Panaad Festival Held In A Construction Zone

The second week in April was the premier festival of all Negros Island, Panaad.  This festival allows each city on the island to showcase their local delicacies as well as fashions and other cultural folkways like dancing.  On previous visits to this festival I was on the search for real honey. So I made my way to the organic section of the festival which was located in a different place from past years.

Because it was early in the morning not many people were out. Walking around nothing really caught my eye.  It seemed to be the same old products I have seen being sold at mall kiosks and other organic fairs. That this display of undisputedly fake honey was allowed into the Panaad Organic Village turned me off to the idea of actually finding any real honey.

That is a display of Wise Man's Food Pure Honey which I wrote about in 2017 and which incidentally if you search that name this blog is the first of only two results! Wise Man's Food is fake. Green honey is not to be found anywhere in nature. Who audits these vendors?

Ennui set in real quick as I realised I did not wish to spend much money anyway.  Certainly not P200 on a bottle of dubious honey. Walking across the area was a bit of a chore because there were large rocks and my slippers were thin. Rain had fallen the previous night and muddied up the place making the situation worse. Finally I found a vendor selling coffee for P15.  I bought a cup and sat down to drink it in peace.

Looking around it occurred to me that something was not right. Then all of a sudden it hit me. This is a construction zone! The organisers of Panaad had moved the organic market to a construction zone.  Look at these pictures:

Those steel girders are obviously the skeleton of a roof that has not even been completed. And how about all the rocks?  Those are not tiny pebbles.

In this photo you can see two tiny concrete pillars amongst the large rocks.

This is a trench filled with broken rubble surrounding one vendors stand. How is this even safe?

More rocks that must be traversed to access a vendor.  But this next one takes the cake.

These vendors have constructed a bridge to make access to their table much easier and safer. Otherwise there is huge trench that must be crossed. These people at least had the insight to know that having your customers navigate a deep trench is not a safe idea. So why didn't the organisers of the festival have this realisation? Who the heck thought holding any kind of activity in this construction zone was a good and safe idea? But remember in the Philippines safety comes last.

After finishing my coffee I looked around for a trash bin in which to toss it. I didn't see one at first but I did see these signs:

Where's the trash can so I can clean as I go?  It's right here of course:

What a joke. I really do not like Panaad and knowing that they moved the one aspect of the festival I have any interest in to a construction zone and that they allow vendors selling fake products makes me to never want to return.

Fake Honey? Maybe!

Usually there are some pretty tasty food stalls at the mall.  This one was pretty nice. The bag of coffee on the top shelf caught my eye and the saleslady pushed hard for the sale.  It's a blend of several coffees she said.  Arabica and robust.  Coffees from the region. She offered a sample which I gladly received.  It was way too hot to drink. She said coffee is supposed to be hot.  Yeah but not hot enough to burn your tongue.  This is supposed to be a drinkable sample.

The coffee they are selling was 150 pesos for 250 grams. That is just too expensive.  I buy Batangas ground coffee from the market at 200 pesos for a kilo. This can last a month or two.  The salesman told me their 250 gram bag of coffee will make 50 cups.  I don't know about that. I wasn't interested at all in buying their coffee.

I noticed they had honey for sale so naturally I asked about it. The saleslady said it was from the region. A friend of hers ships the honey to her in large containers and then she repackages it. I asked why there was no foam and was told that there is no foam because the honey is mature. Next I asked about green honey. She said they don't sell green honey but then she touted its benefits.

That was enough for me to know that this lady has no idea about honey.  I suppose my question was a bit devious because in the stall adjacent to her is "Wise Man's Food" which is selling fake regular honey and fake green honey. My question was a sly trick to garner her opinion on green honey which I am sure she knows is being sold in the stall right next to hers. Maybe she knows green honey is fake and does not want the saleslady in the next stall to hear her say that.  I doubt it.

