactly chemically identical. They have to inspect honey farms to make sure it comes from bees since looking at the final product you can’t tell the difference.
Yeah they are both concentrated sugar extracts. Just because one is made by bees doesn’t make it suddenly not a heaping tablespoon of sugar you’ve just ingested. I eat plenty of honey and molasses but I don’t lie to myself and claim that they are any healthier than corn syrup or simple syrup. They are all just super concentrated fructose and glucose solutions.
I thought the “benefits” to honey were kinda more for kids >1 so they can be exposed to different types of pollen. I dunno if it actually helps with immunity to allergies in the same way, but iirc it’s similar with peanuts. Kids exposed to them young are much less likely to develop allergies to them
That makes sense at first glance, but it’s not true when you think about it for a bit. People have allergic reactto grasses and trees that broadcast spawn their pollen all over the place. Bees collect nectar from flowering plants and spread pollen around that way. Plants only choose one over the other since they are both very resource intensive mating strategies. No one is allergic to lillac, but plenty of people are allergic to ragweed.
I liked when the US National Honey Board funded a study that compared honey, cane sugar, and HFCS and found they’re all about the same (and all raised a key blood fat, a marker for heart disease).
Of course, the truth is that sugar’s sugar and you should have limited amounts of it, but when it’s as cheap as HFCS is in the States, they can stick it in everything.
There is a health difference though https://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/the-sweet-science-behind-honey.html
Trace amounts of proteins and antioxidants, but it’s still an added sugar.
But honey is natural, corn syrup has chemicals in it!
I prefer honey cause I’m no goddamn liberal hippie, so it’s important to me that animals were killed for my food.
It’s a blend of honey and high fructose corn syrup, what in the ever living fuck is high fructose corn syrup doing in honey? Oh, making more profits by cutting it.
Death to high fructose corn syrup
Hot take, but it’s not a bad technology. It’s just heavily overused because US farm subsidies.
Eh, too much fructose and your body stops processing it. Fructose doesn’t actually trigger your body to use it, and if you don’t have enough other sugars present, it causes problems. Not an issue in moderation, but high-fructose syrup is used in so many things that it’s a real concern.
TIL. It sounds like there’s some debate about the severity of that, from what I can see, but it is a thing.
Yeah, just about any diet will have enough other carbs to work, but if all you eat is white bread and pepsi, that will be another issue with your diet.
I can see it being useful if you’re making candy. Different sugars crystallize differently, so it’s not uncommon to mix corn syrup and sugar to get the right ratio.
But they’re also making “pancake syrup” that is corn syrup dyed and flavored to approximate maple syrup which is a crime against nature.
If you’re mixing things up in the kitchen, typically you try to be somewhat precise with ratios.
The difference in this case being that because the actual ratio of the blend is unknown, you don’t actually know how it would crystallize. Technically they could even change up the ratio week to week based on the price of high-fructose corn syrup so you wouldn’t even get consistency from it.
I can see it being useful if you’re making candy. Different sugars crystallize differently, so it’s not uncommon to mix corn syrup and sugar to get the right ratio.
Nobody making candy would every use this pre-blended product; they’d want to combine the two different sugars themselves so they could control the ratio.
Yeah, I was commenting on the notion of mixing honey with corn syrup generally, not this shit.
Though I’m sure there’s a bunch of old ladies in Texas who have recipes on old, yellowed card stock that call for this.
Even brands like log cabin who claim to use “no high fructose corn syrup” are just corn syrup and sugar. There are people who go their entire lives eating pancake syrup and table syrup on their pancakes, and die never having tasted actual maple syrup.
Isn’t that what the cheap syrup has always been? IHOP basically built their whole company on it.
Maybe just me personally, but if they’re gonna put “blend” on the bottle I’d be more inclined to assume it’s intended as a selling point rather than a begrudging legal requirement.
Many thanks.
If they’re gonna put “blend” on the bottle I’d assume it was honey from different kinds of flowers mixed together, not honey mixed with something else!
Plus, it says “made with real honey”. That plus it being a blend should have raised an eyebrow to investigate further.
