
The Science Behind Honey’s Eternal Shelf Life (2013) - sndean
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-science-behind-honeys-eternal-shelf-life-1218690/?no-ist
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annnnd
> If you buy your honey from the supermarket, that little plastic bottle of
> golden nectar has been heated, strained and processed so that it contains
> zero particulates, meaning that there’s nothing in the liquid for molecules
> to crystallize on, and your supermarket honey will look the same for almost
> forever. If you buy your honey from a small-scale vendor, however, certain
> particulates might remain, from pollen to enzymes. With these particulates,
> the honey might crystallize, but don’t worry–if it’s sealed, it’s not
> spoiled and won’t be for quite some time.

I heard a different story. If you add sugar to honey (which some vendors,
small and especially large, do) then it won't crystallize. There might be
other reasons for honey being always in liquid state (linked article talks
about filtering), but I am quite sure that small vendors in my area don't use
special filtering methods - more likely they add sugar to make extra money. Am
I off the track to be always looking for honey that crystallizes?

~~~
mrweasel
>more likely they add sugar to make extra money

That's actually illegal to sell as honey in many countries. It's known as
"false honey" here, it's typically something Chinese producers will do. Either
that or just have the bees convert sugar water to "honey". It's also the
reason why local and smaller bee-keepers (like myself) aren't having any
problems selling our honey. I have more people wanting to buy my honey than I
can supply, because they trust that what I sell or give them is real honey.

How liquid the honey is, is mostly down to the flowers the bees visited. Rape
seed honey will crystallise in the hive, if you don't extract it quickly
enough. The flowers in my neighbourhood will yield honey that pretty much
refuses to crystallise.

Interestingly enough, due to Danish regulations, the minute I put honey in a
jar to sell, it's required to have an expiration date 1 year and 6 months into
the future.

~~~
annnnd
Interesting, didn't know the flowers' type would affect honey crystallization.

The problem I see is that there is not much regulation and inspection going on
with smaller bee-keepers. Which is great on one side, because you have many
hobbyists who take pride in what they do and produce really great honey - but
on the other hand it makes one wonder why some of the honey doesn't
crystallize. I guess I will not be so fast to judge then. :-) Thanks!

~~~
beagle3
It affects everything. The flavors of (say) avocado-flower honey and citrus-
flower honey are so different, that you might not recognize avocado honey as
honey if you're not used to it.

~~~
thomnottom
Wow, I've never heard of avocado-flower honey. What kind of flavor does it
have?

~~~
beagle3
More complex, a little less sweet. I don't know how to describe it, except (to
paraphrase Douglas Adams), "it is quite, but not entirely, unlike citrus-
flower honey."

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Kristine1975
Article is from 2013 and some of the links in it are dead, unfortunately.
Nevertheless, really interesting.

~~~
brillenfux
Conclusion: Internet is not made of honey.

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krzrak
Idea for luxurious and expensive food (for people, who have too much money):
thousand years old honey.

~~~
Kristine1975
Is it actually possible to verify that the "1000 yo" honey is actually 1000
years old? Because if not I'm totally relabeling honey I bought at the
supermarket and disrupting the luxury food sector.

~~~
gruez
Not really "disrupting". More like fraud.

~~~
MichaelBurge
Other ways to disrupt established business are to visit their parking lot and
slash everyone's tires, cut power and internet to their company buildings,
slander them on public television, drive by their building and honk a really
loud horn, find their business partners and spread false rumors, DDoS their
website, make false tips to the SEC that they're scamming investors, etc.

That's the image that appears in my head whenever I hear about some startup
disrupting an industry; like they're a criminal with poor impulse control.

~~~
legulere
Disregarding all regulations to be cheaper than all competitors certainly is
missing from your list.

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hamilyon2
Actally honey begins to contain a lot of HMF carcinogen after a while. Hotter
the conditions faster it becomes poisonous. Just look at highly cited research
on the theme
[https://scholar.google.ru/scholar?q=honey+hmf&btnG=&hl=ru&as...](https://scholar.google.ru/scholar?q=honey+hmf&btnG=&hl=ru&as_sdt=0%2C5)

~~~
bluefinity
HMF doesn't seem to be carcinogenic:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21462333](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21462333)

~~~
anpill
As a layman, I noticed the abstract said that "caramel colors" need to be
evaluated further? why would that be? Also, would honey classify as this
"caramel" color or does the coloring here refer to something else besides the
color of the food?

