gru:Bz

This morning we went out to a local garden center in search of a concrete goose for the porch. But then we got there and they were closed for the holidays still, so we ended up stopping by some random flea market on the way back.

They had clothes for the goose statues there but alas, no geese to speak of.

They did have this little consignment stand with a bunch of different raw honey products from a Baltimore, Ohio based company called Roger’s Honey.¹

I went to their website and immediately fell into a rabbit hole about raw, natural honey vs the stuff most big grocery chains sell:

More than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn’t exactly what the bees produce, according to testing done exclusively for Food Safety News.

The results show that the pollen frequently has been filtered out of products labeled “honey.”

The removal of these microscopic particles from deep within a flower would make the nectar flunk the quality standards set by most of the world’s food safety agencies.

The food safety divisions of the World Health Organization, the European Commission and dozens of others also have ruled that without pollen there is no way to determine whether the honey came from legitimate and safe sources.

Source: Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn’t Honey | Food Safety News

The article was a super good read! I had no idea about all the potential health benefits either:

“Raw honey is thought to have many medicinal properties,” says Kathy Egan, dietitian at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. “Stomach ailments, anemia and allergies are just a few of the conditions that may be improved by consumption of unprocessed honey.”

I’ve always heard it’s a good natural remedy for common colds and stuff like that, but that’s about where my knowledge of it ended. I’d only ever had the ultra processed junk until I found this stuff today.

It’s the little things in life lol.