Honey Laundering

Imagine a death defying car chase scene, hot babes, and rugged assassins protecting the illegal drug trade.  It sounds so Hollywood!.  It isn’t opium from the exotic fields of Afghanistan.  It isn’t the French Connection.  And it isn’t a Mexican drug cartel de-limbing  the population and shooting entire towns.   This is less refined, not romantic.  We’re talking about our own food supply. Honey, honey.

I remember the Ohio Players “Honey” album from 74 with a naked Playboy bunny dripping with honey.   It looked like real honey, but the rumor was that she had skin damage caused by the fake honey used by the studio.   Fake Honey!  Even it the 70’s, that was farfetched.

Fast forward to the new millennium, where colonies are collapsing, and bees are being polluted by toxic environments, neonicotinoids, and super parasites.   Not only are the pollination numbers down, it’s hard to find real honey.

Honey. 

Honey is the nectar based food source of bees that has been collected, regurgitated, and dried into a substance of specific gravity, then capped off by the bees.   The bees’ regurgitation process adds peroxide and other qualities that make the honey antiseptic.  Honey kills MRSA.  It helps support immune health too.   It isn’t corn syrup, molasses, sugar water, or guar gum.  It is flower nectar made into bee food, and it’s delicious.

Pooh bear loves it. Everyone from about the age of 4 on knows that honey comes from honey bees and it is delectable.  But why the car chases, the death threats, the intrigue across continents?

The Chinese are honey laundering a cheap substance made of sugar, water, alum, and food coloring.  It smells like chemicals.    According to Bloomberg news, “The charges from the probe, called “Project Honeygate,” mark the culmination of a two-part investigation that began in 2008 and included U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. attorney’s office in the northern district of Illinois. In the first phase, federal authorities charged 14 individuals for allegedly evading about $80 million in anti-dumping duties.”

The honey laundering bill rose to 180 Billion, a little later in the investigation.     In France,  according to South China Morning Post, “Last month, a study shook France, according to which 10 per cent of the honey consumed in the country is "fraudulent". The samples had been labeled as French, but originated either in China or Eastern Europe.”  Imagine who would star in that movie?  Duping the French on food sounds like a capitol crime.

You might think, what is the problem?  It’s a big problem.  People take honey to help with allergies because it contains pollen and nectar. Honey never goes bad. It is an amazing, nutritional substance.

 Fake honey doesn’t have those properties, and fake honey might have aluminum or other metals.   It’s crap.

People with sugar issues eat honey, not sugar because honey carries monosaccarides fructose and glucose.  Many people use honey as a spiritual or religious source.  If you buy honey, you should be getting honey, not some weird corn syrup. Aluminum, molasses crappacino.

So what do you do?  Don’t buy honey from mass producers or store labels.  Buy it from a beekeeper. Buy it from a farmer’s market.  If you don’t know where to go, here are several sources:

Local Harvest   http://www.localharvest.org/organic-honey.jsp

Online honey locator   It’s easy to use!  http://www.honeylocator.com/

Local Honey Sources   http://www.localhoneysources.org/