Speciality-Food-Magazine-March-2025

38 TRENDWATCH Sponsored by Malik’s Honey. “If you taste it there will be more nuance there, not just an overly sweet, sugar-syrup taste. Real raw honey will have lots of lovely floral notes.” Speaking from a more technical perspective, Lynne admits there’s no legal definition, but that it’s generally interpreted as honey that is taken directly from the hives and spun. Honey that isn’t raw (almost all of what’s in large retailers) might be pasteurised or have its temperature raised to ensure a long shelf life. “But that takes out all the wonderful natural enzymes and properties from the honey. Raw honey will set quicker, but for me that’s a sign of a good honey.” WHAT DOES ‘ETHICAL H ONEY’ MEAN? “There’s been a lot of talk in the vegan community about taking honey away from the bees,” Lynne explains. “B ut we say, if you let the bees ‘ge t on with it’, they’ll make honey anyway. The average hive needs about 40lbs in store for winter but easily produces 100lbs or more. If you leave it with them they won’t eat it. Beekeepers doing things the proper way will only take away this excess, not what the bees need to survive.” DOES RAWHONEY HAVE MORE HEALTH BENEFITS? Honey has been used for Millennia in ancient medicine and as a natural healer and wellbeing tonic. An obvious use practically everyone will have heard of is the old adage of helping a cough or cold with a warmmug of honey and lemon. This was backed up in 2018 by guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and Public Health England (PHE), which said there was some limited evidence honey can help ease cough symptoms. “Honey is antimicrobial and antiviral, and it draws fluid out,” adds Lynne. “The NHS uses honey dressing for things like ulcers and Though it’s often costly for makers to have batches lab tested (and they don’t have the marketingmagic of the Manuka industry behind them), results are showing many Ling Heather honeys contain a TA level of around 10. DOES RAWHONEY TASTE DIFFERENT? In a nutshell, yes. One of the most delightful properties of raw honey is every batch’s unique flavour profile, informed by what the busy honeybees have been foraging on that season. Raw honey can be floral, savoury, herbal, even a touch salty. HOWCAN RETAILERS BE SURE THEY’RE BUYING REALLY GOOD HONEY? Lynne advises looking for independent, natural honey producers in the UK and forming a relationship with them rather than choosing the most convenient jars from a wholesaler. “Avoid labels that say ‘blend of’ or ‘non EU’ honey on. By law, any honey producer here has to state ‘produced in the UK’ on the label. If it says ‘packed in the UK’ it that doesn’t mean anything. It could be any other honey that’s just put into jars here.” Although honey doesn’t have its own accreditation scheme there are, say producers, some other things you could look out for. Black Bee Honey, for example, is a B Corp, which co- founder Paul Webb says gives a really good level of accountability for the business fromfield to jar. RAW HONEY The Life & Soul of the Pantry ORDER AT TRADE.TRACKLEMENTS.CO.UKOR CALL:01666 827044 T here are some ingredients shoppers naturally pop into their baskets on a regular basis. Milk, bread, flour, sugar, eggs... honey. The basics. They’re products most consumers will buy almost without a second thought. But the way we shop is changing. The British public are becoming ever more concerned about not only the quality, but the provenance of their food and drink. This has been demonstratedmost recently by the outrage over Arla’s plans to introduce the supplement Bovaer into a selected number of farms. And by what’s been billed by some as ‘the great honey scandal’. WHAT IS ‘THE GREAT HONEY SCANDAL’? In 2021, the European Commission’s From the Hives initiative tested honey imported into Europe. It found 46% of consignments weren’t compliant with the European Honey Directive. Testing showedmore than half (57%) of operators had exported honey suspected to contain added sugars, andmore than 60% of operators had imported at least one suspicious consignment. Shockingly, 100% of honey sampled in the UK failed the purity test. Last autumn national press picked up onmore recent discussions around added-sugar honey, which thrust it back into the headlines again. Lynne Ingram, chair of the Honey Authenticity Network UK, and honey ambassador for the British Beekeepers Association, says, “You’ll find very little, if any British honey in most shops. Everything is imported and blended. You probably won’t be able to tell where it’s from. And the prices are so cheap. No real beekeeper producing real honey anywhere could make it for the prices we’re seeing. Consumers are constantly being deceived into buying something that says ‘pure’ and ‘natural’ when it’s anything but!” WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RAWAND STANDARD HONEY? “There’s a magic to raw honey,” says Oussama Azzam, co-founder of 46% OF HONEY SAMPLES TESTED WEREN’T COMPLIANT WITH THE EUROPEAN HONEY DIRECTIVE EUROPEAN COMMISSION also burns, to allow the wounds to heal better.” There’s also a lot of talk around honey as a preventative approach to hayfever, but themessage has become muddied along the way, Oussama explains. “There’s this debate around hay fever season where people think raw honey from their local area will help them. But all raw honey can be helpful for hay fever.” WHICH HONEY IS THE HEALTHIEST? For a long time Manuka honey, derived fromhives where bees have fed from the Manuka bushes, has been heralded as one of nature’s great superfoods –with a price to match. Typically the beneficial properties of Manuka honey are measured by the termTotal Activity or TA. The higher the TA score, the greater the antimicrobial and antifungal clout of the honey. The majority of mainstreamManuka honey brands come in with a TA of somewhere between 10 and 20. But... there’s a British alternative. If you want to offer raw honey with evenmore oomph, look out for varieties labelled as Ling Heather. There’s amagic to raw honey. If you try it there will be more nuance there, not just an overly sweet, sugar- syrup taste OUSSAMA AZZAM, CO-FOUNDER OF MALIK’S HONEY What’s the buzz around the store cupboard essential? Speciality Food finds out more...