Sweet obsession: China’s manuka madness
bbc.com
bbc.com
From virtually no imports of New Zealand honey just seven years ago, China has drawn level with Hong Kong as the second largest market in the world, according to government statistics, importing nearly 1,500 tonnes in 2014 — the large majority of which is manuka honey. Taken together, the China and Hong Kong markets far outpace the UK, which has been the world’s largest market for a decade but has seen imports steadily decline since 2009.
And from Wikipedia:
In the wake of the high premium paid for mānuka honey, the majority of product now labelled as such worldwide is counterfeit or adulterated. According to research by UMFHA, the main trade association of New Zealand mānuka honey producers, whereas 1,700 tons of mānuka honey are made there annually representing almost all the world's production, some 10,000 tons of produce is being sold internationally as mānuka honey, including 1,800 tons in the UK.[1]
Those number definitely don't add up. Presumably the vast majority of Manuka being consumed in China is counterfeit.
It's like the counterfeit Champagne they have that is too pressurized, and occasionally kills a billionaire when the cork flies into his temple.
I used to eat a lot of Manuka honey when I grew up in New Zealand. It is strong-tasting. The Chinese have raised the prices and now I won't buy the stuff in Australia because it is too expensive.
This is my thinking as well. This sounds like yet another Chinese health fad, which often has roots in "traditional" and "alternative" Chinese medicine, which has been shown to be almost all nonsense, with the rare exception that's due more to luck than anything else.
The linked paper describes manuka as having antibacteria properties in regards to dressing wounds. I'm not sure if eating it is giving anyone any benefits and considering what we now know about gut flora and antibiotics, well, people shouldn't just be eating antibiotics like tic-tacs.
> With the right marketing you could get the Chinese to consume anything.
Autocratic states generally don't have any sort of democratic movements for medicine, industrial, air, or food safety, so they never get the proper regulatory bodies to make this stuff safe. Case in point, my wife brought some cold medicine back from Russia. It was chock full of mercury. There were a few articles last year about some common cold medicine marketed to children in China. It was full of lead. FDA advisory here:
With many of these things it boils down to: simple food likely does exactly the same thing. I hear that well-nourished people generally have stronger immune systems.
> regards to dressing wounds
Even if it actually works on dressings the bigger question is: how well does it survive HCl and bile? Can it be absorbed via the intestines? Or is the only active effect killing off flora on its way to be pooped out? Sanitized poop: great.
What these people don't realize is that the body isn't something you put things into an expect the same results. Would they guzzle down bleach simply because it cleans their clothes? Why would they then guzzle down this honey, merely because it sanitizes wounds?
Don't recall name, this was four or five years ago.
Plus it being natural you will have off-label clones riding your expenditure once you got it through so there's no profit margin.
At this point, it would need to be evaluated by the FDA because its making a medical claim.
>because it's naturally occurring?
Penicillium fungi is naturally occurring too. That doesn't' mean you can put it in food arbitrarily.
My BS detector goes off whenever I see a phrase like that.
The human immune system is just that a system and the word system seems to be glossed over as if it's a thing not a bunch of separate parts.
From the smallest molecule to larger cells it's an incredibly complex bunch of biological process and one food affecting all of it simultaneously is probably not true.
If you read the study they link, it explains the immune boosting/modulating functions of the honey.
Example: Furthermore, the ability of honey to reduce ‘reactive intermediates release’[23] may well limit tissue damage by activated macrophages during wound healing. Thus, the immunomodulatory property of honey is relevant to wound repair.
I've seen this stuff work for wound repair first hand, and I've read enough first hand accounts of people successfully treating gut-related diseases with the help of this stuff.. so maybe don't dismiss it just yet, but if this gets very popular, I don't think NZ will be able to keep up.. the prices on the stuff are already a bit much for any average shopper.
Yes, the testing isn't perfect, but at least it's something, and for many people with diseases like ulcerative colitis, where the doctor's recommendation is to remove the entire colon, this honey has offered many an alternative way to manage their disease and keep their colon.
Now, if it were me, personally I would try the honey first, even if it's never been through clinical trials, before removing my entire colon. I mean worse case I eat a bunch of honey.
I get where you're coming from, but until the science is there, there's no reason not to try foods that we already consume regularly.