Apparantly the only food not to spoil, how come?
And why is it linked to botulism in young babies?
Honey is very low in moisture and high in sugar. Sugar is an excellent nutrient for bacterial growth, it’s true, but water is necessary too. What little water there is in honey is bound up by the sugars and not available to bacteria. Lots of foods don’t “spoil” in the sense that they can’t support bacterial growth, such as peanut butter. Some of these foods can turn rancid and taste terrible, but that’s not due to bacterial growth.
I have no idea about the botulism thing.
Because it’s too concentrated. Honey is more concentrated than the cell contents of bacteria, so it will suck the water out of them and kill them. However, if you dilute it, they can easily grow. Other highly concentrated foods, such as granular sugar, also won’t spoil (unless they get wet).
Apparently, honey is the most common identifiable cause of botulism in infants. The bacteria are present in honey. It’s unknown why infants are at risk for this while toddlers and up are not. Maple syrup is also known to spread botulism.
Lottsa links:
Google results
From what I can tell from those links, it’s primarily the spores which are present rather than live bacteria. This is worse, since the spores are resistant to heat treatments such as pasteurization, so even that won’t make honey safe for infants.
I thought it was an allergic reaction with infants. Didn’t know about the botulism thing.
Lots of foods don’t spoil. Spoilage is related to bacteria. As others have noted, sugar doesn’t support bacteria very well. That’s why honey makes a good dressing for a wound, in a pinch.
So does powdered sugar. A doctor in Brazil did research about 20 years ago on wound care. His purpose was to find ways for people without access to regular medical care (whether financial or just no doctors, etc., in the vicinity) to handle injuries, and found that plain old sugar (exceedingly cheap in Brazil) would cause the bacteria to lyse (break open; the same quantity of salt :eek: would also cause lysis in bacterial cells, but would really hurt!).
So if you’re ever out in the boonies and get a nasty wound, if you can pack it with sugar and bandage it so it stays dry and nothing else can get in, you would be fine until you can get to real medical care.
Clostridium botulinum is a spore forming organism, as Q.E.D. mentioned. Not sure how, but it sometimes gets into beehives. It is fairly common in the soil, some places more than others (but I don’t know how to tell where the affected places are). It’s the spores you have to be careful of, because they’re nearly impossible to kill.
Now that’s the most useful thing I’ve learned this week. I’m off to add sugar to the house and car emergency kits (the house kit has honey already). Thanks, tygerbryght!
You’re entirely welcome. 
It’s osmosis. The cell membrane will open up to let things (mostly liquids) pass through if there is a big imbalance on opposite sides of the cell membrane. A bacterium surrounded by sugar (or salt) will release water to attempt to balance the difference. In the absence of enough water outside the bacterium cell, the cell will actually release enough water to kill the bacterium.
That’s why fruit preserves and jams work to hold off spoilage. It’s also why salt-cured meat will be safe to eat for a long time.
ALL raw foods are potential sources of botulism in babies. Honey comes up a lot because it’s pretty much the only raw food that toothless babies can eat.
and the reason why babies are vunerable is because their stomaches are not acidic enough to neutralise the spores.
It is important to differentiate adult botulism from infant botulism. In the adult form, premade toxin is ingested (such as from home canned veggies) and causes symptoms.
In the infant form, as above, spores are ingested and then multiply with the resultant bacteria releasing toxin in the GI tract.
Interesting, I remember now the anti-bacterial properties of honey, that makes sense now.
I’m sorry, but that’s not true.
It’s the toxin itself that’s a problem, not the spores. And it’s only in a baby that the spores get a shot at multiplying and making toxin, because they have a less developed normal flora (normal gut bacteria) to act as competition for the growth of the bad guys. Also, their stomachs aren’t as acidic, and so more of the spores survive to get into the gut in the first place.
Once they start getting to toddler stage, their insides start looking more and more like that of an adult, and the risk from botulism spores is less. Of course, a can full of ready-made toxins is still going to be a problem, no matter how many good gut bacteria you have.
What I’d like to know is just how much of the protection is from the normal gut flora, and how much is from the stomach acid. Because some antibiotics can wipe out your gut flora pretty well, and I don’t think I’ve ever been advised to avoid honey during that time period.
I had no idea there was an infectious form of botulism; I thought it was always just the toxic form. More ignorance fought!
Now I’ve always heard that botulin formation was possible because the honey provided an oxygen poor environment (which is what C. botulinum needs to produce toxin). For the same reaons, those decorative bottles of olive oil with veggies (like chopped-up garlic) inside are also potential botulin sources.
Right or wrong?
I thought it was more that C. Botulinum grows best in a low-oxygen environment (like the gut, or cans of food), and toxin production is a normal part of its lifestyle. Bear in mind that the classic presentation of Botulism is from contaminated sausages - if honey was such a great botulin production medium, we’d have heard more about it.
The wikipedia article on Botulism reprises this thread in a little more detail, with a handful of cites.
But you are right about this bit, btw, inasmuch as any non-sterilised foodstuff stored in an oxygen-poor environment is a potential source, particularly if it may have been contaminated with soil.