It was not the saleslady who told me that the honey has no foam because it is mature. Her husband and partner told me that. Apparently this man is the Jarvis of Jarvis Gourmet Foods. Going off their Facebook page it appears as if he is the chef who creates all their food items.  So his food is real. He makes the food.  

But the honey is another story. Maybe not all honey has foam.  Maybe mature honey does not have foam. I don't know really. That sounds dubious to me and the internet isn't exactly helpful with confirming this information. What I do know is that this lady's friend shipping her honey in large containers to be repackaged and which looks suspiciously like syrup and not honey at all does not sit well with me. The fact of her touting the health benefits of fake green honey shows she has not the slightest clue of what she is talking about when it comes to honey. Go ahead and ask a "dog breeder" about princess type shih tzus and you will get the same response as this lady gave me about green honey: the highest praise for something which does not exist. In the Philippines so-called experts are duped all the time and, either wittingly or unwittingly, they pass on the wrong information to their customers. I would not be surprised if these two have been duped by their friend into believing this fake honey is real.

I could be wrong of course but this is the Philippines and there's always a scam right around the next door.

However, their bread and spinach cheese spread was quite delicious!

Fake Honey at the Organic Farmer's Festival

The fake honey saga never ends in the Philippines. This time it was at the annual outdoor Organic Farmer's Festival where the fake honey makes an appearance.

I approached this table the lady asked if I would like to buy some honey. I asked, "Where's the foam?" and the guys with her said its all natural.  I said, "No, where is the foam not where's it from," and I shook a bottle and pointed to the top where the foam should be. The lady said, "Oh it's right here," and picked up a bottle that had a tiny white ring of bubbles at the neck. Next I was offered a sample. Very sweet. Likely just sugar. 

The honey in these jars is rather dark. And why are there various bottle sizes with no labels? Why are their ribbons did to the necks of each bottle? Just to the left out of frame is a stand that has more honey but it's in little jars and not bottles. Over all the selling point for me was the lack of foam. That's a guarantee that this is fake. 

This is actually the second honey display I saw.  The first one was the third.  How did this seller get into the organic market?  Who is vetting these people?  I encountered this group before selling their worthless junk at the mall. Green honey? Who would ever believe it!? Sadly if you search for "wise man's food" honey my previous post about honey is the top result!  That is sad because it means there is still no information about this company on the internet.  The fact that this fake honey is being sold at an organic market is maddening.

The honey in these bottles looks legit to me.  The honey moves freely and is not thick. There is a very nice white foam on the top. They are also selling honey balm. None of the other tables is selling any other bee product except honey. The fact that there are only eight bottles of uniform size also gives a look of legitimacy. Honey is not sold in massive containers like "Wise Man's Food" offers for sale. Nor is honey green. This is the first honey seller I approached. The cost was 200 pesos which is a little cheaper than normal.  I pay 250 for the honey I usually buy. But it seemed legit so I bought a bottle and some of the balm. This is also the first table I approached.

Searching for the name on the label, Victoria's Integrated Social Forestry Farmers Association or VISFFA brings up very little and no information about the company.

Whatever is in this bottle looks good to me.  The foam is abundant. The bottle is sticky. Pouring it onto a spoon reveals a thin and light coloured liquid. The taste is tangy.  A bit of burning in the back of the throat.

Is the balm real?  I can't say.  Searching images for honey balm shows yellow cream products but this is green. Maybe that's because it's raw and all natural.  I have no idea.

This is my fourth article about fake honey in the Philippines. The way things are going I'm sure there will be another. Pretty sad that there is so many fake goods for sale in the Philippines. 

More Fake Honey

Really tired of this nonsense.  Fake honey again.  This time in the mall.  Take a look.

How do I know the honey is fake?  Because honey is not sold in such quantities.  Take a look at that huge container of honey in the first picture. That is ridiculous! Never ever in my life I have I seen real honey sold in a container that huge. It's always small quantities in little jars or bear shaped squeeze bottles.

Now look at the bottom pic.  That is green honey.  GREEN HONEY!!? For 1405 pesos!!??  

