"salted" honey?

Quoted message said:

I wish there were some way to test it for that - is there? It turns
out I have a lifelong allergy to anything dealing with granulated sugar
- but not with flower-feed bees honey. I realize this goes against
logic, since honey is almost chemically identical to granulated sugar,

No, it's not. Commericial sugar is almost pure sucrose.
Honey is mostly simple sugars (glucose and fructose),
also known as "invert sugar".

You can measure the invert sugar content of honey,
which could be used as an indication of adulteration
with sucrose. Here's a method:

http://ohioline.osu.edu/b856/b856_109.html

Note that honey normally contains a small amount
of sucrose. The following link goes to the Codex
standard for honey, which mentions acceptable
levels of sucrose for particular honeys:

http://www.fao.org/docrep/w0076e/w0076e30.htm

However, I very much doubt you have a true allergy
to commercial sugar. There isn't much besides
sucrose in there to act as an allergen.
It's among the purest materials used in food
(comparable to kosher salt, MSG, and distilled
water).

Mark Thorson said:

You can measure the invert sugar content of honey,
which could be used as an indication of adulteration
with sucrose. Here's a method:

http://ohioline.osu.edu/b856/b856_109.html

On reviewing that method more carefully, I don't
think it could be adapted for your purpose.
The simplest method which would work for you
would probably be to read the invert vs. sucrose
content directly using a polarimetric method.
Polarimeters show up on eBay frequently, but
that's probably way more of an investment
in time and money then you wish to make.

Quoted message said:

Is there a way to tell whether or not a store-bought bottle of honey
was made from bees who were feed granulated sugar, as opposed to

honey

Quoted message said:

made by bees who feed upon a nearby field of some known plant? I
usually buy the kind that is labeled "clover", becuase I assume it
means they are required to feed the bees from a clover field, and NOT

snipped...

First of all I hope you are not allergic to sugar as my husband, dad
and grandfathers all grew sugar cane🙂.

I do sell Honey myself and wonder why you limit your Honey to just
Clover. There are a ton of different real and yummy Honeys. I
believe that when there isn't enough rain or food usually at the
beginning of spring, beekeepers have to keep the bee colony alive and
they would have to use sugar water, but I don't think it is what they
most want to do.

Try buying from a beekeeper too, who could tell you everything about
their Honey.

Good luck.

aloha,
Thunder
smithfarms.com
Farmers of 100% Kona Coffee
& other Great Stuff

Quoted message said:

Is there a way to tell whether or not a store-bought bottle of honey
was made from bees who were feed granulated sugar, as opposed to honey
made by bees who feed upon a nearby field of some known plant? I
usually buy the kind that is labeled "clover", becuase I assume it
means they are required to feed the bees from a clover field, and NOT
suppliment with cheap white sugar. But now I am not so sure. The
newer label still says "clover", but it also includes several countries
as the source, and I wonder how are they controlling to insure against
their honey being "salted" (supplimenting the bees feeding with sugar).

snip

Maybe you could find a few (local or non-local) honey farms, and find
out if they supplement their bee hives or not, and just purchase the
honey from them. It would be more expensive, but if you keep close
relations with the owner or manager and they know of your situation,
then maybe you might be safe, rather than going with a big corporation
that purchases from many sources.

By the way, I recommend Fireweed or Orange Blossom Honey. Yum!

Denise~* said:

Maybe you could find a few (local or non-local) honey farms, and find
out if they supplement their bee hives or not, and just purchase the
honey from them. It would be more expensive, but if you keep close
relations with the owner or manager and they know of your situation,
then maybe you might be safe, rather than going with a big corporation
that purchases from many sources.

By the way, I recommend Fireweed or Orange Blossom Honey. Yum!

When my grandfather kept beehives on the farm, he would supplement them
with a solution akin to what they put in humming bird feeders if worse
came to worst.

Incidentally, you are NOT allergic to sugar. Allergic reactions require
protein allergens as triggers, and sugars alone have neither proteins
nor components to build proteins.

Back to my grandpa's bees: One spring he planted a field in rye. The
honey was FABULOUS that year!

Pennyaline said:

Denise~* said:

Maybe you could find a few (local or non-local) honey farms, and find
out if they supplement their bee hives or not, and just purchase the
honey from them. It would be more expensive, but if you keep close
relations with the owner or manager and they know of your situation,
then maybe you might be safe, rather than going with a big corporation
that purchases from many sources.

By the way, I recommend Fireweed or Orange Blossom Honey. Yum!

When my grandfather kept beehives on the farm, he would supplement them
with a solution akin to what they put in humming bird feeders if worse
came to worst.

Incidentally, you are NOT allergic to sugar. Allergic reactions require
protein allergens as triggers, and sugars alone have neither proteins
nor components to build proteins.

Back to my grandpa's bees: One spring he planted a field in rye. The
honey was FABULOUS that year!

I'm imagining the flavor right now. Can you describe it?

--

saerah

http://anisaerah.blogspot.com/

email:
anisaerah at s b c global.net

"Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a
disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice."
-Baruch Spinoza

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly
what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear
and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There
is another theory which states that this has already happened."
-Douglas Adams

Pennyaline said:

Back to my grandpa's bees: One spring he planted a field in rye. The
honey was FABULOUS that year!

We used to get a Fall Flower Honey from the local farmers market. It was
great. It was more flavourful than closer honey. Unfortunately, I haven't
been able to get it for years.

My father used to love buckwheat honey. I don't mind it once in a while, but
it is a very powerful flavour component.

