Food Detective: Honey news that’s not so sweet

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Be alert! This may look like honey, but probably isn’t.

Updated: April 17, 2012 1:42PM

Honey seems to have been around almost as long as mankind.

Egyptian pharaohs were entombed with this sweet insect product, which has remained edible for millennia, possessing what seems to be eternal shelf-life. Before Columbus, indigenous inhabitants of Mexico’s Riviera Maya chiseled into stone temples images of their Descending God, a feet-up/head-down deity, believed to be a bee personified, taking a header into a flower. (Yucatecan bees are small, have deep green eyes, and make excellent honey.)

The most full-flavored honey we enjoyed in 2011 was from Kangaroo Island, South Australia. This eucalyptus flower honey is deliciously complex, salty, savory, lushly thick and harvested at the world’s oldest bee sanctuary. These bees, 19th century immigrants from Liguria in Italy, remain free from Colony Collapse Disorder, the mysterious malady that’s wiped out millions of American bees.

We like to buy honey from North Lawndale’s Chicago Honey Co-Op (chicagohoneycoop.bigcartel.com). Folk wisdom suggests that eating locally grown honey helps residents develop a tolerance to pollens and strengthens their immunity to regional allergens. This light, delicate honey is excellent on ice cream.

I came upon a jar of what looked like honey at our favorite Chinatown grocer. Amber, viscous, with a bee’s picture and marketed as a “Bee Brand,” it’s not clear that bees had anything to do with this product, which had the listed ingredients maltose, honey-flavored syrup, sugar and water.

It turns out a lot of what we think is honey really isn’t. Food Safety News reports that 75 percent of store-bought “honey” may contain little or no honey.

Though the jar we saw in Chinatown just might contain honey in some form, that may not be good news, either. Heavy filtering — what’s called “honey laundering” — is sometimes performed to remove unique pollens and conceal the honey’s point of origin. The reason for such subterfuge is that honey from some countries, including China, frequently contains heavy metals and potentially carcinogenic antibiotics banned by the US. Food & Drug Administration.

Perhaps the best way to ensure you’re getting safe, unadulterated honey is to buy from people you know. Some municipalities, like Oak Park, are now making it easier to do that by permitting residents to keep backyard hives.

Whatever honey you buy, one thing’s for certain: the label should list only one ingredient.

David Hammond is an Oak Park writer and contributor to WBEZ (91.5 FM) and LTHForum.com.
E-mail detective@suntimes.com.