The saleslady told me the honey is green because the bees live under rocks. She also said ALL the honey is harvested from the wild meaning that men go from hive to hive in the jungle and take from the bees. No bee farms. What a joke! It's like expecting to harvest a huge batch of wild corn growing in the jungle at random.  The only way to get such huge quantities of real honey or any food is to farm it. 

And how about the second to last pic?  What is that?  I thought it was royal jelly.  Nope! It's honey in some kind of stasis. I don't know I forget exactly what she said but who cares because this stuff is obviously fake. 

Thankfully there was a sample available.

It tasted like not real honey and it looked like not real honey too. It was thick and granular like sugar! The same fake mix of real honey and sugar. Honey does not look like that.

Now it just so happened that before I went to the mall I had bought a small bottle of real honey from a guy I trust and I had it in my bag.  This honey tastes like honey, looks like honey, moves like honey, and I am sure it is real honey.  You shake the bottle and the honey gets a white foam.  Not so for this fake mall honey.  I shook a jar and there was nothing. I was going to pull out my small bottle and show her the difference but I did not.

Here is the information card about the honey.

Health benefits

The food scams in the Philippines are always the same. Filipinos LOVE Western technology like cell phones and basketball but they sure do HATE Western medicine. So the scam is you tell a Filipino that product X is good for your health in so many ways and these gullible folks will throw their money at you. Can you read the picture listing the benefits of pure wild honey?  Here are some highlights:

1.   Improves Memory
3.   Hangover Helper

11. Parasite Killer

17. Shortens the duration of diarrhoea in children

25. A substitue for shaving cream

A SUBSTITUE FOR SHAVING CREAM!!!!???  That is too funny and if I ever made a movie about life in the Philippines it would feature a scene where a guy actually tries to shave using honey. And it would not be special effects.  We would be sure to use real fake honey. Smear it all over his face and give him a brand new razor and have at it.  

The brand of fake honey is "Wise Man's Food Pure Honey."  They do not even have a Facebook page which is odd. Everyone and everything here in the Philippines has a Facebook page. With a zero web presence there is no way to tell who this company is.

The bottom line is stay way from this fake honey seller. Watch this special report on green honey in the Philippines.

Alchemical Honey Purity Test

In the Philippines buying a bottle of honey is not as simple as going to the store and buying a bottle of honey.  It's a bit more complicated.  Most of the honey sold in stores is fake honey-flavoured syrup. But you wouldn't know that unless you examine the bottle real closely.

No way is that a liter of real honey. 

http://www.fda.gov.ph/attachments/article/411762/FDA%20Advisory%20No.%202017-033.pdf

Ha! Told you so! How was someone able to purchase this bottle from a store when there is an FDA warning about consuming this product?

In the Philippines whenever you buy honey you have to test it to make sure it is the real deal. Testing the authenticity of honey involves calling on the powers of the elements, specifically water, air, and fire. You can't rely solely on your sense of sight or taste.

Which one is real and which one is fake?

First element: Water.

If honey is poured into water it will not dissolve. If the honey is fake it will dissolve. But if real honey does not dissolve in water then it won't dissolve in coffee. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of buying real honey which is to sweeten my coffee? On with the test.

Conclusion: The honey dissolved so its fake!  Right?  Wrong. The test was inconclusive because I put a few drops of real honey in a glass of water and it too dissolved. I did not document that test.

Next element: Air.

If you put fake honey in the refrigerator the cold air will cause it to thicken.  Real honey won't be affected.

The contents of the bottle of "Organic Wild Raw Honey" have thickened considerably after spending a night in the cold refrigerator air.  The contents of the smaller bottle of real honey are still rolling around in the bottle as if they have been unaffected by the cold air of the refrigerator.

Conclusion: The bottle of "Organic Wild Raw Honey" is likely fake. I say likely because these tests are in no way scientific. This is alchemy!

Next element: Fire.

Result: Failure. The match covered in "Organic Wild Raw Honey" took nine strikes until it burned.  

