Many years ago I rented a house from a man who ran a small grocery store in the town where we were living. One day I stopped by his store for a jar of honey. For a reason I did not understand at the time he began telling me about honey, specifically the brand I had chosen. Pointing to the jar, he said, “That stuff has never seen a bee.” I was shocked. I had bought that brand before and believed it to be pure honey. It looked, tasted and smelled like all the other honey I had eaten over the years. As he explained his statement I came to realize that I had chosen a counterfeit product–it looked, tasted, etc. enough like pure honey to fool me. Lesson learned. Over the years God has confirmed the lessons He had formerly taught me. The “honey lesson” was no exception.

Years after the “counterfeit honey episode” I met and became friends with a man who kept bees. Having worked in the food industry for a number of years he was familiar with federal regulations regarding food labeling. My friend told me that the product a manufacturer has labeled “HONEY” need not be 100% pure honey to legally carry the label. The Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows honey to be laced with things like syrup and still be labeled “HONEY.” The jar can even contain more syrup than honey and still be labeled “HONEY.” God works in mysterious ways to teach me something He wants me to teach others. In this instance the lesson is this: Before consuming the contents of honey, read the ingredient label to learn exactly what is inside. The FDA requires the product manufacturer to print on the container a list of what is inside it in descending order of content amounts. For example, if the jar of “honey” contains more honey than syrup, the contents list must state honey, syrup in that order. To the contrary, if the jar contains more syrup than honey, the list will say syrup, honey in that order. The problem is that we honey lovers fail to read the content list. We assume that HONEY means only HONEY. As a result, billions of people are deceived into buying, consuming and being satisfied with a fake product because it looks, smells and tastes like the real thing. To be continued. L.J.