Does honey expire?!

Does honey expire?

No, according to an email that someone sent me a while ago. I did not check it on the net, but it seems to make sense. Here it is:

We went to the Farmers's Market yesterday wanting to get a jar of honey. Numerous vendors displayed a huge assortment of different types of honey in an assortment of quantities - generally, with larger size jars in decreasing cost/kg. While pondering the implications of this, I wondered out loud about the Costco dilemma, ie. the benefit of decrease unit cost vs. longer term storage of larger size jars and expressed my fear that the honey would spoil before I experienced the cost benefit of larger jars. The vendor commented that “honey will never go bad”. I thought of the seven year-old 2 L jar of honey, now containing 20 mL of honey, which, I just realized, had not yet gone bad, sitting on the bottom shelf of our cupboard. He added that’s “because honey contains a natural antibiotic.” We purchased the larger size jar and I made a mental note to check this out.

I now know that honey was commonly used in medicine before antibiotics became widespread. It is still used in the Antipodes; an Australian company makes a product called Medihoney, a formulation that is a certified medicine in Europe.

Arne Simon of Bonn University Children's Clinic in Germany is now leading an international study to compare honey with existing drugs. Simon has already used honey on 150 patients who were not responding to treatment, with some promising results.

The patients were often children whose immune systems had been weakened by chemotherapy, leaving wounds from surgery vulnerable to infection. Around a third of them were also given some antibiotics at the same time as having their wounds dressed with honey. One patient, whose wounds had become infected by the potentially fatal strain of Staphylococcus aureus that is resistant to the antibiotic methicillin, and who failed to respond to other drugs, was free of this superbug within 48 hours of receiving the honey treatment.

Because honey is composed of saturated sugars, it sucks up water, depriving bacteria of the liquid they need to survive and multiply. Also, as bees make honey, they secrete glucoseoxidase, an enzyme that releases the bleach hydrogen peroxide when it comes into contact with wound liquids. The low-level but frequent release of this chemical ensures regular antibacterial washes of the wound.

Now I (and you) know why honey will never go bad ü