Kroger Honey: Heated and Without the Health Benefits of Actual Raw Honey

Written by Ajay Chohan, Founder @ Small Batch Goodness

Private Selection Raw & Unfiltered Honey – Kroger

Why Kroger Private Selection honey’s branding is misleading: Kroger Private Selection honey was shown to be heated at a high temperature and has consequently lost the health benefits of raw honey. It also contains the toxic compound Hydroxymethylfurfural. The labeling is thus false and misleading.

Potentially harmful contaminants in & processes used by Kroger Honey: Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), High heat

Kroger Private Selection Honey is a processed sweetener — not nature’s raw goodness

Sadly, there is no shortage of fake or misleading honey brands, whether in store or online. This Kroger ‘Raw & Unfiltered’ honey is heated honey, not raw honey with all its health benefits. Actual raw honey is nourishing for our bodies with its profile of essential minerals, amino acids and live enzymes. Whereas heated honey is merely a food sweetener. Let’s now dive into why we know this Kroger honey is most likely heated.

High levels of Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) in Kroger honey, and why you should care about this highly toxic chemical compound:

Kroger’s Private Selection Raw & Unfiltered Honey was shown to contain high amounts of your good old 5-Hydroxymethyl-2-furaldehyde (also known as Hydroxymethylfurfural or HMF). HMF is a compound that forms when you heat sugar syrups or honey, and is toxic if above certain thresholds, more on that below.

Honey producers heat honey to make it easier to flow and process. Also, in commercial beekeeping it is sadly common practice to feed the bees themselves various heated sugar syrups. Not only is this completely unnatural (you know, bees should be buzzing around collecting nectar from flowers), these heated sugar syrups fed to bees also contain HMF, toxic to bees and other beings. The HMF levels in Kroger honey could thus be a resulting combination of the honey itself being heated or the honey bees being fed heated sugar syrups. Regardless, both are unnatural and harmful processes.

Class action lawsuit challenging Kroger’s Raw & Unfiltered claims:

Coming back to Kroger Private Selection’s Raw & Unfiltered product labeling, in September 2019 Kathleen Pope had brought a class action lawsuit against Kroger for misleading consumers given their honey is likely heated, and thus not raw (1). Her tests showed high values of the toxic compound HMF in this Kroger honey, which indicate it had been heated to over 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Furthermore, in independent laboratory tests, this Kroger honey was shown to have an HMF value of 100 mg/kg (1). This is important as high levels of HMF indicate a honey has been processed and heated, and HMF is toxic.

The concerns surrounding high Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) levels & links to cancer:

100 mg/kg is not a negligible amount either. A 1975 experiment by Jachimowicz et al. studied the effects of HMF in sugar syrup that was being fed to commercial honey bees. That experiment found that when sugar syrup with HMF values of 150 mg/kg was fed to bees, it caused a mortality rate of 50% within 16 days (2, 3, 4)! It was thus recommend that HMF in sugar syrups fed to bees not exceed 20 mg/kg (2, 4). The honey itself having 100 mg/kg of HMF, as is the case with this Kroger honey, certainly poses potential toxicity risks to humans.

Please Note: Here is my article on the best completely raw + unfiltered honey from small producers with integrity.

HMF’s mutagenic effects on human cells:

As The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry here states, “…various animal experiments showed that HMF has a number of structural alerts that pose possible genotoxic and carcinogenic risks. Some studies have revealed that HMF may induce genotoxic and mutagenic effects in bacterial and human cells and promote colon and liver cancer in rats and mice” (2). Needless to say, it’s best to avoid any honey with high levels of HMF.

Kroger’s processed and heated honey has lost all health benefits of actual raw honey.

In addition to the toxicity risks, honey heated to this temperature has lost most of the benefits that actual raw honey has. The beneficial live enzymes are denatured by this heating process and the phytonutrients mostly destroyed. Actual raw honey has a ton of health & healing properties for our bodies. It is anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-fungal and anti-tumor to name a few. Most of these properties are destroyed in the heating process.

While the court dismissed Kathleen Pope’s case for “insufficient evidence & sample size”, her findings nonetheless are crucial for the informed consumer. Kroger has not independently provided the HMF levels in its honey brands, something we believe it (along with other producers) should. Consumers buying Kroger’s “raw” honey are thus truly getting a raw deal. Next time you are at the supermarket, choose a honey that is completely raw and actually nourishing for your body.

Sources - Research for Yourself!

1. https://casetext.com/case/pope-v-kroger-co

2. http://depa.fquim.unam.mx/amyd/archivero/HMF_26874.pdf

3. Jachimowicz, T.; El Sheribiny, G. Problematic der verwenung von invertzucker fur die bienenfutterung. Apidology 1975, 6, 121−143

4. Kammerer, F. X. Aktueller stand der erkenntnisse ü ber die fütterung von bienen mit zucker. Imkerfreund 1989, 1, 12−14