I would guess the ban came from an overzealous application of the “no personal info” doxxing rule, because that pic has an address on it which is technically a company address, but there ya go, that’s my guess. I was banned once for something similar.
I was permanently banned from streaming (had thousands of followers at the time) for animal abuse after asking another streamer if they milk their goats, then I was permanently site banned for harassment after arguing with them about it. Don’t give me an excuse to get started.
Name checks out.
Yeah with a name like that they’re going to be judged more harshly.
Once I noticed the name I blocked them. Something is wrong with them to think a name like that is okay, and I don’t care to find out what that is.
Have you tried Owncast for self-hosted FOSS fediverse streaming? You literally can’t get banned on it because you host your own stream, same with self-hosting a lemmy instance. Like, other streaming instances can defederate from you, but you can never be banned off your own stream.
Okay, this is the line that should not be crossed, we should evict Texas.
*eject
deleted by creator
Remembering bees get fed corn syrup, started reading & wow:
Honey adulteration using HFCS was especially rampant in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it was virtually impossible for regulators to determine that honey had in fact been adulterated (in some cases up to 80%) with HFCS. This practice was so epidemic that the American Beekeeping Federation developed a program of testing suspect honey samples sent in by beekeepers. This was only possible, however, through the efforts of Dr. Jonathon White, who literally came out of retirement to develop a reasonable testing procedure.
all economy of the Empire (aka USA) is a SCAM
Into fairy tales of old empires
People don’t belive anyome
- ELYSIUM, Tanks(translated)
Only in America.
OK maybe not, but at least here it’s illegal to label it honey if it isn’t 100% pure honey. that goes for all of EU, where it’s illegal to add sugar, according to the EU honey directive.
The result is that you buy either Honey or Syrup, you know what you get, and you get what you pay for.Edit:
Apparently it’s illegal in USA too, whether adding the word “blend” makes it legal IDK. It is sort of a warning sign but still misleading.
The result is that you buy either Honey or Syrup, you know what you get, and you get what you pay for.
You would think so, but the EU did an investigation back in 2022 and found that almost half of all honey imported into the EU is (illegally) blended with sugar syrup. If you’re buying honey labeled as a blend of EU and non-EU honey (which is almost all honey available on supermarket shelves) there’s a large chance you’re buying a sugar blend.
Current officially sanctioned honey tests are not capable of detecting fake honey. New testing methodology has been agreed upon as a result, but it will take a few years until those are internationally recognised.
If you want to be certain that what you’re buying is real honey, the only real option is to buy directly from a local producer.
Where I am in all supermarkets I know of, honey at least used to be labeled by country of origin, usually Poland or Hungary, maybe it’s not the case anymore, it’s been a while since I checked.
Still there’s a difference between the legality in USA of selling Honey and Sirup labeled as Honey blend, which is clearly illegal in EU. If there is any amount of sugar added, it is sirup. It can only LEGALLY be called honey if it’s actually pure honey.
You have to label the honey with the ingredients it is blended with as well in the US. So for this it would need to be “Blend of Honey and High Fructose Corn Syrup”.
It doesn’t have to be in the name, just in the ingredients list. In this case it is, so it’s perfectly above-board for the US.
You have to label the honey with the ingredients it is blended with as well in the US.
Nonono, that’s a huge difference, in EU it’s ILLEGAL to call it honey at all, you cannot call it honey blend either. And it’s not enough to label that there is sugar added. If you add any amount of sugar it’s not honey but sirup.
Good for y’all.
This reminds me of the dumbness of the Germans I know calling bread “toast” even though toast has to be toasted and white toastie bread has enough sugar to be a cake per eu regulations but it’s not toast because it’s not been toasted.
Shh mate you’re going to ruin the Euro circlejerk.
I doubt the Europeans will abandon their circlejerk that easily.
I just got done watching a video called European Circlejerk on xvideos.
Yup we have the fun loopholes of adding something like “blend” means it can be 1% honey and it’s legal. Same things with why things at our stores say “cheesy” or “chocolatey”. Neither one of those need to have cheese or chocolate. It’s a marketing game for them. Come up with a name that sounds like it’s fun for the consumer but really is a massive loophole they can jump through.
