Submitted 9 months ago by SexWithDogs@infosec.pub to mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
https://infosec.pub/pictrs/image/2a2a90d6-af97-42ca-910b-630b4213f173.jpeg
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.
Only in America.
OK maybe not, but at least here it’s illegal to label it honey if it isn’t. I think that goes for all of EU.
The result is that you buy either Honey or Syrup, you know what you get, and you get what you pay for.
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.”.
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.
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”.
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.
Shh mate you’re going to ruin the Euro circlejerk.
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.
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.
It’s recommended to label it as “Honey with corn syrup” (PDF: fda.gov/…/PDF---Guidance-for-Industry--Proper-Lab…) but that’s just a recommendation, not a law. I think labeling it as “Honey blend” and “made with real honey” (which implies that it’s not 100% honey) is legal today.
The USA usually has fairly strict rules about labelling of food packages, specifically around the common name of the product. Some things that are legal in my home country of Australia aren’t legal in the USA.
I was permanently banned from the Reddit sub
Looks at username
You’re sure it wasn’t for… other reasons?
I am very worried about these rules
Na, that would get upvotes and 5 generic comments
To be fair 3 lemmy communities have banned me exclusively for my username.
Maybe, but reddit also bans anyone who isn’t a bot.
Update: It was because I triggered bot detection for not pandering in enough comment sections.
Do you mean… not pandering to the majority who wish you wouldn’t copulate with canines?
Makes me think of this video
Honey is a commonly faked food. 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.
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.
It’s recommended to label it as “Honey with corn syrup” (PDF: fda.gov/…/PDF---Guidance-for-Industry--Proper-Lab…) but that’s just a recommendation, not a law. The FDA should get stricter about this.
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).
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 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 is straight up fraud most often.
The fuck?? How is that even remotely legal?
I knew that the FDA was toothless, but for faking a SINGLE INGREDIENT food to be a common occurrence is some dystopian bullshit!
Hmm that would be illegal in the EU and UK, where nutritional info and proportion of honey would be required.
Quite tempted to write in though. Anyone else?
It is also required in America. The FDA requires it except for small business. Also the EU wouldn’t even let this have the word “Honey” in the name at all. I’d assume that the retail business above doesn’t reach the threshold of 500,000 so can request for an exemption of nutritional labeling.
A local supermarket chain got a fine because they had “fake cheese” sold in the cheese section. It wasn’t labeled as cheese, but it was under a large CHEESE banner. I think it was leftovers from cheese production just mixed up.
I’m ok with not throwing away stuff, but it tasted like sin, even for cheap industrial cheese standard.
The Dutch consumer program recently showed that most honey in regular retail are made with a special stain of sugar syrup, made in China, that is indistinguishable from real honey using the common tests.
With more modern testing methods it can be sniffed out, but even though this product would be illegal, the same thing happens on large scale in Europe.
You don’t need nutritional info on pure honey, the standard glasses and labels from the German beekeeper’s association certainly don’t have that info on them, also, you’d need to test batch-wise. They analyse for maximum water and minimum enzyme levels, but not nutritional value that’s basically given by the water content, a bit more or less protein or pollen doesn’t change the values in a way anyone caring about macros would care about: For those intents and purposes honey is pure sugar.
This would be sold at a farmer’s market or something like that rather than in a super market. Just my guess. They may also have been breaking the rules the whole time and enforcement is lax.
I’m okay with the product itself existing. I mean blah blah Americans put corn syrup in everything sure, you’re allowed to buy honey and you’re allowed to buy corn syrup, you’re allowed to mix them in your own kitchen, I’m okay with this substance being allowed on the store shelf.
“Honey Blend” strikes me as one of those FDA required weasel phrases like “processed whey product” or “beef-related substance”. You don’t usually see the word “blend” on a honey bear bottle, says something’s up.
The ingredients are plainly listed.
The nutrition facts are not; you’d have to lick a stamp to learn them, which I hope isn’t legal.
Nutritional facts aren’t as strictly controlled for small businesses/side businesses.
It doesn’t seem to be legal in this particular case, however IANAL and may have missed something. What is concerning is that it does seem to be legal in a whole slew of cases that have some pretty big loopholes if that is what you happen to be looking for.
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.
This is fine, they’re telling you what’s in the bottle. I mean I don’t agree with messing up honey with corn syrup and the fact that the bottle sort of leads you to think you’re getting just honey, but it is what it is.
Yea, and no, that should be better regulated. Let’s not settle for something bad just because. In France this is better regulated, but still some brands play cat and mouse, finding corner cases to circumvent the rules. Honey is subject to this very frequently too.
I don’t disagree. I think how blatantly misleading packaging and labeling many foods are in the US is and it’s BS. From the meaninglessness of “organic” to “100% natural”, they don’t really tell the consumer what that means.
