Just because the label says "Honey" doesn't mean a bee would eat it

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Plastic honey bears

In fact, reports Andrew Schneider at Food Safety News, more than three-fourths of the honey sold inU.S. grocery stores isn’t technically 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,” writes Schneider. “In theU.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, reported Food Safety News.

“It is a spin-off of a technique refined by the Chinese,” writes Schneider, who foundU.S.groceries are flooded with Chinese and Indian honey banned inEuropeas unsafe because of contamination by antibiotics, heavy metal and a total lack of pollen which prevented tracking its origin.

Food Safety News purchased more than 60 jars, jugs and plastic bears of honey in 10 states and the District of Columbia.Professor Bryant found that:

•     76 percent of samples bought at groceries had all the pollen removed.

•     100 percent of the honey sampled from drugstores had no pollen.

•     77 percent of the honey sampled from big box stores had the pollen filtered out.

•     100 percent of the honey packaged in the small individual service portions from fast-food restaurants had the pollen removed.

•     100 percent of the honey labeled as “organic” wasn’t filtered, but the pollen was from Brazil, which would make it effective in battling

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