Yes I’ve often seen that clearly misleading advertising is perfectly legal in USA.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Ugh, Kraft singles (individually wrapped pieces of “cheese”) are labeled something like “dairy product” because they use vegetable oil.
And make sure you’re buying “ice cream” and not “frozen dairy product”. Ice Cream has a minimum cream/milk requirement that some brands fall below. Might as well call it “ice milk, etc.”.
Or “iced dessert”. <25% milkfat is the line, I think.
That just reminded me that there’s something in the store here in the US sold as Chicken Wyngz, because they don’t contain any chicken wing meat.
Adulterated honey is a massive issue around the world; at least these people are being honest about it.
“At least they shot me in the face, and not in the back of the head!”
All text in large print, but you have to write them snail mail for the nutritional information, which is required by law to be printed on the label.
Not if the business is making under a certain amount each year. Then they can request for an exemption of the nutritional labeling.
Honey is a commonly faked food. At least they label it so you can avoid it.
At least they label it so you can avoid it.
But they call it honey blend, which implies it’s a blend of honey from different sources.
This would absolutely be deemed misleading advertising here.I agree. This should be called a honey sauce at best.
I think that interpretation cuts both ways, where the ‘blend’ could also imply that the honey is blended with something other than honey.
Pretty much the same thing as the “juice cocktails” they have in the juice isle that are fruit juice and sugar water. “Made with real fruit juice!” (like ten percent).
I always squint at meat products that claim something like “made with 100% real chicken.” Yeah okay, there is chicken in there, but how much of the food consists of that 100% real chicken?
Yeah, apparently the chicken in there is a hundred percent real, even if only two percent of the product is chicken.
I’ve been buying fruit juice recently after staying away from all that sugar for a lot of years, and I’m sad to find out that most fruit juice in my grocery is corn syrup. Even with being willing to pay more, it can be difficult to find sweetened with fruit juice or even sugar
At least in Denmark it’s illegal to use the word ‘juice’ if there’s any sugar water in it. If I see a juice on the self I can be certain it is 100% juice (maybe made from concentrate but that must be written somewhere). If it’s not then it is “nektar”
Yeah, have to stay away from the “cocktails” and stick with 100% juice. On the other hand, even most of those have a lot of apple, pear, and grape juice added, which are all very, very sweet. There’s more sugar in apple juice than in soda, it’s just the kind of sugar that’s different.
For me, I have a weight problem so sugar is sugar: I don’t need empty calories. However my kid does not, so I care what kind of sugar he gets his calories from
Understandable, though I’m not sure there’s any agreement that fructose is healthier than sucrose.
How bout thems glass bottles that’re straight juice? Often organic, and expensive. Can dilute with water and put on ice… and sweeten yourself if needed.
I’ve gotten those a few times as well. Very expensive. I’m willing to pay more but those are a lot more. It doesn’t help the they seem to want to outdo each other on how “different” the juice can be. Some of the combination are truly awful (but they’re all “superfoods”, why shouldn’t we put them together?)
Needs more this
But they call it honey blend
That is illegal as the must label it with what the Honey is blended with. So in this case you’d need to have it labeled “Blended Honey with Corn Syrup” or some variation of that.
I’m not a lawyer, but it looks like you are wrong:
4: If a food consists of honey and a sweetener, such as sugar or corn syrup, can I label the food as only “honey”?
No. A product consisting of honey and a sweetener cannot be labeled with the common or usual name “honey” because “[t]he common or usual name of a food . . . shall accurately identify or describe . . . the basic nature of the food or its characterizing properties or ingredients” (21 CFR 102.5(a)). Identifying a blend or a mixture of honey and another sweetener only as “honey” does not properly identify the basic nature of the food. You must sufficiently describe the name of the food on the label to distinguish it from simply “honey” (21 CFR 102.5(a)).However they are only exempt from the declaration if it’s pure honey, so the part about not having that is clearly against the guidelines. The header on page 1 says: “Contains Nonbinding Recommendations” So it’s very fuzzy to a layman like me.
