I mean it’s not terrible advice. Alleegies or not, local honey is generally delicious.
While it’s not a cure all, the advice is also legit.
Likely because honey has anti-inflammatory properties.
The local honey myth is about using the honey as a form of allergy immunotherapy since it would be from local pollen.
I thought it would work until I realized I’ve been exposing myself to pollen every damn year as it is. If my body was ever going to get used to it then it would have already lol
Now I just keep eating the honey because it’s honey, why not? Lol
The concept is its very concentrated, but because it’s broken down in the stomach you won’t likely have an allergic reaction. I didn’t know people used honey when they sell bee pollen for the exact purpose.
Has the idea been disproven? I remember well the various flipflopping about toddlers and peanuts
That’s different. With peanuts you’re directly ingesting the allergen. With honey you have to hope that enough of the allergen, survived the honey making process, assuming you’re allergic to something bees make honey from.
There’s no question that allergy immunotherapy is legit, but honey is unlikely to be a viable method of it.
50 - 80g of honey a day?! Allergies are gone hello diabetes!
Seriously 1g honey to 1kg of body mass is insane. This is obviously ignoring the cost which is also insane.
Yay allergies solved. New problem: diabetes.
A lot of you gluttonous chunkers need to learn the skill of not fucking eating all of it.
Hey don’t get all up in my crank. It’s the study posted that made the conclusion about what it takes for allergen success.
Yeah the study used 1g/kg. So if we use nice round numbers, a 100kg person would be doing 100g of honey or roughly 80g of sugar to start the day. That’s more than a 20oz (568ml) bottle of Coke!
Hmmm coke with honey
Picked up spicy peach honey. Was delicious.
Then the habaneros came a-knocking.
Eat local, honey.
i’m not your honey, pal
I’m not you pal, sweetie
I’m not you sweetie, babe
I’m not your babe, buddy
Eat, local honey.
Eat lo-cal honey .
In the lo-cal calzone zone.
Eat lo-cal, honey
But I like chain restaurants. And don’t call me “honey”.
oh i just realized that’s not what the message said. i was thinking that sounds like a condescending reply.
Same idea as immunotherapy shots or sublingual drops.
Whether it’s actually local, and if the allergens are actually concentrated enough to make any difference, is a very different question. Set of questions.
Don’t forget this one: Is it actually honey? Honey flavored corn syrup doesn’t help.
I’m guessing this is a US thing? At least I’ve never heard of it before as a european and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be allowed to be sold as honey here
Yeah, us Canadians have to check the label to make sure the honey is Canadian, otherwise its usually 50% corn syrup.
Another easy tell is if you don’t mix it for a couple months it splits, and all the corn syrup floats to the top.
American here … we’re really sorry. We don’t like it neither; but the corporations, you see? they need their profits.
Another American here … I have literally never seen honey that’s been stepped on.
What brands do this?
Same, and I eat a fair amount of honey. Even when I buy cheap stuff on the road, it’s 100% honey. Maybe there’s some Dollar General store brand that’s severely discounted and cut, but I’ve never seen it.
Are you on the coasts or in the flyovers?
Also very much a problem in Europe sadly. Of course not allowed, but pretty hard to detect. There are test that can tell the difference, but they are not accepted by the EU (yet?).
i mean this is solved by not buying imported honey, even here in sweden i can just go on a walk around the area and find at least one person selling honey from their backyard at a perfectly resonable price, so i don’t see the point in buying imported unless you’re a colony of bees in a trenchcoat and need it to survive.
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It is a thing. I think it started with “pancake syrup” being corn syrup with brown color and artifical maple flavor. You know, Big Buttersworth
They said local honey, not factory made junk.
I would hope the roadside stand in front of the apiary has real honey and not corn syrup. But you never know…
Excuse me? Immunology shots are freaking amazing. I’ve been on them for about 2 years and the difference between last spring and this sptirng is incredible. I no longer need Allegra daily.
I think he meant for honey. The shots are very specifically concentrated lol.
Even then honey has some anti inflammatory effect that can help regardless of the added benefit of bee pollen
OK, I reread the comment and I see that I misunderstood it.
I only did mine for 6 months, but I went from dying every spring to getting a bit sniffly if the pollen count is so high walking outside smells like it. I can’t imagine how effective it would have been if I did all 3 years.
Fun fact: you can do it with poison ivy. I knew someone who had it done, and he could rub the stuff on his face with no reaction.
Pollution makes my hayfever so much fucking worse.
Walking down the river, trees, grass, weeds everywhere. Fine.
Walk to work down busy A-roads, eyes and nose streaming.
Fuck cars.
You’ll encounter more flowering plants in urban/suburban environments thanks to planning that favors male trees to female trees which makes more pollen.. So yeah, cars definitely contribute to breathing problems, but city planners make it even worse.
Big ass conkers in my street are definitely female considering the fruits it gives, so funny in the middle of a city
I see lots of competing discussion on whether this is a bs wives tale or not.
Its enough of an excuse to eat more delicious honey though
Oh so you just want everyone to be sticky???
I’d prefer everyone be slippery but sticky is acceptable.
Meet me at the truck stop in an hour. Stall #3.
The things you are alleegic to aren’t the things bees are making honey out of. We mostly have allergies to things that are broadcast spwaning obscene amounts their pollen like ragweed, mold, and grass, while bees use flowering plants to make their honey.
Jokes on you, I’m allergic to basically everything!
The hypothesis is that you are eating all of the flower allergens that are causing your allergies. The body usually doesn’t react to things you eat so by consuming those allergens your body does have an immune response since it’s part of food.
