I TOTALLY agree with Allen!  I have concerns about marketing honey on the
basis of health claims.  This may come back to haunt us.  Did anyone see the
piece in the Berkeley Health News pointing out that any health benefits
honey may have are outweighed by the fact that it is a caloric sweetener? 
They have a point.  Not only am I critical of this approach to honey
promotion, but I think there are far more honest and powerful ways to
increase the value of our profession.

There is nothing mysterious behind health eating.  Control your intake of
calories and spread those calories out across a diverse set of food
groups... Health Canada and the USDA have been advocating this for decades.
 What beekeepers should contemplate is what would be the implications for
the beekeeping industry if every American ate what was recommended by the
USDA Food Guide Pyramid? I think we would witness huge growth.

We eat far too few fruits and vegetables.  Fruits and vegetables,
particularily the ones we don't eat enough of, require pollination.  A diet
that is high in refined sugar and fats, by contrast, does not require much
pollination.  

This issue is highlighted by one of my favorate studies is a USDA
publication on this subject is:
Moving Toward the Food Guide Pyramid Implications for U.S. Agriculture
C. Edwin Young and Linda Scott Kantor (look up anything by Linda Kantor...
it is all very good)
http://151.121.68.30/publications/aib750/aib750t.pdf

Go straight to Table 2.  If Americans ate what was recommended on the food
guide there would need to be a need to increase the amount of fruit and
vegetable acres by 6 million acres.  That would not only be a good thing for
the general health of our citizens, but it would make for a brisk business
in pollination.

There is also the issue of sustainability and honey:
http://www.honeycouncil.ca/users/folder.asp?FolderID=5507

After I wrote this article I discovered that Southwick and Pimintel tackled
the same issue at the end of the last oil boom:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0006-3568(198111)31%3A10%3C730%3AEEOHPB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G

I think anybody who is simultaneously worried about their health AND
sustainability should cut out all their refined sugar and substitute ALL
those recommended 12 daily teaspoons of caloric sweetener with honey.  We
would sell more honey, people would be healthier and it would take far fewer
non-renewable energy to sweeten our cookies.  Slam dunk!

The challenges of getting to this point are enormous.  I once saw a figure
that at the peak of the 'Five A Day' fruit and vegetable propomotion
campaign they spent $2 million on advertising.  This is about the same
amount that Altoid mints spends and dwarfs in comparision to the ad budgets
of McDonalds or Coca-Cola. 

Regards,
Adony    

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