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Author Topic: Honey Kills Babies!  (Read 17904 times)

Offline yockey5

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #40 on: July 20, 2012, 02:34:21 pm »
I love to watch a dog chase his tail! :pop: :lau: Sometimes it may just be a bulldog! :pop: :cheer: :lau:

Offline Javin

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #41 on: July 20, 2012, 02:43:37 pm »
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but you won't bother doing your own research into the subject
am i supposed to use children as guinea pigs now ?

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Your condescending comments, just like those of your ilk, are insinuating that you're making the "better" decision than those who choose to give their kids honey
and that isn't condescending ?

no, i'm just not going to take your word as gospel when your best argument includes the words possibly, probably, and most likely, or in other words you don't know for sure either.

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But don't tell ME that I'm a lesser parent when I've actually DONE the research, and you haven't

again, i'm not going to take your word for anything, i don't know you from adam. you could be a lunatic for all i know.


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Don't get on MY Facebook page when I'm offering honey to my family

you obviously think way too much of yourself.

i think i understand the situation perfectly now. you're not mad that kids all over the world aren't gulping honey by the gallon on a daily basis, your mad because your fragile little ego is bruised that everyone isn't listening to your advice as the end all be all.

Man... It's like arguing with a five year old.  This'll be my last post to you, and I'll try to be real clear so you can understand:

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am i supposed to use children as guinea pigs now ?
No, you're supposed to actually do a little research.  There's a vast body of evidence about the antibacterial properties of honey.  There's also the fact that botulin is a bacteria.  Best case scenario, try to grow some spores of botulin out of honey in a blood agar (I have, and I've never had it succeed, but that's hardly a sample size large enough to be conclusive).  We have this crazy technology now called the "internet" that allows you to start your research without actually injecting babies with honey.  You're being obtuse and you know it.


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no, i'm just not going to take your word as gospel when your best argument includes the words possibly, probably, and most likely, or in other words you don't know for sure either.
I've actually shown facts.  You've shown... what, exactly?  That you're capable of following the fear mongering like a sheep.  That's it.  Oh, and that you're condescending without bothering to attempt any research... Unless you can do it on babies.



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again, i'm not going to take your word for anything, i don't know you from adam. you could be a lunatic for all i know.
This one's probably true.  



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Don't get on MY Facebook page when I'm offering honey to my family
you obviously think way too much of yourself.
Riiiiiiight.  Offering honey to family and friends because you had a good year, then being upset when some uneducated moron starts railing at you on your personal Facebook account is a glaring sign of vanity.  Sometimes I think you find condescending phrases you like to use, but you're not really sure where to work them into the conversation.



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i think i understand the situation perfectly now. you're not mad that kids all over the world aren't gulping honey by the gallon on a daily basis, your mad because your fragile little ego is bruised that everyone isn't listening to your advice as the end all be all.
Have you even bothered to READ what I've written?  Yeah... I've made it pretty clear why I was upset.  But if that's what you want to believe is the reason, you just keep right on truckin'.  I mean, maybe your "common sense" trumps what I've actually stated as my reason for being upset, even from the first post.  

As we're obviously not going to agree, and I see that you're precisely the type of person that I've recently blocked from my Facebook, there's little point in continuing a conversation with you.

I hope you step on a Lego.

Offline D Coates

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #42 on: July 20, 2012, 03:27:17 pm »
I hope you step on a Lego.

Okay, that was funny.
Ninja, is not in the dictionary.  Well played Ninja's, well played...

Offline Javin

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #43 on: July 20, 2012, 03:44:00 pm »
Oh, and for anyone interested in some light reading, here's EVERY botulism case in the U.S. since about the mid 1990's:

http://www.cdc.gov/search.do?action=search&direction=desc&queryText=clostridium+botulinum&sort=date&subset=mmwr

I'll give you ONE guess as to what you'll find has NEVER been determined to be the cause?

