Today I found out something that honestly blew my mind.
People still buy honey from the supermarket and have no idea that it’s fake! Somehow, we’ve normalised honey that stays perfectly liquid forever. We’ve been sold the idea that clear liquid honey is better, when in reality, it often just means overly processed, lifeless, and ineffective.
This rabbit hole doesn’t stop with honey. It runs deep through our pantries, our skincare routines, and even our gardens.
Crystallisation is Life
Real, raw honey crystallises. It’s supposed to. That process is natural, a sign of the presence of glucose and trace particles like pollen that trigger crystallisation. Supermarket honey doesn’t crystallise because it’s been aggressively processed to improve its shelf appeal and extend its use-by date.
That usually means:
Heat treatment (pasteurisation) - heating honey to around 60–70°C breaks down crystals and slows crystallisation, but it also destroys the natural enzymes (like diastase, invertase, and glucose oxidase), which are responsible for its antibacterial, antioxidant, and digestive properties.
Ultrafiltration - this removes not only particles like wax and pollen (which are natural indicators of origin and quality), but also strips away much of the honey’s flavour complexity, nutrient density, and trace minerals.
Blending from multiple, often international sources - most commercial honey isn’t single-origin. It’s pooled from various suppliers, sometimes across countries, to create a uniform, supermarket-friendly product. This means you have no real idea where your honey comes from, how it was produced, or what standards it was held to.
What you’re left with is honey that looks “clean” and pours neatly but is void of life. No active enzymes, beneficial microbes and worse no subtle floral signatures from the plants the bees foraged.
It’s essentially just sugar syrup with a great marketing spin.
Real honey, raw and unfiltered, varies in colour and flavour with the flowers of the season, and yes, it crystallises over time. That crystallisation isn’t a flaw. It’s a feature. It tells you that the honey still contains all its natural compounds, just as the bees made it.
Want to go deeper into what real honey is (and isn’t)? Read my full honey blog here
Fractionated Means Stripped Bare
Next stop on the deception train: coconut oil.
You might see “fractionated coconut oil” sold at premium prices. Some companies even market it as better than real coconut oil, thanks to its “feather-light emollient effect” and “Certified Pure Tested Grade™” status.
Sounds fancy, right?
But fractionated coconut oil is just coconut oil that’s been processed to remove the fatty acids that give it any real benefit, especially lauric acid, which is what gives virgin coconut oil its antibacterial, antiviral power.
It’s clear, it doesn’t solidify and it looks “pure” but to get to that point, it lost everything that made it good.
So while it’s stable and neat and won’t harden in the cupboard… it’s also nutritionally meaningless.
Fertiliser Fakery: When “Organic” Isn’t Alive
And then we get to the garden aisle.
Everyone wants organic fertiliser these days. Pelletised, easy to apply, no smell, no mess. Sounds ideal, right? There’s a problem with that, most pelletised organic fertilisers are made using high heat extrusion.
That means they’ve been cooked at temperatures that:
Destroy microbial life
Break down beneficial compounds like humic and fulvic acids
Leave you with pellets that do very little for the soil
So you’re spending money on “organic” fertiliser that’s just dead bulk.
Organic Link I have found is one exception. Instead of heat, they use low-temperature dehydration to form their pellets. This method retains soil-loving microorganisms, active humic substances and actual organic nutrients that actually feed your soil
Destroying Life for Aesthetics
I wish my daughter came up with this catch phrase, but she didn’t. We are living in a culture that promotes clear and beautiful over real and healthier. We’ve been trained to value appearance, convenience, clarity, and neatness over substance, integrity, and function.
Let’s be honest, most products on our shelves have been overly processed, stripped, sterilised, and deactivated, all in the name of shelf life, marketing, “premium” appeal and profit. These products have lost their soul, and I feel so are we by allowing this to happen. Normalising this.
Can we all just take a moment… and think?
Seriously. Use our brains.
Corporations aren’t here to save us. Capilano isn’t here to give us real honey. No one is offering us real food anymore. And let’s be honest, our government is doing nothing to protect the farmers who actually feed us.
So let’s start a movement. Let’s start with honey.
Stop buying the supermarket stuff, I don’t care how fancy the label looks. Buy from a local beekeeper. Ask where it came from. Learn what real honey tastes like. And once you’ve made that switch, let’s talk about eggs. Then meat. Then the rest.
Because change doesn’t come from the top. It starts at the checkout.
“If you think you’re too small to make a difference, you haven’t spent the night with a mosquito.” — African proverb
Real consumers ask questions.
So let’s start asking them and let’s start now.