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 thanks to such encouragement.
it had me worried for a minute: same bear, same colored label, grocery store brand so it could be from anywhere. I had to check. Nope, not Texas. Whew. (Jk, not corn syrup)
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.
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.
Curds maybe. Seems an odd thing to fine someone over. Curds are made into cheese and also commonly sold just as curds. It’s pretty much what paneer is. Perhaps someone expects it to be generic “dairy”.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
in the EU with “honey blend” you’d expect a blend of different types of honey
And, in the US you’d expect it to be something blended with honey. Different expectations, neither one of those expectations is unreasonable.
as it wouldn’t be allowed to be call honey unless it was pure honey
Right… and it’s not called honey, it’s called “Texas Honey Blend”. If it were honey it would be called “Honey”.
Having to decipher “made with real honey” to mean “its not real honey” is just fucking odd.
You don’t have to “decipher” that, you just have to look at the fact it’s a blend, not honey. The “made with real honey” is just additional confirmation that yes, it’s not pure honey.
Flip it over and look at the ingredients and its just a list? Why no percentages?
Because different food rules? Why percentages?
Gourmet stuff comes in all sorts of weird packaging
Gourmet stuff doesn’t come in bear-shaped plastic bottles.
No rules for food labelling is wild.
It would be, if it were the case. But, that’s definitely not the case here. It’s just different from the rules you’re used to. The core of your comment seems to be “this is different than what I’m used to, and I’m shocked!”
You know what else is odd? That you’re staunchly defending this label with barely any information on it. Pretty much every point you’ve made is “but why does it need information”…
Oh sorry, you’re right, there’s an address for more info. I shall scribe my correspondence post haste in order to discover the nature of the product on the shelf.
Look at that, it’s a product that is entirely dependent on the idea that no one ever actually reads the label… Sadly this unscrupulous company has probably made a fortune this way
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.
UK regulations state that ingredients must be listed in order of weight, with the main ingredient first according to the amounts that were used to make the food - the percentages are by weight
The issue is often a result of companies paying off those 3rd party testers to use outdated equipment that can’t detect the counterfeiting methods being used, or so I’ve heard.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Even brands like log cabin who claim to use “no high fructose corn syrup” are just corn syrup and sugar. There are people who go their entire lives eating pancake syrup and table syrup on their pancakes, and die never having tasted actual maple syrup.
If you’re mixing things up in the kitchen, typically you try to be somewhat precise with ratios.
The difference in this case being that because the actual ratio of the blend is unknown, you don’t actually know how it would crystallize. Technically they could even change up the ratio week to week based on the price of high-fructose corn syrup so you wouldn’t even get consistency from it.
Hmm. I was a professional chef for ~15 years and your right and wrong at the same time
Baking is precise. Bakers are wholly different kinds of people compared to those on a line. Baking is exact amounts, humidity percentages, controlled environments. Cooking is eyeballing everything and adjusting by taste.
I make recipe by ratio. Sometimes, a lot of the times, the ratio isn’t even conscious, I just know it needs more of this and this to get the taste and textures I want.
So yes; ratios. But no; no measuring. A cup is about a handful. If you got the spatial chops that should be just about all you need to make everything in the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) manual, which, if you’re gonna buy a cook book, just bite the bullet and spend the $100 on it
Baking is exact amounts, humidity percentages, controlled environments
Yes but no. Humidity and environment will change how the bread turns out, but even in large industrial bakeries where they chemically analyse the flour and have influence over microbiomes they know that the slightest, uncontrollable, variation can throw things off so you still have people listening to how the dough sounds in the kneader, how sproingy it is after proofing, and make calls about whether the dough needs some more or less work or time.
It might be possible to fully automate things by killing the flour (by default it contains lots of microorganisms), use yeast only (while you can get pure-strain sourdough it’s still a more fickle beast than straight yeast), but then you probably need to be American to still call the final product bread.
By contrast if you’re a baker’s apprentice in Germany for the first year you’ll be forbidden to touch the kneader, you need to have heard lots of doughs and observed many a decision the master makes on the fly about what exactly to do to the dough and why until you have the necessary intuition to start making calls on your own. The first thing you learn is dough tension and how to knead two loaves at the same time, messing up there is not a biggie you just gotta have to start over. Not exactly German but here’s a good video about dough tension. It’s important for every elastic dough and baguettes are particularly finicky so it’s a good example.
I think the reason you hear the “baking is a science” trope: People can’t actually bake. Sure, using exact amounts will get you a better result if you don’t know anything about dough but once you do you’ll be adjusting things on the fly to account for things like initial water content in the flour and the phase of the moon. Baking is alchemy.
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.
Nobody making candy would every use this pre-blended product; they’d want to combine the two different sugars themselves so they could control the ratio.
But the honey industry is hiding a secret. There’s a high chance that your store-bought honey is fake. While fake honey usually includes some amount of real honey, it is often mixed with other corn, rice, or sugar cane syrup to reduce its cost. These fillers are far cheaper than raw honey and are used to produce more honey, quicker. In fact, up to 76% of honey sold in the US is not really honey, at least not entirely.
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.
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
You are being downvoted but HFCS and honey are almost exactly chemically identical. They have to inspect honey farms to make sure it comes from bees since looking at the final product you can’t tell the difference.
Yeah they are both concentrated sugar extracts. Just because one is made by bees doesn’t make it suddenly not a heaping tablespoon of sugar you’ve just ingested. I eat plenty of honey and molasses but I don’t lie to myself and claim that they are any healthier than corn syrup or simple syrup. They are all just super concentrated fructose and glucose solutions.
I liked when the US National Honey Board funded a study that compared honey, cane sugar, and HFCS and found they’re all about the same (and all raised a key blood fat, a marker for heart disease).
Of course, the truth is that sugar’s sugar and you should have limited amounts of it, but when it’s as cheap as HFCS is in the States, they can stick it in everything.
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.
I get it, I was banned from Reddit for saying that being progressive was a good thing. That was just dandy. I consider it a badge of honor to have pissed them off so royally.
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