From what seems like a plot device for an episode of CSI, the website “Food Safety Network” has an article this week warning about the honey we may be buying.

Honey in familiar consumer containers, imagae courtesy of Wikipedia

The FSN reports that their research shows that most of the honey in U.S. stores are not really honey.  This is due to the lack of pollen in the honey, which is used to detect where the honey came from.  Knowing the origin is important since it determines whether or not the honey comes from a safe source.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, pollen can be removed by a process called “ultra-filtration”.  This procedure is claimed to be used to mask the origins of honey that are made in unsafe regions where contaminants such as antibiotics and heavy metals can find their way into honey.  Suspected culprits in the FSN report include China and India who at one point were pushing cheap honey into the U.S. market before getting hit by trade tariffs.

Ultra-filtered “honey” is also not considered to be honey by the FDA.

The FSN provide the following listing to help identify the honey they tested to have no pollen.

Honey Without Pollen list, image courtesy of the Food Safety Network.

The article also makes a distinguishing difference between regular filtration and ultra-filtration.  While ultra-filtration removes the trackable pollen from honey, all regular filtration do is remove the debris from hives, bee wax, and other visible contaminants.

The FSN article recommends purchasing honey from your local beekeepers or any of the safe brands that do not filter pollen.  You can read more of the FSN article by clicking here.

Recently, we mention that there is a food contamination notice out in the USA due to listeria bacterium.  Even earlier than that, we wrote about the radiation found in foodstuffs in Japan as a result of the Fukushima plant incident.

Today, CNN with the help of health.com released a short list of foods to avoid in general.

Here they are:

Raw Milk

Risks:  Low chance of cleaning out harmful contaminants that may have gotten into the milk.

Raw Sprouts

Image courtesy of CNN.com

Risks: Uncooked bean sprouts has been the cause of at least 30 foodborne outbreaks since 1996.

Raw Oysters from the Gulf of Mexico

Risks:  Oysters are one of the natural custodians of the sea, one of their niches is to clean the water of contaminants.  Now mix that with the warmer climates of the Gulf of Mexico and you get bacterium such as Vibrio vulnificus growing.  I dare you to google it.

You can read the rest of the CNN article here.

Health.com also has a list called “10 Types of food  that can make you sick“.  Happy browsing.