ITT:
Americans: I’m so used to being lied to about literally everything that this doesn’t seem that bad.
Smh…
It isn’t that bad.
It says “made with real honey”, which is a pretty big clue that it isn’t real honey.
It says “texas honey blend”, again indicating that it’s honey blended with something.
And, as for “gourmet” it’s in a plastic bear-shaped container, it’s not a luxury item.
If people want to buy stuff made from high fructose corn syrup, shouldn’t they be allowed to do it? How much more obvious does it need to be that this isn’t pure honey?
You sir are on the right side of the IQ bell curve. We need packaging that people on the left side of the bell curve can understand.
As other people said, in the EU with “honey blend” you’d expect a blend of different types of honey, as it wouldn’t be allowed to be call honey unless it was pure honey. Having to decipher “made with real honey” to mean “its not real honey” is just fucking odd. Flip it over and look at the ingredients and its just a list? Why no percentages?
Gourmet stuff comes in all sorts of weird packaging and shitty stuff comes in fancy packaging, so having to assume it is corn syrup because it’s in a bear shape is also weird.
No rules for food labelling is wild.
I guess this is pretty American of me, but it’s called “honey blend” for a reason.
I’m American, and honey blend implies to me that it is a mix of different types of honey. Like clover honey and whatnot. Kinda like a Red blend wine is a mix of different wines, not 50% merlot/50% rubbing alcohol or something.
Clearly, and nothing personal here and I’m sure this honey company are good people, but my comment was more addressed at the larger societal issues of being an American (which I am) and how we’re constantly lied to and how we’ve normalized that 100%. So that small things like this don’t seem worth calling out. This particular label is not that bad, but in other countries, as others have said here, the label would be even clearer. Europeans don’t have to read between the lines with phrases like, “Made with…” to know that’s not the same as “100% made with …”. That’s all.
Okay, this is the line that should not be crossed, we should evict Texas.
*eject
Wajt, why can’t you feed it to Children under one?
Some type of bacteria they’re not ready to handle yet?
There are bacterial spores that are no danger to nearly all adults but will absolutely end your baby.
Basically, yeah.
Apart from OP’s picture missing the 's on Kelley’s, it seems genuine due to the matching inconsistent use of capitalisation.
Why does it say “Texas” on it 6 times?
This reminds me of KFC and how they switch from “Honey” to “Honey Sauce”.
I got a shock random permaban in one of my preferred niche subs from someone obviously having a bad day. It made me sit up and ask why I was putting up with so much nonsense and abandoned reddit that very moment. I had been dipping my toes into Lemmy but this made me dive in head first.
As a beekeeper of 30 odd years, that hurts
ps welcome
You might say that Reddit is mostly just high fructose corn syrup, while Lemmy is pure, responsibly sourced honey.
I see no problem here. It’s very clearly labeled.
I’m confused there are no packaging standards in the US. Is the first ingredient the largest? How do you know if there’s no percentage given?
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.
I worked a contract job at a honey bottling plant in Mich where they would simply take 55 gallon drums of raw honey from all over the world, dump them into a giant tank, churn it up… then bottle it. That’s was it, nothing more nothing less. At one point in the past they used to add water, but they had stopped when I was installing the new mixing system (it was a patent thing). Makes me shake my head to see companies adding anything else to such a simple operation…
At least it’s labelled. Better than China sneaking sugar syrup into the supply chain without being open about it.
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.
Would corn syrup stop it from becoming solid? I love honey but budget mind thinks, “buy bulk” and 1 yr later I have like half a quart left to practice my own tar experiment.
Times like this I’m glad I have not one but two friends who are backyard beekeepers. They are more than happy to give away the enormous amount of honey they collect each year…
How old is that bottle? I looked at their website and they don’t even sell this product.
Welcome to the fediverse!
Report them to… I think it’s the FDA that oversees food labels?
They’re violating federal regulations.
At least the ingredients are being honest. It’s a massive problem around the world. They even have insanely sophisticated testing machines that are even fooled sometimes.
ITT: a bunch of stolen bee vomit fetishists. Why pay so much money for something weird, gross, and every bit as unhealthy as sugar and corn syrup? Maple syrup (while also unhealthy) tastes way better. And date sugar, whole blended dates, or molasses are healthier alternatives.
“Made with…”
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.
Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 9 months ago
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!
TK420@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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
Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 9 months ago
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.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 9 months ago
Hot take, but it’s not a bad technology. It’s just heavily overused because US farm subsidies.
abracaDavid@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
BakerBagel@midwest.social 9 months ago
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
Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 9 months ago
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.
LillyPip@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
It seems not to be as well known as I thought, but most commercial honey sold in the US is not actually honey:
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.
SexWithDogs@infosec.pub 9 months ago
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.
grue@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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!
TragicNotCute@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Plus, it says “made with real honey”. That plus it being a blend should have raised an eyebrow to investigate further.