Offline luvin honey

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #44 on: July 20, 2012, 04:03:31 pm »
why do babies have to eat honey in the first place ?  if you want to feed your baby honey go ahead, but if it dies you're gonna feel awful silly.
i don't know if it is safe or dangerous or something in between, but it seems to me that if there is the slightest risk why do it ? babies don't have a complete immune system like adults do so they are more susceptible to a number of problems that most adult immune systems can handle better. so i would tend to lean towards the better safe than sorry approach. i also grew up eating dirt and unwashed fruits and vegetables, stepping on rusty nails and chicken or goose poop, wrapping wounds with paper towels and electrical tape that should have gotten stitches or at the very least a good cleaning and all the other things that are bad for you today, but it was mostly done out of ignorance. i still don't clean my cuts properly, but i gave up eating dirt for the most part.
I agree with all the above. We didn't do honey or peanuts when our babies were under 2. Too many other foods to have a pressing reason to introduce those two. Plus, we avoided all sugars until they were old enough to ask for it, including honey.

Not sure how I'd do it today. I'd have to research it more thoroughly. In general, our kids should have guts of steel with all the germs and dirt we get from eating food straight from the dirt.

ETA: Not sure why this thread has gotten so heated. I sell eggs and vegetables, and if I freaked every time someone told me eggs, potatoes and corn were bad for their health, I wouldn't have many customers left. People have all sorts of ideas about diet, and many of them are not based on much but the latest magazine article or fad diet. Shrug.
The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy.
---Emily Dickinson

Offline Javin

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #45 on: July 20, 2012, 05:09:58 pm »

why do babies have to eat honey in the first place ?  if you want to feed your baby honey go ahead, but if it dies you're gonna feel awful silly.
i don't know if it is safe or dangerous or something in between, but it seems to me that if there is the slightest risk why do it ? babies don't have a complete immune system like adults do so they are more susceptible to a number of problems that most adult immune systems can handle better. so i would tend to lean towards the better safe than sorry approach. i also grew up eating dirt and unwashed fruits and vegetables, stepping on rusty nails and chicken or goose poop, wrapping wounds with paper towels and electrical tape that should have gotten stitches or at the very least a good cleaning and all the other things that are bad for you today, but it was mostly done out of ignorance. i still don't clean my cuts properly, but i gave up eating dirt for the most part.
I agree with all the above. We didn't do honey or peanuts when our babies were under 2. Too many other foods to have a pressing reason to introduce those two. Plus, we avoided all sugars until they were old enough to ask for it, including honey.

Not sure how I'd do it today. I'd have to research it more thoroughly. In general, our kids should have guts of steel with all the germs and dirt we get from eating food straight from the dirt.

ETA: Not sure why this thread has gotten so heated. I sell eggs and vegetables, and if I freaked every time someone told me eggs, potatoes and corn were bad for their health, I wouldn't have many customers left. People have all sorts of ideas about diet, and many of them are not based on much but the latest magazine article or fad diet. Shrug.

I certainly don't have a problem with a person making a choice on how to raise their own children.  I firmly believe it's every parent's right.  My initial spin-up came from the umpteeth time since I've started keeping bees where "friends" started yelling and screaming that I was a horrible person for offering honey to my family (I've lots of new nieces and nephews).  I feel if you want to "correct" someone publicly, then you most certainly better have qualified your argument with facts instead of a distinct lack of them.  This is the core of what got me spun up in the first place.  These people know my background, and should know that I wouldn't be going out and offering something (for free) to someone else if I believed there to be the slightest risk to them.  If those people determine the risk to be too great and turn down the offer, that's certainly not a problem.  Again, that's their choice.  But when a third party attacks me with a myth based on bad information, it really gets under my skin.

On a much broader scope, in modern society, there's a ridiculous push to eliminate all bacteria from our diets and environments "coz bacturra's bad."  I personally firmly believe that this is directly related to the autoimmune disorders that are so much more prevalent today.  The anti-honey craziness is just a small portion of this overarching problem.  Immune systems cannot be strengthened without exposure to bacteria.  Yet we're the only species that have gone out of our way to eliminate those exposures at every possible point, even to the point of putting our children in a bubble precisely when it's most important for their immune systems to develop.  They have the natural "passive" immunity from their mothers when they're just a few months old, and this passive immunity can be strengthened through breast feeding.  This is precisely when the baby's immune systems should be developing by exposure to natural external exposures: While they still have passive immunity.  Retarding the development of the immune system until they have no immunity isn't how nature intended it, nor does it make logical "common sense".  But this is an entirely new can of worms that I could be opening here.

