Talk:Raw honey

Issues with the current article

The tone of the article seems to take the position that raw honey is totally worthless, which is an unscientific point of view. Cf, the following review articles:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259200803_Honey_in_dermatology_and_skin_care_A_review

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5424551/

It may not be a benefit to leave the honey raw, but by leaving it raw, it remains honey, with all of the well-documented scientifically proven benefits thereof. There is a problem with pollen, but according to the first review article:

Allergy to honey is uncommon, but pollen and bee proteins in honey-based cosmetics can function as sensitizers, causing problems to people with pollen allergies.

Which suggests that arguing against raw honey based on the pollen thing is equivalent in rational merit to the classic "Someone I heard of has celiac's disease. Therefore, gluten is bad." argument.

So the argument has to be made that Raw Honey is dangerous, or else there's no argument against it, just arguments against bloggers. If bloggers are the problem, then their claims, not raw honey itself, should be challenged here. That said, there might be an argument that raw honey is dangerous depending on how paranoid you are. I didn't see this claim about C. Botulnum in the rationalwiki article confirmed in the references, but it's mentioned the first review article, which cites its 71st reference about it. Then there's the following article, which is the 72nd reference:

https://www.jcdr.net/articles/PDF/562/426.pdf

In this source, it was healthy young medical students who were nearly fatally poisoned, not just "infants and immunocompromised adults." If there's any argument about unpasteurized honey, it's here. References 71, 72, and 73 in the first review article seem to be good sources of information about this if anyone can access them.

So in pursuit of "[3] how to fix those problems," here are my suggestions:

1) Source the C. botulinum line.

2) Match the level of condescension toward raw foodies to be proportional to their crimes. Compare Raw milk movement, where the risk is high, so the snark is turned up. If there's a high risk of disease or injury from using raw honey, then it should be sourced. I don't see enough in the jcdr report to suggest that the rate of risk touches the rate of risk for raw milk, for example. You can just avoid sourcing your raw honey from the "wrong places" if that's the only problem. If the risk of using raw honey is not significant (which I suspect it isn't, based on a few things I saw, but didn't confirm, when doing research about raw honey myself, e.g., Australia honey is mostly "raw." I'd be happy to be proven wrong), then the article should be revised to be a separation between the actual benefits of raw honey and the claimed benefits of raw honey, as well as an explanation about how using raw honey is at best an unnecessary risk, and doesn't really come with any benefits over regular honey (unless anyone can find benefits. I didn't).

I've never contributed to a wiki before, so I'll leave the writing to the experts.

On a slightly related note, after coming here to see if the claims about Raw honey were dumb lies, I took the plunge and dried raw honey in my hair for 5 hours, then rinsed it off, and now my scalp flakes are waaaaaaay smaller. And the world didn't end. Not data, just anecdote, just sayin. Have a nice day.

(I'm sorry if I failed to follow any conventions about formatting ones talk entry. I also haven't done a talk page entry before) ^{— Unsigned, by: 71.9.249.41 / talk / contribs}

Those seem like generally reasonable criticisms to me. Why don't you reconsider and edit the article yourself. Also, consider creating an account here. Bongolian (talk) 02:26, 11 March 2019 (UTC)