I was permanently banned from the Reddit sub without recourse for posting this despite not breaking any rules. I’m slowly making the migration over thanks to such encouragement.
Honey is 95 to 99% a solution of a roughly equal proportion of glucose and fructose with other sugars, pollen etc. making up the remainder. HFCS is a solution of ~50 to 55% fructose with the remainder glucose.
TLDR: honey is essentially HFCS with some pollen and a small amount of other sugars mixed in.
All my honey at home is 80-85% sugar. Internet confirms this number. I’m not seeing facts here.
Secondly, the comment implies that dilution doesn’t make a difference because the concentration is already low. Soda is also 20% syrup and 80% water. How do you think it’ll taste if you make it 10% syrup and 90% water?
I’ll give you that they didn’t get the numbers perfectly correct with the 95-99% thing, but I don’t think the accurate numbers change the point they were making – if anything, it’s a stronger comparison. According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey#Nutrition), honey is 82% sugar and 17% water. HFCS is 24% water (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup#Composition_and_varieties), which makes it 76% sugar.
When I say facts, what I’m referring to is that honey is basically straight high-fructose sugar, in the same way that high-fructose corn syrup is. Wikipedia: “The average ratio was 56% fructose to 44% glucose”. The HFCS that people freak out about in most food is 42% or 55% fructose. So these are very comparable sources of carbohydrates, which is one of the reasons it’s so easy to fake honey with corn syrup.
I’m not making a value judgement here, and I didn’t see one in the GP post that was heavily downvoted. Just pointing out that honey has a very similar composition as HFCS, do with it as you will.
As a bonus, my favorite use for honey is to make honey mustard dipping sauce for chicken tendies. Here’s my not-so-secret recipe: Gulden’s spicy brown mustard, honey, and mayonnaise. (adjust the ratio to your taste) And if you haven’t tried Mike’s Hot Honey, I say seek some out. You can use it in the honey mustard sauce, but I like to make myself a little yogurt, granola, and fruit parfait for breakfast and drizzle hot honey on it.
The other things in honey is what makes the difference. Good honey is a magical thing. But it wouldn’t be mixed with anything else. A marker of high quality honey is being single source and single season (similar to single malt whisky).
HFCS has uses - many. But it’s not a good substitute for honey if the honey flavour is important. This product is the cheapest honey mixed together and then added to HFCS to push the price down and make the low quality honey more tolerable in taste. There’s a market for it only because honey is so expensive.
