Is raw honey safe to consume

food-safetyhoneyraw

I recently purchased a jar of Very Raw Honey from my local market. I purchased it because it was on sale, but eventually I looked up whether it was safe or not to eat and came across articles such as this and this one. The label on the jar says its 100% unfiltered. Also, I don't know if the articles means truly raw (as in straight from the honey comb) and whether or not the jar of honey I purchased is the same as raw honey that comes straight from the honey comb.

Is it safe to consume? Is the Madhava honey the same stuff that I would get straight from a honey comb?


Upate: So from the post, honey is safe to eat, which I was aware of, but what about raw honey (at least raw honey purchased in stores)? It's still unclear to me.

Best Answer

If the honey has always had a water content below ~18% and is continuously stored in a sealed container (for instance a glass jar), it is perfectly safe to eat as long as you are over 1 year old. In fact, pasteurized honey is inferior in quality. The pollen and spores will remain in there either way, even if they're dead and can only be removed by (expensive) filtering. So if you got an allergy to that, don't eat honey. But they (pollen, yeasts) are not generally harmful. Botulism is not a concern unless you take medication that reduces the amount of acid your stomach produces.

Acid inhibits the growth in the stomach, your (good) bacteria in the gut (after the acid has been neutralized) will then continue to protect you. Since infants don't have sufficient/stable composition of bacteria yet, they are in (higher) danger of getting botulism. But even then, they rarely get infected. No point in taking the risk, tho.

Honey is hygroscopic, meaning it will draw moisture from it's surroundings (hence the sealed container). This effectively prevents pathogens to grow, preserving the honey as long as the water content of the honey remains at or below 18%.

In fact, here in germany, honey may not be subjected to temperatures higher than 40°C, it may contain no additives at all and the only thing you can do to it is filter the pollen out. We still don't have waves of botulism from honey here. In fact, I have never once heard of one.