This is a fine point because I have oral allergy syndrome, which is my body violently reacting to bananas because of my ragweed allergy and my immune system being dumb as hell.
But also o do react less to flower pollen with a spoon of local honey a day so maybe it’s just a big weird world we live in.
There really aren’t a lot of good studies/experiments done.
So we’re left with anecdotes. While that’s not totally worthless, it also can’t be conclusive.
Honey is better for you than refined sugar.
Also, getting local honey helps limit your carbon footprint and helps out your region economically.
Honey is refined sugar. Just because a bee did the refining doesn’t make it any healthier than Fritolay doing it
Bees never put a chemical fat substitute that causes Anal Leakage in their potato chips.
They can’t be perfect
My one gripe with bees is they aren’t the direct cause of my anal leakage
Its not 1 to 1.
https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/honey-vs-sugar
Based on that, honey is denser so you need less of it. And while it is refined, it is less refined than sugar
Except oir brains aren’t wired to consume kess if something. Sugar is great if you are an animal or a hunter gather bevause it is calorie rich while taking little effort to harvest (once you fogure out how to deal with the bees). Calorie dense is great when you dont know ehen your next meal is coming, but in out modern society it means health problems.
And i love honey, but your body doesn’t see any difference between a spoonful of honey, molasses, agave, maple syrup, or high fructose corn syrup. They are all just a concentrated dose of sugar.
Honey is filled with nutrients and antioxidants. Refined sugar is filled with refined sugar.
The amount of nutrients and antioxidants you’re getting in the amount of honey you consume is negligible at best. It’s a spoon full of calories.
Calories isn’t the worst part. It’s a spoonful of insulin spike.
This article describes a study that looked into exactly that claim: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/11/honey-seemed-like-a-healthier-choice-then-scientists-tested-it-against-high-fructose-corn-syrup/
It’s gotta be organic and it’s gotta be local, but it works like magic. A tablespoon a day over winter.
This is a myth, but placebos can be powerful… https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/is-local-honey-a-cure-for-hayfever
You appear to be attempting to link to a specific study, however that study is not accessible from your link. It’s possible you were trying to reference this study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11868925/, which was done on 36 (human) participants at the University of CT in 2002. Full paper available at: https://sci-hub.scrongyao.com/10.1016/S1081-1206(10)61996-5
I’m not certain that a paper with 36 participants would be representative of all humans.
Searching PubMed non-exhaustively for “honey” and “allergies” yields this paper, Allergies and Natural Alternatives (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.otc.2022.06.005), states, amongst other things, that “The efficacy of these therapies is varied and under-researched.” Alas, this seems to be the case.
But there’s no pollen to be allergic to in the winter?
Do you know where honey comes from? Read about it. You’ll be amazed.
Definitely a shitpost, but please consider other treatments for allergies than honey. Honey bees are domesticated and have a net negative on local environments where they aren’t native, such as North America. And rearing honey bees is not vegan, for those who care about pollinator welfare on both the domesticated and natural sides.
Shut the fuck up with that vegan ass advice.
Evidence vs coercion. Gotta love Lemmy sometimes.
Edit: c/whooooosh 😅
They were very obviously making a joke based on the original picture
Oh haha I see it now, yeah I think this is also a typical Lemmy case of users aka me not reading headlines or posts and only the comments section. :)
alright we doin this okay so most small-time beekepers at least (can’t speak for the larger industrial ones) only rarely resort to providing sugar as a substitute for honey because bees massively overprodice it. Also, the lack of micronutrients is not supported by any literature I can find, and additionally sugar substitution should only occur during the winter regardless. Finally: if bees are being exploited they will just leave. Everything I’ve found indicates that under poor conditions the entire hive will swarm and just go somewhere else. I do think the point about impacting biodiversity is valid, but if that were a decider for whether a food source is vegan there would be a whole lot fewer crops on that list.
My dad is a beekeeper, so I can pretty much confirm what you’re saying about sugar bricks/syrup in the winter. And actually there is some evidence online saying that beekeepers should keep honey in the hives.
As for migration, many wild bees hibernate, in-place over the winter, and the research regarding wild honey bees, although sparse, seems to suggest the same. Having bees stay in the same hive over the winter isn’t necessarily unnatural.
On the swarming point, beekeepers try to observe and look out for specific signs of swarming in order to prevent this from happening. And if swarming does happen, beekeepers can set up swarm traps. My dad has done this in the past, and he has had some success.
The point about all of the above though is that beekeepers 1) intentionally rob the bees of the work (i.e. honey creation) they’ve contributed to over the course of the spring/summer/fall nectar flows, and 2) intentionally try to trap hives that want to escape due to a lack of good conditions - both immoral acts imo.
And the biodiversity impacts don’t just affect food sources. Honey bees in such high populations that even modest beekeeping operations sustain overcrowd the native populations, capitalizing on nectar resources first, and risk native populations via virus and disease spillover. Native plants often have adapted along with native bees over time such that both species receive/perform pollination activities to 100% effectiveness. Honey bees are generalists, and so while they may pollinate more plants, they may only do so to 75% effectiveness or less (just throwing a number out there). So, plants get pollinated to lesser degrees with honey bees, and the leftover nectar for native bees often isn’t enough to sustain populations meaningfully.
This is why when people say save the bees, the actual message of the campaign is geared towards native bees - not honey bees. There are capitalistic interests involved in keeping honey bees populations healthy and high to the detriment of local environments.
Shits gonna get even more complicated when we prove they have a conscience
Right. Don’t get hives because it’s an imperfect solution so it’s useless. Useless!
Gotcha.
