- Hi, I'm Parris, and the other day,
I was at my supermarket
looking for some locally produced honey.
We like to buy the local honey
because when the bees go to local flowers
and bushes and trees, they pick up the pollen
and some things that cause us allergies
and we believe by ingesting that,
it helps to reduce the allergic response we have.
Well in any case, I saw a product I had never seen before
and couldn't really imagine existing.
It was called Bee Free.
My first thought was, "Will they guarantee
"there are no bee parts in it?"
But no, it's honee, H-O-N-E-E,
and it's made from apples.
This is honey-free honee.
♫ Epic Review Guys.
- Bee Free Honee goes for about $10
for a 12-ounce jar.
I picked this up at our local Sprouts supermarket,
which is sort of a health food type store
and I'll put a link to find out more about this
down below the video.
Now I was shopping for honey, not a honey substitute
but I was curious both,
who's the intended customer for this product
and also, does it taste very good?
Is there a reason why I should not be having honey,
a reason why this might be better?
So I bought a jar, decided to investigate.
Now my first thought was,
"Maybe it's for people who have honey allergy,"
that is a thing
and regular honey, like this container right here,
does say, "Not for children under the age of one."
But I checked and there really aren't very many people
who have honey allergy
and those that do, it tends more often to be an allergy
to the pollen that's in the honey
or to bee venom or bee parts that are in the honey.
So it didn't seem like Bee Free
was aimed to people with honey allergies,
so then I wondered, is this maybe a vegetarian thing,
something about honey being produced by bees
or humans going and taking the honey from bees,
something like that.
I think mostly along vegetarian lines,
but it's by doctor's order,
so I don't really know the inner workings
of the vegetarian and vegan world,
so I googled, "Can vegans eat honey?"
Oh my gosh, the websites, the videos,
the message boards, all the discussion,
all the arguments, all the angry people,
commenting and insulting each other over this one topic.
Add vegans and honey to politics and religion
as for things you should not discuss at a party.
I have my own opinions on the matter
but I will keep those to myself.
So I did find out that a number of vegans won't eat honey
but they like the taste of honey, apparently,
because they're looking for a substitute
and so a clever company came out with a product
that has a honey viscousness to it,
sort of a dark honey color
and supposedly taste a lot like honey,
so clever company to come out with something like this
for a group of people who like that honey taste
and like to apply it to the same kinds of foods,
you can put it in their tea,
but don't wanna eat honey made by bees.
So I learned why it exists.
That was a curiosity itch that really needed scratching.
So now the question remains, how is it?
Does it compare to honey
or is it good on its own in some different way?
Time to get some tablespoons and try 'em out.
A quick look at the nutrition label
and the ingredients of both of these.
This Good Flow Honey is produced locally here in Austin.
One tablespoon is 70 calories
and the ingredients are honey.
The Bee Free, one tablespoon is 60 calories,
but the ingredients are several.
There's apple juice,
there's cane sugar,
and lemon juice.
It seems this has a lot more complex taste
than what you would be able to match
with just those three simple ingredients,
but let's see how they did.
Good Flow Honey first.
It's good honey.
Hard to beat.
Or maybe they did it.
Let me show you what this looks like.
Similar to honey
but not quite as viscous.
It's gonna pour
fairly fast here.
Whoop.
Gah.
Some honey is darker, so it could look like this.
Smells just sort of sugary.
And I put about the same amount that I have on that spoon.
Mm.
Mm, molasses.
That taste like molasses, which I really like.
If they offered this as a molasses substitute,
I would say that's great.
They hit it right on the money.
But it's a lot different than honey.
I remember as a kid, four or five years old,
having molasses sandwiches.
We would go back to the East Coast
to spend Christmas with my great aunt
and all she ever seem to have in the cupboard
that we could find was molasses and bread,
so we had molasses sandwiches.
Mm, brings back memories.
Now it's a pretty tough taste test
when a replacement ingredient has to go head-to-head
up against the original ingredient, a capella,
when it's in a food
and just one ingredient amongst others,
sometimes it comes out faring better,
so I've decided to give this another chance
to be like honey.
To make up a couple cups of chamomile tea
and I will mix a tablespoonful of each of these in,
see how it is in a drink.
(spoon clanging)
I do like the way this pours better than this.
I've got a sticky mess on the outside of this jar already.
Rather than putting it in a little container
that looks like a bear, like they do with honey,
maybe they should put this in a container
that looks like a bee, or maybe not.
(spoon clanging)
The Bee Free sweetened tea is several shades darker
than the plain old honey sweetened one.
Nice, this is such a good drink
for late at night when you're trying to get sleepy
or if you have a cold, you have a rough throat,
it's really good, the honey and the tea.
Hmm.
Doesn't taste nearly as sweet now.
The honey and the chamomile are somehow very complementary,
very nice together.
Not so much with this.
As a honey substitute,
I guess if you absolutely aren't gonna eat honey
and you miss some of the consistency and the sweetness,
you could use it in the same way,
but it's not going to fool anyone,
not anyone in this family anyway,
to realizing they're not having real honey.
If I baked up some molasses cookies,
which suddenly I'm in the mood for,
I might give this a try as an ingredient.
You can keep checking back
to see if I try that out and how they turned out
or you can click that Subscribe button down below
and the bell next it,
you'll get notified when my videos go up.
See you on the next review.
♫ Epic Review Guys
♫ Wanna watch it all night long