Sweet Deceit

According to testing done for Food Safety News, more than three quarters of the honey sold in grocery stores across the United States isn't what the bees produce. The results show that, more often than not, the pollen has been filtered out of products labeled "honey." The removal of these microscopic particles from deep within a flower would make the nectar fail the quality standards set by most of the world's food safety agencies.

The food safety divisions of the World Health Organization, the European Commission and dozens of others have ruled that without pollen there is no way to determine whether the honey came from a safe source. The FDA says any product that's been ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen is not honey. But the FDA isn't checking honey sold in the U.S. to see if it contains pollen.

Ultra filtering is a high-tech procedure where honey is heated, watered down and then forced at high pressure through very small filters to remove pollen, which is the only foolproof sign identifying the source of the honey. It is a spin-off of a technique developed by the Chinese, who have been illegally dumping tons of their honey (some containing illegal antibiotics) on the U.S. market for years.

Food Safety News purchased more than 60 containers of honey in 10 states and the District of Columbia. The contents were then analyzed for pollen.

The findings were as follows:

•76 percent of honey samples from grocery stores had all the pollen removed. These were stores like Safeway, Kroger, A&P, and Stop & Shop.

•100 percent of the honey sampled from drugstores like Walgreens, Rite-Aid and CVS Pharmacy had no pollen.

•77 percent of the honey sampled from big box stores like Costco, Sam's Club, Walmart, and Target contained no pollen.

•100 percent of the honey packaged in the small individual service portions from Smucker's, McDonald's and KFC had no pollen.

•100 percent of the samples from farmers markets, co-ops and "natural" stores like PCC and Trader Joe's had the full amount of pollen.

Most people never stop to think about where their honey comes from and what it contains. But in our modern age of bigger and cheaper, it's more crucial than ever to examine our food sources. It might cost a few more dollars, but that jar of raw organic honey is actually honey that contains pollen, not an ultra-filtered pollen-less antibiotic-full substance from China that's being packaged in a cute little plastic bear and labeled as "honey."