Honey in processed foods

[rober]

Since the topic of Chinese & other honey sources that have been coming up I contacted General Mills Foods & asked where they bought the honey that they added to their cereals explaining my concern with Chinese & Indochinese honey ( since several Indochinese countries are reselling Chinese honey & claiming that it is their own ). Their reply was that that was proprietary information. Makes you wonder.........

[hankdog1]

Nothing let to wonder about people are driven by cheap prices.  Cheap honey allows you to keep prices down.  Dumped honey from China allows you to keep your prices low.  People don't care about qauility anymore.  I would rather pay 2 or 3 times as much for a safe product but most people don't see it that way. 

[JackM]

I wonder what the answer would be if the FDA asked them??????  Glad I don't eat cereal

[sterling]

This came in an email from a member of the bee association here in Nashville Tn. It is a long article so I didn't copy all of it, but this is the jest of what it's talking about.

Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn't Honey
Ultra-filtering Removes Pollen, Hides Honey Origins
by Andrew Schneider | Nov 07, 2011

More than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn't exactly what the bees produce, according to testing done exclusively for Food Safety News.


The results show that the pollen frequently has been filtered out of products labeled "honey."
The removal of these microscopic particles from deep within a flower would make the nectar flunk the quality standards set by most of the world's food safety agencies.


The food safety divisions of the  World Health Organization, the European Commission and dozens of others also have ruled that without pollen there is no way to determine whether the honey came from legitimate and safe sources.

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration says that any product that's been ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen isn't honey. However, the FDA isn't checking honey sold here to see if it contains pollen.


Ultra filtering is a high-tech procedure where honey is heated, sometimes watered down and then forced at high pressure through extremely small filters to remove pollen, which is the only foolproof sign identifying the source of the honey. It is a spin-off of a technique refined by the Chinese, who have illegally dumped tons of their honey - some containing illegal antibiotics - on the U.S. market for years.

Food Safety News decided to test honey sold in various outlets after its earlier investigation found U.S. groceries flooded with Indian honey banned in Europe as unsafe because of contamination with antibiotics, heavy metal and a total lack of pollen which prevented tracking its origin.

[redhat]

Sometimes we need to examine the real price of cheap.

[luvin honey]

Exactly. There are huge prices, just not at the store.

[kingbee]

... Their reply was that that was proprietary information...

I can think of any number of personal questions about your or my finances and life styles that we would rather not answer or see become common knowledge.  General Mills etc. is no different.  I don't think they should be forced to answer every question asked by a curious public.  And since you asked, the answer is yes, I quit beating my wife years ago.  How about you?  See what I mean?

Ok, if you still don't get it, if I were your employer do you think I should be able to ask you how far in arrears you are with your alimony payments, and how hard your ex's lawyer is pressing you to catch up?  You know I could use that information against you to figure out how desperate you are to keep your job.  That would give me a leg up in our negotiations over you're next raise or promotion. I'm telling you that it's a jungle out there. 

[luvin honey]

They're not asking the GM CEO if he/she beats his/her spouse. They're asking where the food ingredients are coming from. As a person who may actually eat said food, it seems a fair question to ask.

As someone who produces food for other people, I absolutely would answer ANY question regarding my practices. Totally different than answering questions about my economic situation, or my family relationships.

[T Beek]

"Good food isn't cheap, cheap food isn't good." 

thomas