Honey is a kind of nutritional tonic. It tastes sweet and delicious. It can be eaten by men, women, old and young. So can honey be eaten for a long time? How long is the shelf life of honey? Let's get to know.
According to the truth, honey has no shelf life. There are five kinds of foods that never go bad in nature. They are honey, white wine, vinegar, solid sugar and salt. In 1913, American archaeologists excavated 3300 years old honey in the pyramids of Egypt, which has not gone bad at all and can still be eaten. "It can be seen that the real mature natural honey can be eaten after long-term storage without any strict shelf life. However, as a food listed, according to the "food law" all requirements on the food products to indicate the shelf life, therefore, honey manufacturers generally set the shelf life of honey as 2 years. '(according to Guo Fangbin, 500 questions on bee products medical care)
The unexpected situation is, why do some beekeepers sell honey, saying that the shelf life of honey is only one year? This is very simple. What they produce is immature honey, and the honey that never goes bad refers to the mature honey with high Baume degree.
Many people say: "I am the honey from the bee farm, the most pure!" and honey is never guaranteed, so they do not understand why this "what is the most pure" honey will sour, sour, produce foam gas and cause expansion, and finally serious deterioration?
Honey itself contains many natural sugar tolerant yeast. When the concentration of honey is low (generally below 40 ℃) and the water content is more than 23%, yeast will cause honey fermentation under appropriate temperature conditions (especially in summer). They transform glucose and fructose in honey into ethanol (i.e. alcohol), glycerin, water, etc., and release carbon dioxide to generate bubbles.
I met my former colleague two days ago and took a bottle of Conway's Manuka honey, native to New Zealand. At first sight, it's amazing that the shelf life of this honey is 5 years. Why is the shelf life of honey in China 18 months or two years, but its honey is 5 years? This Convita honey should be sold publicly in China in accordance with the relevant laws and regulations of China. Under the same laws and regulations, why is the shelf life of Convita honey 5 years?
There is no exact evidence, I guess: Convita honey is a natural mature honey, and there is no shelf life of natural mature honey, so there is nothing wrong with the standard of 5 years. However, more than 90% of domestic honey is concentrated honey. Because of the processing and concentration, the quality is seriously damaged. If the quality guarantee period is more than two years and the industrial and commercial department tests the honey after two years, there will be many tests that can not meet the requirements of the national standard, and it will be identified as problem honey or fake honey by the quality inspection department, which will not pay off.
Therefore, two years or 18 months is the standard method of quality guarantee period for concentrated honey in China. It's probably a convention. Everyone's marked it that way.