I pretty much agree. We’re not huge eaters of honey, but we do keep it on hand for baking and occasional eating on toast, etc… I just cut to the chase and get local honey from our farmer’s market for those purposes. If it’s for a recipe that calls for a lot, I typically buy larger national brands and don’t worry about it, as it’s typically not carrying the flavor torch so to speak, and it doesn’t matter if it is adulterated or not.
Beyond that, we do tend to go through more sorghum syrup/molasses and cane syrup, and we got some “ribbon cane table syrup” last summer in Mississippi after having had it at a restaurant where we had it with biscuits. It was heavenly, and it turns out it’s partially corn syrup. Do I care? Not at all. It’s entirely possible that straight ribbon cane syrup is too strong and diluting it with corn syrup makes it just right. It may be cost cutting, but it may be a more practical consideration.
I feel like labeling is important when there’s a lot of confusion about what is/isn’t a specific product, but it can be used to cram things into defined boxes and stifle creativity. Look at the liquor labeling laws- they’re very specific, and unfortunately if people stray from them creatively, they get the same sort of labeling that cheaper products have traditionally gotten, which is unfortunate because that labeling isn’t intended to connote a cheaper or substandard product, but it’s become that over time. Another example is jams, fruit butters, preserves, and jellies. There are very specific labeling laws for them - certain percentages of sugar, fruit, etc… are required to be labeled as those specific products. Everything else gets labeled as “fruit spread”, from 100% fruit products all the way to ones that are predominantly pectin and sugar, with just enough fruit and fruit flavorings to make it taste vaguely like the fruit. But some of the very best products are labeled as “spread”, even though they’re very high quality products.
I guess it’s “caveat emptor” ultimately, but I feel like overly strict labeling tends to be more problematic than not.
If you can’t tell the difference, why worry? (Notwithstanding toxic or inedible fillers like tree sap or motor oil, of course.)
I’m not a huge honey fan (though I think I could tell the difference between real and fake), but the same issue exists with maple syrup, which I am a huge fan of.
The difference between the real and the fake stuff is night and day. I still buy Mrs. Buttersworth for my kids, because they prefer it. If it wasn’t clearly and obviously inferior to real maple, I’d use it exclusively, because it’s much cheaper.
My parenthetical addressed that, obliquely I admit. And I missed the “ethical stand” issue.
My point is that these suggested tricks presume that the substances are indistinguishable without such testing. In my experience that’s unlikely to be the case.
If people could make artificial honey that is indistinguishable from the real thing, for much cheaper, the grocery stores would be full of it, and real honey would be an expensive top shelf specialty item, if they sold it at the grocery store at all. Just like maple syrup, in reality.
And for that matter, there’s enough variation in real honey that you might well have a “fake” honey that’s closer to some real honey than some other real honey is.
There laws about putting proper labels products being sold in stores. Now the honey may be imported or local and the label will probably not note which it is.
A few years ago there was an expose about most of the honey imported from China being fake.
That article also suggests that it’s really hard to reliably test for “real honey”, so I am pretty sure you can’t do it at home.
I enjoy trying a variety of honeys, but don’t actually eat that much of it, so my cupboard is full of honeys bought from beekeepers, plus a few specialty honeys. They all taste different. But I suppose if you added a little syrup, it wouldn’t change the taste much.
So you buy your honey (and other food products) from suppliers in first-world countries where inspectors can, at least sometimes, check up on their claims.
And yeah, even in the US, the inspectors can’t check everyone. I think it was mentioned in another thread that, with the manpower the USDA has, it’d take 30 years to make one visit to each facility. But even so, a 1 in 10 chance of getting shut down sometime in the next three years is a huge risk for a business, one that the vast majority of businesses won’t want to take, especially when there are so many legitimate ways to cut corners that won’t get them shut down (like cutting the honey with syrup anyway, but saying so on the label).
