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.
Only in America.
OK maybe not, but at least here it’s illegal to label it honey if it isn’t 100% pure honey. that goes for all of EU, where it’s illegal to add sugar, according to the EU honey directive.
The result is that you buy either Honey or Syrup, you know what you get, and you get what you pay for.Edit:
Apparently it’s illegal in USA too, whether adding the word “blend” makes it legal IDK. It is sort of a warning sign but still misleading.
deleted by creator
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.”.
Or “iced dessert”. <25% milkfat is the line, I think.
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.
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.
deleted by creator
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.
Good for y’all.
Shh mate you’re going to ruin the Euro circlejerk.
Honey is a commonly faked food. At least they label it so you can avoid it.
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.
If they were Really Smart™ they would just lable it as a dietary supplement, then all regulation goes out the window and it’s a free-for-all!
I think that interpretation cuts both ways, where the ‘blend’ could also imply that the honey is blended with something other than honey.
I agree. This should be called a honey sauce at best.
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).
I always squint at meat products that claim something like “made with 100% real chicken.” Yeah okay, there is chicken in there, but how much of the food consists of that 100% real chicken?
Yeah, apparently the chicken in there is a hundred percent real, even if only two percent of the product is chicken.
I’ve been buying fruit juice recently after staying away from all that sugar for a lot of years, and I’m sad to find out that most fruit juice in my grocery is corn syrup. Even with being willing to pay more, it can be difficult to find sweetened with fruit juice or even sugar
Yeah, have to stay away from the “cocktails” and stick with 100% juice. On the other hand, even most of those have a lot of apple, pear, and grape juice added, which are all very, very sweet. There’s more sugar in apple juice than in soda, it’s just the kind of sugar that’s different.
At least in Denmark it’s illegal to use the word ‘juice’ if there’s any sugar water in it. If I see a juice on the self I can be certain it is 100% juice (maybe made from concentrate but that must be written somewhere). If it’s not then it is “nektar”
In the USA, it’s recommended to label it as “Honey with corn syrup” (PDF: https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/PDF---Guidance-for-Industry--Proper-Labeling-of-Honey-and-Honey-Products.pdf) but that’s just a recommendation, not a law. The FDA should get stricter about this.
The FDA should get a hell of a lot stricter in general, but decades of political fuckery has made it simultaneously rife with corruption, permanently understaffed and critically underfunded.
The FDA is pretty much in exactly the condition that Republicans want for all regulatory agencies.
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’m not a lawyer, but it looks like you are wrong:
4: If a food consists of honey and a sweetener, such as sugar or corn syrup, can I label the food as only “honey”?
No. A product consisting of honey and a sweetener cannot be labeled with the common or usual name “honey” because “[t]he common or usual name of a food . . . shall accurately identify or describe . . . the basic nature of the food or its characterizing properties or ingredients” (21 CFR 102.5(a)). Identifying a blend or a mixture of honey and another sweetener only as “honey” does not properly identify the basic nature of the food. You must sufficiently describe the name of the food on the label to distinguish it from simply “honey” (21 CFR 102.5(a)).However they are only exempt from the declaration if it’s pure honey, so the part about not having that is clearly against the guidelines. The header on page 1 says: “Contains Nonbinding Recommendations” So it’s very fuzzy to a layman like me.
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 and avacado is straight up fraud most often.
Okay, this is the line that should not be crossed, we should evict Texas.
*eject
ITT:
Americans: I’m so used to being lied to about literally everything that this doesn’t seem that bad.
Smh…
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.
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?
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.
Not if the business is making under a certain amount each year. Then they can request for an exemption of the nutritional labeling.
“Made with…”
I was told a long time ago that if it says “Made with…”, you should always mentally add “very little of…”
“Based on a true story”…
I was permanently banned from the Reddit sub without recourse for posting this
Looks at username
You’re sure it wasn’t for… other reasons?
Na, that would get upvotes and 5 generic comments
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.
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.
I’m seeing the nutritional value thing, but I don’t see what the other comments are talking about…
It’s not honey, it’s high fructose corn syrup
Technically since honey is listed first it should be at least mostly honey, as in 51% or more. But it is probably mostly corn syrup and the phrasing is intended to discourage lawsuits that would lead to anyone checking the ratio.
Which is really bad since only needing to be 51% of the thing is a pretty low bar in the first place.
If it’s not just honey, it’s not honey. Therefore it’s HFCS
Not according the FDA. You can put something down as Honey as long as there is at least some honey in there. Source: https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/PDF---Guidance-for-Industry--Proper-Labeling-of-Honey-and-Honey-Products.pdf
Surely that logic would work the other way around as well…
Isn’t it honey AND high fructose corn syrup, and with honey being above the syrup it’s mostly honey?
How old is that bottle? I looked at their website and they don’t even sell this product.
Report them to… I think it’s the FDA that oversees food labels?
They’re violating federal regulations.
You might say that Reddit is mostly just high fructose corn syrup, while Lemmy is pure, responsibly sourced honey.
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
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.
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)