Result: Success!  "Just one!"  Just one strike and this match covered in real honey burned.

Conclusion: The bottle of "Organic Wild Raw Honey" is likely not real honey. It's almost certainly fake. There is enough reasonable doubt to acquit this bottle of honey from being pure.

Real Conclusion: This is ridiculous! Why do I have to go all Harry Potter and use alchemical wizardry to determine whether or not the bottle of honey I just bought is real or fake? No!  I am not a wizard, nor was meant to be.  I want to buy a bottle of honey and not have any doubts in the back of my mind as to its purity.  But this is the Philippines and it is the land of the fake. Fake diplomas, fake attorneys, fake dentists, fake doctors, fake cures, fake rice, and fake honey.

Fake honey is just a symptom of a much larger problem in the Philippines: the willingness to swindle people for a quick profit.

Fake Honey

A few years back I bought a bottle of honey at the grocery store.  It was delicious.  It made my coffee taste sweet.  But then I was told that it was probably fake. Just sugar syrup. Not honey. I couldn't believe it but I couldn't shake the idea either so I ended up testing the honey by pouring a spoonful into a glass of water. The water test says if the honey dissolves then its not real honey.  

The honey dissolved and I was very disappointed.

But I really wanted honey so the search began. At one point I even bought a bottle from a guy on the street who had a bucket full of sweet sticky honey. There was even a honeycomb with a bee on it in the bucket.  He filled a bottle, I took it back home, and it turned out to be fake. Eventually I did find real honey from local sellers and direct from bee farms but it's usually expensive and so few and far between. A special treat.

A few months ago I found honey being sold at SM Bacolod at a store called "Sabor Illonggo."  It looked good.  It was fairly inexpensive. It was in a store selling local delicacies. So I bought it.  Great taste.  Just like honey.  And then, a few months later, it happened.

"That's probably not real honey."

What? After all this time I have been buying this stuff and now you tell me? But the bottle says real honey. From the island of Mindanao. And it tastes like honey. How can it be fake? Why would  specialty store selling regional delicacies be selling fake honey?

Today a few bottles of real honey from a bee farm in Dolores, Quezon in Luzon arrived. So it was time to put the honey to the test.

The bottle labeled Camiguin Honey is the honey I buy from the mall. The other bottle is raw honey recently arrived from Luzon.

Two glasses of cold water for the test.

Already it's not looking good for the Camiguin honey.  See how light the colour is and how it slides around the spoon?  The other honey is dark and forms an almost perfect circle while staying in place.

The results of the test:  the Camiguin honey completely dissolves in the water while the honey from Luzon sinks to the bottom of the glass.  The Camiguin honey is not honey. Not pure honey anyway.

The taste is different too. The Camiguin honey is sweet and mild while the Laguna raw honey is sharp and tangy. 

It's hard to believe that Camiguin Honey is fake honey but that appears to be the case.  I do not want to sweeten my coffee with sugar syrup so I won't be buying anymore bottles.

Fake honey seems to be a real problem in the Philippines. You can read all about it here: http://beephilippines.info/honey-fraud/.

Aside from companies manufacturing and selling fake honey it must be wondered how the large supermarkets allow this fake honey to be sold in their stores.  Don't they do any sort of quality control and inspection of the companies they deal with? Aren't they aware of FDA warnings and regulations? CEM is the king of fake honey and yet can be found in stores throughout the Philippines.  Why?

Because nobody cares.  The supermarkets and the suppliers only want the money.  They think their customers are too stupid to realise they are buying fake honey. With enforcement of the law being lax at every level of society it is not too far-fetched to say the FDA doesn't care either. And Filipinos do not complain. You sell a Filipino fake honey and they will try to find a way to make apples out of oranges rather than demand the store give a refund and discontinue selling the fake honey.

If you live in Iloilo or Bacolod do not shop at "Sabor Illonggo."  And definitely do not buy the fake honey they are selling.