In the USA, it’s recommended to label it as “Honey with corn syrup” (PDF: https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/PDF---Guidance-for-Industry--Proper-Labeling-of-Honey-and-Honey-Products.pdf) but that’s just a recommendation, not a law. The FDA should get stricter about this.
The FDA should get a hell of a lot stricter in general, but decades of political fuckery has made it simultaneously rife with corruption, permanently understaffed and critically underfunded.
The FDA is pretty much in exactly the condition that Republicans want for all regulatory agencies.
It sucks in the US where misleading labeling gets a free pass for being technically corrent if you squint hard enough is not considered misleading.
If they were Really Smart™ they would just lable it as a dietary supplement, then all regulation goes out the window and it’s a free-for-all!
deleted by creator
I heard about that. I wouldn’t even buy beeswax from Amazon because I heard all the horror stories of even some of the highly rated products being cut with Paraffin, which gives me headaches. I could give you a list.
Depending on where you live, i would recommend checking out the local farmers market in the weekends. I bought iver a gallon of local honey for about $50 last summer and i am only just starting to finish it off.
And trying to get pure maple syrup and olive oil these days is also a pain, when it shouldn’t be.
Maple is often blended, and olive and avacado is straight up fraud most often.
That is absolutely revolting.
it had me worried for a minute: same bear, same colored label, grocery store brand so it could be from anywhere. I had to check. Nope, not Texas. Whew. (Jk, not corn syrup)
Report them to… I think it’s the FDA that oversees food labels?
They’re violating federal regulations.
As if that is something someone in Texas cares about these days.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
You know what they say about people who live in glass houses, right?
They’re exhibitionists.
Honey is 95 to 99% a solution of a roughly equal proportion of glucose and fructose with other sugars, pollen etc. making up the remainder. HFCS is a solution of ~50 to 55% fructose with the remainder glucose.
TLDR: honey is essentially HFCS with some pollen and a small amount of other sugars mixed in.
People are downvoting a simple, literal fact.
All my honey at home is 80-85% sugar. Internet confirms this number. I’m not seeing facts here.
Secondly, the comment implies that dilution doesn’t make a difference because the concentration is already low. Soda is also 20% syrup and 80% water. How do you think it’ll taste if you make it 10% syrup and 90% water?
I’ll give you that they didn’t get the numbers perfectly correct with the 95-99% thing, but I don’t think the accurate numbers change the point they were making – if anything, it’s a stronger comparison. According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey#Nutrition), honey is 82% sugar and 17% water. HFCS is 24% water (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup#Composition_and_varieties), which makes it 76% sugar.
When I say facts, what I’m referring to is that honey is basically straight high-fructose sugar, in the same way that high-fructose corn syrup is. Wikipedia: “The average ratio was 56% fructose to 44% glucose”. The HFCS that people freak out about in most food is 42% or 55% fructose. So these are very comparable sources of carbohydrates, which is one of the reasons it’s so easy to fake honey with corn syrup.
I’m not making a value judgement here, and I didn’t see one in the GP post that was heavily downvoted. Just pointing out that honey has a very similar composition as HFCS, do with it as you will.
As a bonus, my favorite use for honey is to make honey mustard dipping sauce for chicken tendies. Here’s my not-so-secret recipe: Gulden’s spicy brown mustard, honey, and mayonnaise. (adjust the ratio to your taste) And if you haven’t tried Mike’s Hot Honey, I say seek some out. You can use it in the honey mustard sauce, but I like to make myself a little yogurt, granola, and fruit parfait for breakfast and drizzle hot honey on it.
I was not saying that it was 95 to 99% of honey is glucose and fructose. I was saying that 95 to 99% of the solutes in that solution are glucose and fructose.
The other things in honey is what makes the difference. Good honey is a magical thing. But it wouldn’t be mixed with anything else. A marker of high quality honey is being single source and single season (similar to single malt whisky).
HFCS has uses - many. But it’s not a good substitute for honey if the honey flavour is important. This product is the cheapest honey mixed together and then added to HFCS to push the price down and make the low quality honey more tolerable in taste. There’s a market for it only because honey is so expensive.