Pennyaline said:

Incidentally, you are NOT allergic to sugar. Allergic reactions
require protein allergens as triggers, and sugars alone have
neither proteins nor components to build proteins.

Allergens do not have to be proteins. An allergen
can be anything that binds to a protein, such as
certain metal ions. These are authentic allergies,
even though the allergen is not a protein or even
anything organic.

For example, in the case of chromium:
http://www.chromium-asoc.com/publications/crfile2oct96.htm

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Is there a way to tell whether or not a store-bought bottle of honey
was made from bees who were feed granulated sugar, as opposed to

honey

Quoted message said:

made by bees who feed upon a nearby field of some known plant? I
usually buy the kind that is labeled "clover", becuase I assume it
means they are required to feed the bees from a clover field, and

NOT

Quoted message said:

suppliment with cheap white sugar. But now I am not so sure. The
newer label still says "clover", but it also includes several

countries

Quoted message said:

as the source, and I wonder how are they controlling to insure

against

Quoted message said:

their honey being "salted" (supplimenting the bees feeding with

sugar).

Quoted message said:

I wish there were some way to test it for that - is there? It turns
out I have a lifelong allergy to anything dealing with granulated

sugar

Quoted message said:

- but not with flower-feed bees honey. I realize this goes against
logic, since honey is almost chemically identical to granulated

sugar Thanks, littlberry

Quoted message said:

Little known about run-of-the-mill honey: This product is heavily
'cut' with glucose to prevent it from losing its shelf appeal (read:
translucency), and the producers are not required by law to list the
glucose on the label!

Even honeys labeled as raw can be deceptive. Having purchased 'raw'
honey from Whole Foods (who had it in a heated container) I gave it
the acid test: I refrigerated the honey, and it did not solidify. I
returned the bogus honey to Whole Foods for a refund.

Chemically, honey is quite far from sucrose; it is _naturally_ high in
glucose (as opposed to the synthetic glucose used to cut most
commercial honeys).

Make sure that you purchase raw honey (refrigerate to prove it is
raw), and you will not have an untoward allergic reaction. It is open
to debate as to how a bee would metabolize sucrose; it could be as
serendipitous as a pig eating garbage, or it could be nearly poisonous
to them. A topic for another forum.

--
Mabry
C=;-{ }

<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

[snipped]

Quoted message said:

It turns out I have a lifelong allergy to anything dealing with

granulated sugar

Quoted message said:

- but not with flower-feed bees honey.
but, years and years of reacting to hidden sugar in my diet,

combined

Quoted message said:

with years

Thanks, littlberry

You are reacting to the "commercial" (chemically altered) sugar that
food manufacturers put in their products (as much as possible) that
produces an insulin spike followed by an insulin crash in the
consumer, whereby the blood sugar level drops below_ where it was
prior to ingestion. And you would have to know the effect of this is
an enormous increase in appetite - which sells more of the,
especially, snack products. A vicious circle the manufacturers take
full advantage of. Originally they added sugar to cover inferior
quality but received the manna-from-heaven bonus of increased sales.

Interestingly enough, you could probably tolerate a portion of
homemade (made with sugar from your sugar bowl) rice pudding without
incident, but a commercial rice pudding would have you near collapse.
I also am hypersensitive to what I thought was all sugar but passed
the rice pudding test with flying colors. The synthetic sugar of the
food manufacturers is the dirty little secret that all deny
vehemently.

--
Mabry
C=;-{ }

"Mabry" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:jo8Of.3721$p43.3662@fed1read05...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

OK, now you've got me curious - exactly how do you
believe this sugar has been altered (what is the chemical
change involved), and for what reason? Is the sugar
in question something other than the good ol' sucrose,
fructose, lactose, etc., that we all came to know and
love in organic chem?

Quoted message said:

"By their fruits shall ye know them." The well-established blood
sugar crashes (below the starting point level) are easily proved with
simple blood sugar testing equipment, As there is a difference in
individual metabolisms, so will there be a range of intensity of
"crashes". If there is any doubt/question, then this test after
consuming a given commercial product will provide a graphic answer.

Fine, but that's completely irrelevant to the claim that the
sugar in question has somehow been altered.

Quoted message said:

The reason initially was to produce/create the most inexpensive sugar
possible to use in commercial products. The unforeseen
consequences/benefits was the demonstrable increase in appetite among
the consumers who bought & bought more and more, especially snack
foods.

That's a possible reason for doing something - but you have
yet to show that such an "altered sugar" even exist, that it IS
somehow different from the "natural" sugar that would otherwise
be used in these products, and that IF both of those are true, that
it would be cheaper to use in commercial products per the
above reasoning. Let's take this one step at a time, and take
the first question that I asked first - just how do you think this
sugar was "altered"?

Quoted message said:

Obviously, neither I nor any other lay person would
have access to this chemical formula, but given that a
synthetic grapefruit flavor was produced to flavor the soft drink
Squirt, it is hardly a stretch to think in terms of producing a
synthetic sugar.

That's nonsense. Sugars are relatively simple organic
compounds, readily available from a wide variety of source,
and there's simply no reason to think that a "synthetic sugar"
would be less expensive, easier to produce, or for that matter
that it would differ IN ANY WAY from its "natural"
counterpart. Sucrose is sucrose, and that's all there is to it.
This is barely freshman-level chemistry - it hardly takes a
Nobel prize winner to understand this stuff. You haven't even
taken the trouble, though, to learn even the slightest bit of the
science in question here, which in my opinion says volumes
about your whole position here.

Bob M.