They'll sweet talk you with promises of honey...

December 27, 1:08 PMFood ExaminerEric Burkett

Previous Next

2 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Food Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Many promise; not all deliver.

A few months ago, I wrote about the amount of sweeteners included in breakfast cereals. One of the cereals I looked at specifically – simply because I happened to be eating it at the time – was Post’s Honey Bunches of Oats. Post promotes the product by saying it contains “a touch of honey”. They weren’t kidding; a touch is all it contained.

As it happens, some bee-keepers are more than a little annoyed by what they say is a misleading use of the word “honey” to promote products that contain little, if any, honey at all. The makers of Bee Quick, a product used to disperse bees during honey collection, have been running a web site to draw attention to the fact that many of the country’s best selling honey products are not delivering what they promise. They call it "The Wall of Shame".

“Our intent is to expose the fraud, and perhaps embarrass a few food companies into putting more honey in such products,” they write. They also praise the companies that deliver on those promises; you’ll find lists that do everything from praising the good guys to shaming the evil-doers.

Why worry about things like this? There are a few reasons. First is that many people are attracted to what they believe are the healthful aspects of honey. It’s certainly a more complex sweetener than ordinary cane sugar and contains a wide number of vitamins and elements, and one ounce of honey contains only 85 calories compared to the same of sugar at 108 calories. If you’re watching carbs, honey and sugar are pretty much the same, but honey is about five points lower on the glycemic index. Honey is also a source – albeit a small source – of amino acids, the building blocks of protein. Sugar contains none at all. In other words, both are sweeteners and eating too much of either isn’t particularly good for you, but sugar really is just empty calories.

Second, honey is natural, white sugar is not. Bees will produce honey whether humans are involved in the process or not. White, granulated, refined sugar is a man-made product.

The final, arguably most important, reason for using honey over sugar is that honey simply tastes better. While there are plenty of reasons to want a neutral sweetener like plain sugar, honey is wonderfully complex in its flavor and adds depth to foods in a wide variety of ways.

When food manufacturers promise you honey, they’re promising a lot and – apparently – many of them are not delivering.