Whole Foods 365 Organic Honey: Heated and Devoid of Health Properties of Actual Raw Honey
Written by Ajay Chohan, Founder @ Small Batch Goodness
365 Organic Mountain Forest Honey – Whole Foods
Why Whole Foods 365 organic honey’s branding is misleading: This Whole Foods 365 honey is heated given high levels of the toxic compound HMF found in multiple samples. Whole Foods 365 Honey needs to mention this in its labeling
Potentially harmful contaminants in & processes used by Whole Foods 365 Organic Honey: Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), High heat
Note: This article’s focus is solely on the 365 Organic Honey brand and does not say anything about any other honey brands sold at Whole Foods.
“Organic mountain forest honey”. What a name. There cannot be a honey more pure and raw than one that comes from bees buzzing around a mountain forest. At least that’s the misleading image Whole Foods 365 wants to conjure in your mind when you pick up a container of this. Sadly, the tests tell a different story.
Before we get into the testing, let’s remind ourselves that the health benefits of actual raw honey from bees roaming freely cannot be understated. As this article from Pure Healing Foods states, “honey contains all of the B-complex, A, C, D, E, and K, minerals and trace elements: magnesium, sulfur, phosphorus, iron, calcium, chlorine, potassium, iodine, sodium, copper, and manganese. The live enzyme content of honey is one of the highest of all foods. Honey also contains hormones, and antimicrobial and antibacterial factors.”
Sadly most of these benefits are gone when you heat honey, and you are instead left with a mere sweetener. Not only that, heated honey contains elevated levels of HMF. Levels at which this HMF compound has been proven to be deadly to bees and thus likely toxic to humans as well. My research below dives into Whole Foods’ 365 honey varietals. Please note that this research does not apply to all the honey companies that sell at Whole Foods — but is solely focused on the generic Whole Foods 365 brand honey varieties.
Whole Foods 365 organic honey was shown to have elevated levels of the toxic compound Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) — which is linked with cancer and has been shown to be deadly to bees:
Shayla Love, senior staff writer at Vice, conducted research on adulteration in the honey industry and the severe detrimental effects it is having on our environment. In that study, in tests conducted in two separate labs, this Whole Foods 365 organic honey was found to have HMF values of 156 mg/kg and 162 mg/kg respectively (1).
In that article, Arne Dubecke, who works in R&D at the Germany based food testing lab Quality Services International, says that these HMF levels indicate “heating for a long time (1).” HMF can be found in honey either when the honey is heated or when the bees themselves were fed heated sugar syrups as part of their diet. As mentioned, HMF has been shown to be deadly to bees and thus probably toxic to humans (2).
156 mg/kg and 162 mg/kg are very high levels of HMF! For context, based on research in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, it was recommend that HMF levels in sugar syrup fed to bees not exceed 20 mg/kg (2, 4). A 1975 experiment by Jachimowicz et al. studied the effects of HMF in sugar syrup that was being fed to commercial honey bees. That experiment found that when sugar syrup with HMF values of 150 mg/kg was fed to bees, it caused a mortality rate of 50% within 16 days (2, 3, 4)! The honey itself consumed by humans containing the levels of HMF that this 365 honey has is certainly troubling.
Imagine using this honey for all your sweetening needs throughout the day, everyday, for years or decades. You will have consistently exposed your body to an unnecessarily high dosage of this toxic compound. Remember, these high HFM levels would not be present in raw honey inside a honeycomb. That is, unless, the honey has been processed & heated to above 105 degrees Fahrenheit.
Please Note: Here is my article on the best completely raw + unfiltered honey brands with all its healthful properties intact.
Why do honey producers heat honey in the first place (Hint: none of the reasons are good)?
For that we will have to dive into honey laundering. Honey laundering is essentially when pure honey is mixed with additives like water, synthetic chemicals or sweeteners. Then the honey is heated and filtered to kill off any harmful chemicals and hide the source trail. In the honey industry, it is well known that a large percentage of honey from countries like China and Brazil is adulterated.
To be fair, we do not know if this Whole Foods “mountain forest” honey is heated to hide things like additives or the source of origin, or if it’s heated for another purpose. These are questions, however, that Whole Foods 365 needs to answer. Consumers should clearly know if their honey has been heated at all, what the source of their honey is, and if the honey bees used in its production did indeed buzz freely or if they were fed sugar syrups (which would be disgusting).
Whole Foods 365 organic honey has successfully misled consumers.
This specific container of honey does not claim to be “raw” in its labeling, so technically they are not lying. What actually matters though is the intention of the labeling and how it influences consumers. People read organic mountain forest honey, and believe this is an unprocessed food. Just look at the gullible user comment by ‘jerzeygerl’ on this food rating site here.
Or read this blog post review of 365 Organic Honey here, where the author Amy Selleck mentions “upon getting one of each of these new 365 Everyday Value Organic Mountain Forest Honey products, I decided to do some research to find out what the difference between raw honey and the honey I normally buy in stores is and what I found out is that raw honey…is totally unheated, unpasteurized, unprocessed honey,” not knowing that this 365 organic “mountain forest honey” she is reviewing has indeed been heated and is devoid of the health properties of raw honey.
Whole Foods 365 organic honey is neither healthy nor good for you.
Like most store bought honeys, this honey is not healthy, neither is it pure. Raw honey is good for your body on so many levels. But this heated honey has lost most of the health properties that raw honey has, the reason why many consumers buy honey in the first place. The beneficial enzymes found in pure raw honey have been denatured during heating and the phytonutrients present mostly destroyed. This Whole Foods 365 honey thus no longer carries the same healing and nutritional properties for the body as pure raw honey would.
To top it off, this honey is contaminated with the toxic HMF compound. Consumers should demand Whole Foods 365 come clean on the heating process used for its honey as well as inform us what the bees are fed - are they buzzing around freely or are they being fed heated sugar syrups? Until then, we recommend you avoid this product line and instead buy honey that clearly states it has not been heated or pasteurized in any manner.
Sources - Research for Yourself!
1. https://www.vice.com/en/article/884kq4/your-fancy-honey-might-not-actually-be-honey
2. http://depa.fquim.unam.mx/amyd/archivero/HMF_26874.pdf
3. Jachimowicz, T.; El Sheribiny, G. Problematic der verwenung von invertzucker fur die bienenfutterung. Apidology 1975, 6, 121−143
4. Kammerer, F. X. Aktueller stand der erkenntnisse ü ber die fütterung von bienen mit zucker. Imkerfreund 1989, 1, 12−14