Why Honey NEVER Goes Bad?

[00:00:00]Did you know that honey never goes bad? When I first heard that, I couldn't believe it. I thought that nonsense because honey is very sweet and sweet things kind of goes bad quite fast. Bacteria like sugar and then I dig into it a little bit more and it started to make sense. Turns out there are three reasons why honey do not go bad bad. And the first reason is that sugar that I just talked. Honey consists of like 80% of sugar and about 18% of water. So, that is very very dry. And bacteria need more water to survive and thrive.

[00:00:44]Another thing that is called osmosis and osmosis means that when bacteria gets into the honey or other dry things like honey, they this this thing like honey is more dry than bacteria itself and honey starts to suck the water from from the bacteria and bacteria basically dehydrates and dies. So, that's one mechanism that keeps the honey not getting bad.

[00:01:21]Another thing, let's say somehow bacteria survives the that dry environment.

[00:01:28]Honey is acidic and bacteria needs neutral or slightly alkaline environment to survive.

[00:01:39]Honey sits at between 3.2 and 4.5 pH. It is way too acidic for bacteria to survive. So, that is another mechanism. And the third reason why honey do not go bad is basically made by by bees themselves.

[00:02:01]When bees collect the nectar, they collect that into the honey stomach. And in that honey stomach, there is an enzyme called glucose oxidase. And when bees get back to the hive and basically regurgitate that nectar, that enzyme creates the gluconic acid.

[00:02:23]That's why honey is acidic. So, that's one thing.

[00:02:28]And another thing that it creates is hydrogen peroxide. And you probably heard about that, and that's the same thing that you apply to your scraped knees when you want to disinfect it.

[00:02:42]So, it acts like a natural preservative in a honey. It kills the bacteria. And all of those three things makes honey never goes bad.

[00:02:54]But, you can actually make it go bad if you store it incorrectly. For example, if you store it with the open jar, in that way honey will collect more water.

[00:03:05]Water concentration becomes high in the honey, and it becomes more appealable for for bacteria to survive in it. And it that that can make honey go bad. Another thing, if the honey is collected too early, it also contains more water.

[00:03:26]That can make it go bad.

[00:03:29]If you buy a honey in the supermarket, you might see that it has This doesn't have, but you might see in the supermarket honey that it has the expiration date or best before date.

[00:03:40]And that is basically just a legal requirement. It doesn't mean that this honey will goes bad.

[00:03:47]That's just a legal requirement to add best before date on everything. even the salt have have expiration date which doesn't make any sense.

[00:03:58]And the last thing you might see that honey sometimes crystallizes.

[00:04:05]And that's just basically the glucose separates from the water.

[00:04:10]It doesn't mean that honey goes that this honey gets bad. It just means that water and glucose separated.

[00:04:20]To fix that you can just warm the the jar and uh water and that glucose will mix it up together and honey will get back to its natural form.

[00:04:34]So, yeah.

[00:04:36]Honey never goes bad. But I have another question for you. Have you ever heard in the movies or something like that when soldiers say, "Roger that."?

[00:04:46]Do you know who's Roger?

[00:04:48]I have a video about that. So, see you there.