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.
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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.
Welcome to the Fediverse!
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.
Death to high fructose corn syrup
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, I was commenting on the notion of mixing honey with corn syrup generally, not this shit.
Though I’m sure there’s a bunch of old ladies in Texas who have recipes on old, yellowed card stock that call for this.
Hot take, but it’s not a bad technology. It’s just heavily overused because US farm subsidies.
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.
Many thanks.
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!
What in the hell? You think this is ok? A honey blend implies a blend of…wait for it… different HONEY.
Not a blend of super cheap and super unhealthy syrup.
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 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.
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 a HFCS is in the States, they can stick it in everything.
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 thought the “benefits” to honey were kinda more for kids >1 so they can be exposed to different types of pollen. I dunno if it actually helps with immunity to allergies in the same way, but iirc it’s similar with peanuts. Kids exposed to them young are much less likely to develop allergies to them
But honey is natural, corn syrup has chemicals in it!
Plus, it says “made with real honey”. That plus it being a blend should have raised an eyebrow to investigate further.
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.
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.
Where I am in all supermarkets I know of, honey at least used to be labeled by country of origin, usually Poland or Hungary, maybe it’s not the case anymore, it’s been a while since I checked.
Still there’s a difference between the legality in USA of selling Honey and Sirup labeled as Honey blend, which is clearly illegal in EU. If there is any amount of sugar added, it is sirup. It can only LEGALLY be called honey if it’s actually pure honey.
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.
I doubt the Europeans will abandon their circlejerk that easily.
I just got done watching a video called European Circlejerk on xvideos.
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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.
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?
I am very worried about these rules
Na, that would get upvotes and 5 generic comments
This
/thread
Maybe, but reddit also bans anyone who isn’t a bot.
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.
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.
I agree. This should be called a honey sauce at best.
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.
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”
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.
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.
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.
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Hmm that would be illegal in the EU and UK, where nutritional info and proportion of honey would be required.
Quite tempted to write in though. Anyone else?
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”.
And with such an abomination, they would have to state how much honey is in there.
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.
Okay, this is the line that should not be crossed, we should evict Texas.
*eject
I live near by this area. I also buy honey from Kelley’s regularly, but have never seen this abomination. The honey they sell around here is 100% grade a raw unfiltered. It also has nutrition information on the bottle.
Wait, why can’t you feed it to Children under one?
Some type of bacteria they’re not ready to handle yet?Correct. Infant botulism can result from bacteria in raw honey that is otherwise harmless to anyone with a developed immune system.
At first I was like “yeah doesn’t everyone know that?” And then I realized that I didn’t know that until I had kids.
I have a kid and this is the first I’m hearing about it.
Our pedi was over the top with reminding us. With both kids, actually.
He probably has some history that led him to stress that so much to patients.
Not everyone is good at it
I don’t have kids and I know it. When I was a kid, my parents would make us banana smoothies as a treat. It’s just banana, milk, ice, and honey. They mentioned a few times that they were excited for us to turn a year old so we could have them because of the honey.
I waited til they were there before I have them honey, hah
Basically, yeah.
There are bacterial spores that are no danger to nearly all adults but will absolutely end your baby.
But you CAN put it on little bumps and scrapes.
Apart from OP’s picture missing the 's on Kelley’s, it seems genuine due to the matching inconsistent use of capitalisation.
Only other image I could find was from Walmart. Wonder if the “Texas blend” is a Walmart specific product.
Walmart has been known to make unreasonable demands to farmers that might result in exactly this type of fuckery
ITT:
Americans: I’m so used to being lied to about literally everything that this doesn’t seem that bad.
Smh…
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?
You sir are on the right side of the IQ bell curve. We need packaging that people on the left side of the bell curve can understand.
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.
Just like American blended whiskey is a little bit of whiskey, neutral grain spirits, and caramel coloring.
Clearly, and nothing personal here and I’m sure this honey company are good people, but my comment was more addressed at the larger societal issues of being an American (which I am) and how we’re constantly lied to and how we’ve normalized that 100%. So that small things like this don’t seem worth calling out. This particular label is not that bad, but in other countries, as others have said here, the label would be even clearer. Europeans don’t have to read between the lines with phrases like, “Made with…” to know that’s not the same as “100% made with …”. That’s all.
You might say that Reddit is mostly just high fructose corn syrup, while Lemmy is pure, responsibly sourced honey.
Also the murder hornets.
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.
How old is that bottle? I looked at their website and they don’t even sell this product.
I got a shock random permaban in one of my preferred niche subs from someone obviously having a bad day and projecting it outwardly. It made me sit up and ask why I was putting up with so much nonsense and abandoned reddit that very moment. I had been dipping my toes into Lemmy but this made me dive in head first.
It happens here too. There are certain people. They are indecent. And they want to control the conversation.
Yeah. The rest of us are just indecent and happy to let the conversation go whatever way it goes.
The main difference here being if a community has crappy mods you can not only start your own better one, you can start it on another whole server where said crappy mods have no power. Bonus if the server’s general vibe happens to be a better fit for what you want to build.
“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”…
Report them to… I think it’s the FDA that oversees food labels?
They’re violating federal regulations.
As if that is something someone in Texas cares about these days.
Gonna bet you’re tossing rocks in a glass house.
You know what they say about people who live in glass houses, right?
They’re exhibitionists.
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.
Being honest would require percentages, really
Is that percentage by weight or by volume?
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
