5 little-understood facts about Real Honey vs Fake Honey.

I just got sick.

Everyone on earth brought me soup and healthy supplements and rough bark cherry this and weirdly plastic-packaged bullshit. That stuff costs a lot of money! But among the tried and true ways to get well is a huge Ball jar of lemon, cayenne, and this and this. And honey. But because I’ve recently had a Real Honey education courtesy the handsome, charming Tim Brod, I figured a few things out about honey and tea and health that I half knew but now understand, more, and am happy to share with you.

May it be of benefit! ~ Waylon Lewis

1. If honey isn’t raw, it loses most of its nutrients. But! Most honey brands say “very raw” or “raw” or whatever, but aren’t. So find a honey like Highland (click here to see video) that’s truly raw. If it isn’t raw, not only has it lost most of the point of eating it, but it’s likely been watered down. Hint: bubbles should not flow through raw, unfiltered honey.

Want some science? You got it! “Bacteria from bees possible alternative to antibiotics: 13 lactic acid bacteria found in the honey stomach of bees have shown promising results. The group of bacteria counteracted antibiotic-resistant MRSA in lab experiments. The bacteria, mixed into honey, has healed horses with persistent wounds.” (lunduniversity.lu.se)

2. You know honey is almost a magic food? It’ll keep forever, as long as clean and closed—they’ve found honey in Egyptian tombs that you could spread healthfully on your morning toast? Well fake honey isn’t like that—there’s stuff in it. It won’t keep. This is a sign that you’ve been had.

3. You know how honey will inoculate you against allergies, if it’s truly local, depending on what your allergies are and where you’re getting the honey from? Most local honey isn’t local. Often the bees are from China, or Brazil. Make sure your honey’s actually local, and then beyond that, who and how they’re making it. It matters. Ignore label words like “pure,” “raw,” “local” and make sure they actually are. Only “organic” is actually certifiable.

4. You got raw honey, then put it in tea? Of course you do, it’s a cherished tradition. But you just killed most of the goodness in it: heating honey is like heating fresh lettuce: don’t do it, man. Instead, either put it on the lip of your mug where it won’t soak at all (which I do, nomnom), or wait ’til the tea cools before putting it in.

5. Bonus! You do all that, you save the bees. What’s killing bees? Being transported around in trucks getting fed corn syrup to pollinate our crops…

Bee keepers’ use of corn syrup and other honey substitutes as bee feed may be contributing to colony collapse (reuters.com))

…not having flowering plants to visit (too many parking lots, roads, development), and this difficult to pronounce word that chemical companies love to inject into plants, roses, and spray on everything. So you support local, organic, raw honey that’s actually local, organic, and raw—and you’re saving up to 40% of our food supply. That makes you Wonder Woman or Superman, pretty much.

Is this urgent? Yes! “Rate of honey bee losses in the US ‘economically unsustainable,” 50% of US Bees Dead. “We’ve been doing this 30 years, & we’ve never experienced this kind of loss before.”~ Jeremy Hance

Click below to read more:

PS: Burt’s is owned by Clorox.

PPS: Want to help? “Here’s the rule of ONE that we teach: 1. plant one native plant in your yard. 2. get rid of one chemical 3. plant one food (tomato, apple, etc.) 4. Let one pest survive. predators (lady bugs) have to have pests to eat. no pests, no predators. 5. Learn to raise gentle bees.” But caution re raising bees: heed Tim’s words.

More: “If each gardener does one thing, they might do another. Native plants have more pollen than hybrids. Require less maintenance, less water. If someone gets rid of one chemical, they might get rid of another. And maybe another. Just start with one. If you learn that you can grow a piece of food, you might care what you spray on it. And how it is/isn’t pollinated. An ecobalanced yard has pests and predators on all levels. The fastidious home owner wants no holes in leaves, no aphids on plants. Predators HAVE to have prey. If you wipe out the predators, you have to continually spray toxic chemicals to keep all in line. Not smart. Raising bees has the person all of a sudden become connected to the outdoors, much more than dogs/cats/horses. Mason bees are extremely gentle and a simple path to begin with.”

Summary time! Crib notes: How everyone is ruining the amazing honey they buy by putting it in boiling tea, which everyone does. Also: four other ways we’re messing up honey. Honey shouldn’t be heated—if you want all the goodness in it. Raw is best. And even if it says raw, it’s probably not raw. And if it’s not local, you’re missing all the stuff that would get rid of your allergies. And, you’re directly funding the death of bees, ’cause they can’t handle commercial conventional pesticide-heavy operations or getting transported without dying off

~

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