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The Giant's knife
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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
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Commercial honey is often pasteurized and filtered to avoid crystallization, be smoother and be pollen free. While it can effect the shelf life raw honey isn't enormously dangerous (or illegal anywhere as far as I'm aware) like raw milk but should still be avoided by infants and immunocompromised people. I am also not american.
Isn't honey supposed to be avoided by infants anyway?
Is cristalised honey considered unproper for consumption? Honey doesn't go bad. That is the only food that is so. Cristalised honey is just that: honey that doesn't have the same texture as a more recent more.
Isn’t eating local honey supposed to help with allergies because it contains local pollens? So it like builds an immunity or something?
That's unfortunately untrue. Raw honey contains too little pollen to have an effect, and what little is there is rapidly broken down in the stomach.
It's also the wrong type of pollen as the type collected by bees is from plants that utilize insects, not wind, for fertilization. It's heavy and stickier, so isn't airborne in substantial quantities, and thus not the type of pollens responsible for most seasonal allergies.
Honey can contain botulism, which is why you need to avoid it with babies and those with weak immune systems.
Would stirring it up real good help with that? Like to aerate it. I don't think bubbles would move around very freely but mixing it for a while should eventually expose it all to air.
Edit: no, it does not, the lack of oxygen is only relevant to the production of the toxin, not the stability of it as I incorrectly believed until the following conversation happened.
Did this guy just think that air bubbles can remove botulism?
Clostridium botulinum is anaerobic bacteria. But I doubt it that mixing up the jar of honey once in a while is gonna do anything. Especially since it's apparently the spores that chill out in honey, and only turn into bacteria when eaten.
Please tell me you don't think storing it will get rid of botulism.
Why would I think that? There's a whole conversation thread beside this where I go into more detail about what I thought and why. It was a misunderstanding about how the presence or thereof of oxygen played a role in the toxin's production (it does) and stability (I thought it did but it didn't).
To elaborate a bit, apparently Clostridium botulinum bacteria produce spores, which are very resistant and don't give much of a fuck about anything — e.g. boiling at 100°C. That's why preserved foods are boiled at pressure with higher temps, and pickled with acid and salt to kill the emerging bacteria. Toxin itself can theoretically be destroyed by prolonged boiling, but it's highly potent in very small quantities, so it's always recommended to just toss spoiled canned foods.
Bacteria themselves don't live in honey because of its high sugar content, but if it has spores, those would turn into bacteria in ones' intestines, and children's immune system is not equipped to deal with that.
With "children" what's the actual age that is meant in this case?
I have no certain idea, being blissfully free of the obligation of childcare, so you better clarify that at some more scientifically inclined resource. But from what I've briefly seen on Wikipedia, it seems that switching to solid foods changes the acidity of the stomach environment, or at least the acidity is ready when switching can be done — and the acidity is what nukes bacteria trying to pop up from the spores.
Oh I thought they meant it contained the toxin rather than the bacteria (or spores).
Though I also thought the bacteria was one of the ones that was around us all the time and it's just anaerobic conditions like in an unsterilized sealed can that make it dangerous.
Toxin is produced by the bacteria in canned foods (typically indicated by swelling from the gases that the bacteria also emit). The toxin can't be easily destroyed, and definitely not with enough certainty that it won't paralyze you.
That's 1.3 nanograms, i.e. 0.0000000013 grams. Firstly, your aeration would do absolutely nothing to the toxin, secondly even if it did, consider if you're sure enough that you didn't miss ~0.00000013 grams of it in there.
That's true:
Idk how exactly anaerobic bacteria live and multiply, but at least when spores are dumped into a healthy adult stomach, the acid kills the bacteria. As evidenced by lots of people eating honey all the time.
The way I understand it is the bacteria itself isn't anaerobic (or rather, oxygen isn't toxic to it but it doesn't need it) but the toxin reacts with oxygen. Canned foods lack 02, so a contamination means the toxin builds up over time instead of breaking down quickly, which is how it is so widespread without constantly killing people. That's where the idea that aerating it could reduce the amount of toxin (if it was the toxin rather than the spores that was an issue).
Though I'm still confused about why honey in particular is considered dangerous for babies and immune compromised when they (the babies) are constantly sticking random objects in their mouths that likely have the bacteria and spores on them.
It's certifiedly anaerobic bacteria:
I've never once seen it said that the toxin is destroyed by exposure to oxygen, and can't find such a claim on Wikipedia. If getting rid of the toxin was as easy as stirring the crap out of food for a few hours, the universally prevailing advice wouldn't be to avoid food in swelled cans like your life depends on it (which it does).
Ok, good to know, thanks for the convo. Probably wouldn't have saved any lives, since I would have assumed the amount of stirring required to get rid of it all wouldn't be worth the effort if it did work like that, but my understanding is better now.
Btw, regarding
The go-to methods of preventing C. botulinum multiplying in canned foods is pressure-boiling the food at high temperature for a few minutes and adding acid (i.e. vinegar) and/or salt. The first one kills the spores, the latter two kill bacteria emerging from remaining spores. If this doesn't work too well, the bacteria multiply and start producing the toxin and the gases.
There are also the options of dehydrating the food with salt or smoking, or adding lots of sugar. But the former two are mostly done to meat, to my knowledge, and the latter one is just sweets or honey.
Lol, this was exactly my first thought as well.
Archaeologists have found 3,000-year-old pots of honey that are still edible.
Well, it wasn't in a shelf, was it? Check-mate.
Can, not will
In Finland honey is never pasteurized but also not recommendes for children under 1 year old