Honey is one of the ingredients I value most in my pantry. Its layered natural flavor, which can vary from floral to earthy to nutty, adds a sweetness to dishes. It’s an essential ingredient in my Sumactail and Basilberry Mocktail recipe. I also love adding it to dessert dishes like Baked Apple Jack to enhance the fruit.

This sweet golden liquid is as good drizzled on roasted carrots as it is swirled into a glass of hot tea. But there’s so much more to it—and a lot that’s misunderstood. Here, we break it down.

xPrimaFoodie

Honey 101

A thick, rich, golden liquid, honey comes from the orchestrated teamwork of honeybees living in a colony. They work in harmony to extract nectar from flowers and other vegetal sources (hence the varying flavors), then engage in a detailed process of digesting and regurgitating the nectar so it mixes with their natural enzymes. Eventually this process causes the nectar to thicken into the golden, sweet goo that is honey.

Nutritional and Medicinal Properties

For centuries, cultures across the globe have been using honey for its nutritional elements and healing benefits. Research shows that honey, deemed a “flavorful liquid food of high nutritional value,” boasts numerous flavonoid antioxidants, as well as small amounts of various minerals including calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc. It also has a lower glycemic index than sugar.

In addition to being a nutrient-dense alternative to sugar and other conventional sweeteners, honey has many medicinal benefits— which is why ancient cultures have long used it as a cure for ailments. It naturally has anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties, making it a protective salve. And studies have shown it to boast anti-inflammatory capabilities, to stimulate immune responses within a wound, and to provide allergy relief.

Types of Honey

Honey is as complex as it is delicious. This is because the busy bees that make it live in different regions across the globe and extract nectar from various sources of local vegetation. For example, when a honey is called ‘Orange Blossom Honey, this means that the bees mainly frequented orange blossoms for their nectar. The same goes for ‘Buckwheat Honey,’ ‘Lavender Honey,' ’Wildflower Honey,’ and countless other varieties. The flavor profiles and nutritional values will vary depending on where the bees have sourced their nectar.

The Plight of the Bees

While it may seem easy enough to grab a jar of honey off the shelves, the complex world of honey's natural makers is in danger. ‘The plight of the honeybee,’ as stated by the advocacy group Friends of the Earth, is a serious issue. The globe’s honeybee population is rapidly declining due to use of fertilizers and pesticides, disease, habitat loss, and other unsustainable human-made practices. This presents dire consequences for essentially every ecosystem on earth, as bees’ pollination impacts the flourishing of countless vegetal species. Losing bees would create a great danger to our existing global food systems.

Growing Demand

Trend analysis shows a growing demand for honey—which, of course, fuels a need for its supply. As a result, honey has become greatly commercialized and industrialized to accommodate this growing need. Many commercial sourcing methods include forced, exploitative, and extractive measures and thus treat the bees with little to no consideration or care. In some industrial or commercial hives, human workers employ smoke techniques to extract bees. Others cut the queen bee’s wings to prevent her from leaving the colony to go to a new hive (thus impeding her ability to mate). Some honeybees are fed artificial sweeteners, such as sugar water or high fructose corn syrup. This lacks nutrition leaving their immunity compromised.

Sustainable Sourcing

While all pure and natural honey is nature’s gold, not all honey on the shelves is equal. Unsustainable practices, cruel measures, and other cryptic means can often lead to adulterated, pesticide-laden, or even artificial honey. To ensure you get the highest product with the most concentrated nutrients, it’s important to look out for several things:

Local: The best honey to get is local honey. This ensures it’s fresh and derives from nectar from the region you live in (which can be great for combating allergies). You can source good quality, real raw honey from your local farmers market. As always, be sure to ask questions about harvesting and bee treatment—and get to know your farmers.

Raw and Unfiltered: Raw honey is the densest in nutrients and healthy enzymes. That is because it has undergone limited to no processing from the hive to the jar, so it’s in its purest form. There may be some trace impurities in raw honey. Unfiltered honey may undergo a mild straining to remove some impurities, but it is done so in a way that honors the honey’s integrity.
Honey that is not marked pure raw or unfiltered means that it has likely been processed, blended with carrier ingredients (like corn syrup), or heated in a way that will jeopardize its natural purity. High amounts of heating and/or filtering often robs the liquid of its beneficial natural enzymes, chemical compounds, and antioxidant properties.

Humane Sourcing: As previously mentioned, honoring the integrity of the bees is critical. Aim to source from local farmers who humanely care for their bees or brands who put transparency and ethics first.

What to Look for in the Market

Like shopping for eggs, sourcing a good quality honey in the market requires a bit of a dance. The first marker: Look on the jar to find the honey’s location of origin. Again, it’s always best to purchase honey that is harvested in the region you live in.

Some markets offer honey that is labeled organic, which would ideally mean that the bees are humanely treated and allowed to pull nectar from vegetation that hasn’t been treated with pesticides. This is ideal, but nearly impossible to fully guarantee. When ethical beekeepers bring their bees to source their nectar, it’s impossible to know if the bees are always pulling from vegetation that is, in fact, organic. Therefore, when it comes to honey in the US, the organic marker is still nebulous. Most labeled organic are a blend of honeys from other countries, usually Mexico and Brazil.

Rather than being lured in by the ‘organic label’ in this case, look for other markers that communicate that the honey has been ethically and locally produced in your region. True Source Certified, an independent third-party verification system, is an excellent marker as it verifies authenticity, purity, and traceability of ethically produced honey.

PrimaFoodie-Approved Brands

Here are some of our favorite honey brands at PrimaFoodie. Each follows ethical beekeeping and harvesting practices:

Honey Pacifica: With apiaries in southern California, Honey Pacifica has partnerships with local farmers to provide ample space, crops, and water for their honeybees.
Bloom Honey: Bloom Honey is unfiltered and unpasteurized. It’s also True Source Certified.
Blue Ridge Honey: Ethically produced, family owned, and local to California.
White Gold Honey: White Gold is based out of Canada. Although all of us at PrimaFoodie aim to source local honey in California, this company boasts excellent standards. They produce unheated, unfiltered, untreated, unprocessed pure raw honey.