But this actually brings me back to my theory on why honey is actually good for very young children.  Besides all of the other benefits that adults enjoy, the natural sugars are easier on the baby's underdeveloped digestive system, and IF there are LOCAL spores/pollen/bacteria/etc. in the honey, it can help the baby develop those immunities to the local environment while it still has the passive immunization. 

Then there's the well documented antibacterial and antiviral aspects of the honey.  Doctors recommend that babies be given their first immunizations at the age of 2 months for the very reason that the passive immunity will soon go away.  These vaccinations are almost exclusively the "killed" form of whatever virus they're vaccinating against (they are chemically "inactivated", with chemicals such as formalin).  Local honey would (again, theoretically and logically), precisely and naturally mirror this vaccination by killing any bacteria and viruses that the bees have picked up.  In theory, one could create a vaccine by growing the viral/bacterial cultures, mixing them with honey, giving the honey enough time to kill it off, then consuming it orally.  For obvious reasons, this one would need to be thoroughly tested before I'd EVER recommend anyone give it a shot, but the theory is sound.  I will tell you this, though.  Streptococcus and Staph cultures, mixed with honey, left for two days, and then separated from the honey with a quarter-normal saline solution (half as salty as the human body) and returned to a petri dish will not grow.  Again, hardly a conclusive test, but these are the kinds of weird hobbies I have.  (As a side note, while never testing my honey specifically for botulin spores, I have never had any other bacterial growth come from the honey, either).

While they're still doing research on precisely HOW the honey kills bacteria and viruses, we do know that it's a different mechanism than how our current antibiotics work.  (Current antibiotics disrupt the formation of cell walls - destroying the structure - so creating a vaccine with bacteria treated with antibiotics is unable to produce the same immune response).  Honey seems to kill the pathogens without destroying their structure, which again, in theory, would make it ideal for vaccine production.  Perhaps one of the many reasons that honey was used for centuries for babies was because it was the closest thing to a natural vaccine we had, and we didn't know it?  But for this reason, it's also why the presence of the spores in the honey (the same spores found in almost every single food source out there) may in fact be a GOOD thing, but past history has shown it's never been proven to be a BAD thing.

As a total side note, I do have one nephew that's allergic to nearly everything.  Peanuts, milk, etc.  I always recommend that ANYONE dilute whatever new food they're trying to feed their baby, and give it in VERY small amounts, and closely monitor for any signs of distress.  And this is *any* new food.  Not just honey.

So yeah, probably way TL;DR, but this is where I'm coming from.  And I didn't call anyone any names this time.

Offline luvin honey

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #46 on: July 20, 2012, 05:18:35 pm »
Makes sense. I just don't see any reason to give infants sugar at all. And I get very annoyed also when people "inform" me of things I doubt they know a single thing about. Especially when I'm trying to make my living from what they're attacking. However, since it's someone else's health or their perception of it, I don't feel qualified to insist on my views. My husband nearly died of salmonella as a toddler, so it's not like all germs are welcome in a baby's system or can be fought off easily.
The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;
A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy.
---Emily Dickinson

Offline Javin

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #47 on: July 20, 2012, 05:37:43 pm »
And yet some more light reading.  What can honey do that our current antibiotics cannot?  Kill MRSA.  So something that can kill MRSA, and we're supposed to believe that the spores from botulin are still alive in it?  Reallllly...

Clinical Study - Seven patients cured of MRSA with honey
A paper where a hospital has been successfully using honey dressing for chronic MRSA infections
Honey cures MRSA in an immunosuppressed patient

A little quote from the first one:
"Full healing was achieved in seven consecutive patients whose wounds were either infected or colonised with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Antiseptics and antibiotics had previously failed to irradicate the clinical signs of infection."

