Is your honey Pure

According to research commissioned by Food Safety News, up to 76% of honey options found in US grocery stores are either fake honey, or have been processed to the point that the majority of food laws around the world would prevent them from being labeled as honey.

We all know that honey is much healthier sweetener than sugar, however, looking for honey at your typical supermarket means choosing between lots of fake honey options. Unfortunately, the honey you have in your kitchen cabinets is most likely fake, devoid of essential nutrients and actually unhealthy to the body.

There are those that started out as natural honey, but have been processed to the point that the only parts left of its’ natural state are the sticky texture and the sweetness

Watch out for sugar-free honey. Honey is a product naturally high in sugar, which means that any sugar-free honey you find isn’t honey at all.

Then you will find honey that is listed as blended honey. This means that a portion of the product is pure honey—usually, somewhere between 30% and 70%– and the rest is high-fructose corn syrup.

Finally, there are those companies that feel pure honey is not sweet enough, so they choose to add sugar—even whole pieces of rock sugar—to their jars of pure honey, negating any health benefits the honey might have offered.

So what are the honey options???

You might be surprised by how many differences there are. You have medical-grade vs food-grade honey, raw honey, organic honey, pasteurized honey, and more. Then there are the differences based on where the honey is made. Variables here can include the level of pollution, the weather, the soil, and even the ethics and legal restrictions found in the area where the honey was produced.

Pasteurized Honey: This is honey that has been heated and treated to ensure than certain pathogens are not present. However, this process kills the healthy bacteria within honey, eliminating the vast majority of its natural health benefits.

Medical-Grade Honey: This honey is exceptionally high in antimicrobial properties. These antimicrobial properties make it excellent to use when treating scrapes, cuts, and burns. Manuka honey is one of the most wildly used forms of medical grade honey.

Food-Grade Honey: In essence, food-grade honey is anything that doesn’t qualify as medical grade. This honey will not have as high of antimicrobial properties, but if you choose the correct brand, you will still experience health benefits.

Raw Honey: This is pure, unheated, unpasteurized, and unprocessed honey. In terms of preserving all the healthy elements of honey, consuming raw honey is vital.

Organic Honey: Organic honey is usually also raw honey, but not all raw honey is organic. Organic honey is made in an area that is free of fertilizers and pesticides, including the flowers where the bees gather their pollen. Organic, raw honey is the ONLY honey our family consumes.

Depending on where you live, access to locally produced, raw honey is pretty simple; you might be able to find it sold along the side of the road or at your local farmer’s market. Local grocers committed to supporting other local food vendors might even have it available on their shelves.

Why raw honey is healthier?

Raw (unprocessed) honey is filled with pollen, enzymes, vitamins, and other elements that can't survive the pasteurization process which means that their benefits do not survive, either. While your number one concern might be decreasing the amount of refined sugar in your family’s diet, you also do not want to forgot the many health benefits that unprocessed honey offers.

Raw local honey can help with boosting your immune system against allergies and is a powerful anti-bacterial since it contains hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). Hydrogen peroxide is proven to have powerful antioxidant and anti-bacterial qualities that inhibits the growth of bacteria. Some people use raw honey to treat minor burns and cuts with raw honey because it has such strong anti-bacterial properties.