That gourmet luxury blend...

SexWithDogs@infosec.pub to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 936 points –

I was permanently banned from the Reddit sub without recourse for posting this despite not breaking any rules. I'm slowly making the migration over thanks to such encouragement.

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Honey is a commonly faked food. At least they label it so you can avoid it.

At least they label it so you can avoid it.

But they call it honey blend, which implies it's a blend of honey from different sources.
This would absolutely be deemed misleading advertising here.

It sucks in the US where misleading labeling gets a free pass for being technically corrent if you squint hard enough is not considered misleading.

If they were Really Smart™ they would just lable it as a dietary supplement, then all regulation goes out the window and it's a free-for-all!

In the USA, it's recommended to label it as "Honey with corn syrup" (PDF: https://www.fda.gov/files/food/published/PDF---Guidance-for-Industry--Proper-Labeling-of-Honey-and-Honey-Products.pdf) but that's just a recommendation, not a law. The FDA should get stricter about this.

The FDA should get a hell of a lot stricter in general, but decades of political fuckery has made it simultaneously rife with corruption, permanently understaffed and critically underfunded.

The FDA is pretty much in exactly the condition that Republicans want for all regulatory agencies.

I think that interpretation cuts both ways, where the 'blend' could also imply that the honey is blended with something other than honey.

I agree. This should be called a honey sauce at best.

Pretty much the same thing as the "juice cocktails" they have in the juice isle that are fruit juice and sugar water. "Made with real fruit juice!" (like ten percent).

I always squint at meat products that claim something like "made with 100% real chicken." Yeah okay, there is chicken in there, but how much of the food consists of that 100% real chicken?

Yeah, apparently the chicken in there is a hundred percent real, even if only two percent of the product is chicken.

I’ve been buying fruit juice recently after staying away from all that sugar for a lot of years, and I’m sad to find out that most fruit juice in my grocery is corn syrup. Even with being willing to pay more, it can be difficult to find sweetened with fruit juice or even sugar

At least in Denmark it's illegal to use the word 'juice' if there's any sugar water in it. If I see a juice on the self I can be certain it is 100% juice (maybe made from concentrate but that must be written somewhere). If it's not then it is "nektar"

Yeah, have to stay away from the "cocktails" and stick with 100% juice. On the other hand, even most of those have a lot of apple, pear, and grape juice added, which are all very, very sweet. There's more sugar in apple juice than in soda, it's just the kind of sugar that's different.

For me, I have a weight problem so sugar is sugar: I don’t need empty calories. However my kid does not, so I care what kind of sugar he gets his calories from

Understandable, though I'm not sure there's any agreement that fructose is healthier than sucrose.

How bout thems glass bottles that’re straight juice? Often organic, and expensive. Can dilute with water and put on ice… and sweeten yourself if needed.

I’ve gotten those a few times as well. Very expensive. I’m willing to pay more but those are a lot more. It doesn’t help the they seem to want to outdo each other on how “different” the juice can be. Some of the combination are truly awful (but they’re all “superfoods”, why shouldn’t we put them together?)

But they call it honey blend

That is illegal as the must label it with what the Honey is blended with. So in this case you'd need to have it labeled "Blended Honey with Corn Syrup" or some variation of that.

I'm not a lawyer, but it looks like you are wrong:

4: If a food consists of honey and a sweetener, such as sugar or corn syrup, can I label the food as only “honey”?
No. A product consisting of honey and a sweetener cannot be labeled with the common or usual name “honey” because “[t]he common or usual name of a food . . . shall accurately identify or describe . . . the basic nature of the food or its characterizing properties or ingredients” (21 CFR 102.5(a)). Identifying a blend or a mixture of honey and another sweetener only as “honey” does not properly identify the basic nature of the food. You must sufficiently describe the name of the food on the label to distinguish it from simply “honey” (21 CFR 102.5(a)).

However they are only exempt from the declaration if it's pure honey, so the part about not having that is clearly against the guidelines. The header on page 1 says: "Contains Nonbinding Recommendations" So it's very fuzzy to a layman like me.

I heard about that. I wouldn't even buy beeswax from Amazon because I heard all the horror stories of even some of the highly rated products being cut with Paraffin, which gives me headaches. I could give you a list.

Depending on where you live, i would recommend checking out the local farmers market in the weekends. I bought iver a gallon of local honey for about $50 last summer and i am only just starting to finish it off.

And trying to get pure maple syrup and olive oil these days is also a pain, when it shouldn't be.

Maple is often blended, and olive and avacado is straight up fraud most often.

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