Offline bulldog

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #48 on: July 21, 2012, 12:31:25 am »
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As we're obviously not going to agree, and I see that you're precisely the type of person that I've recently blocked from my Facebook, there's little point in continuing a conversation with you.

that's funny, because i was just about to send you a friend request  :roll:
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Offline Javin

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #49 on: July 21, 2012, 02:19:42 am »
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As we're obviously not going to agree, and I see that you're precisely the type of person that I've recently blocked from my Facebook, there's little point in continuing a conversation with you.

that's funny, because i was just about to send you a friend request  :roll:

There's no rule that says friends can't disagree.   :-D

Offline kingbee

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #50 on: July 21, 2012, 07:48:27 am »
Botulism is more a condition than a disease.   Botulism victims usually eat contaminated food that has been improperly stored, especially foods improperly prepared, preserved, or home canned.  By eating improperly prepared or caned food contaminated by the botulism organism you are consuming raw or pure botulism toxin.   To survive and reproduce in great enough quantizes to be of concern, the botulism organism must be incubated in the ABSENCE of oxygen.  Therefore the legitimate concern with botulism poisoning in caned and preserved food.

Even though the botulism toxin is used in plastic surgery (you’ve heard of Botox injections haven’t you) botulism toxin is deadly stuff.  The ingestion of just a tiny amount of  botulism toxin will kill you by paralyzing your heart and lung muscles long long before the first botulism bacterium or spore can reproduce inside you or infect your intestinal tract. 

I don’t know if this is true or not but one lecturer said that just one index finger dipped in pure botulism toxin could hold enough poison to kill 100,000 people.   :shock: :shock:  I know it sounds scary, but who can get one hundred thousand people to stand in line just to lick a strangers’ index finger?  I can’t get one person to even pull my index finger.  :evil: :-D  What the OP was concerned about in my honest opinion is the complete lack in America today of that most uncommon of attributes… COMMON sense.

Before we abandoned our children to be raised by the state instead of by their parents, both granulated sugar as well as white corn syrup (a.k.a. Karo syrup) was fed in home made baby formulas to every American infant who was not still nursing.  The Nanny State in the form of those all knowing but little thinking WIC nutritionist even now recommends that you feed your infant white granulated cane or beet sugar in home made baby formula instead of corn syrup because the good people at Karo syrup GASP, found a botulism spore or two floating in their product just like those spores found floating in Mother Nature’s own honey, OMG we’re doomed.    Edna, you better shut that fall out shelter door you hear, you‘re letting in the germs!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clostridium_botulinum
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090805160028AArmg9o


Offline Javin

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #51 on: July 21, 2012, 01:25:36 pm »
Botulism is more a condition than a disease.

Very true.  Botulism is the condition caused by the ingestion of the toxins created by the C. Botulinum bacteria.  Also, as this toxin generally gets produced in an anerobic environment, this is also why the symptoms can last so long, and take so long to develop in the human body.  The vast majority of deaths from botulism are actually caused (as you said) by eating foods that were preserved ineffectively, and the toxin has had an opportunity to build up.  No matter how much you boil the preserves, you cannot remove the toxins.  This is also why when a doctor told me that we needed to be sure to boil our canned foods for 10 minutes before eating so we didn't get botulism, I wanted to rip his medical license off the wall.

I don’t know if this is true or not but one lecturer said that just one index finger dipped in pure botulism toxin could hold enough poison to kill 100,000 people.

That definitely sounds about right.  It only takes one microgram of toxin to kill a human.  To put this into perspective, a paperclip is about ONE MILLION micrograms.

But to reiterate (while I know you're in agreement) spores do NOT equal toxin.  Particularly not spores that have been marinating in a known antibiotic.

Offline kingbee

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #52 on: July 22, 2012, 09:29:01 am »
... But to reiterate (while I know you're in agreement) spores do NOT equal toxin.  Particularly not spores that have been marinating in a known antibiotic.

Are you speaking of a known antibiotic like honey?  Or Karo?  Or vinegar?  Or salt?  Or granulated sugar?  Or even high specific gravity HFCS?

Gee, do you 'recond' that the reason our ancestors used these shoo nasty nasty things in the past to preserve their foods was because they knew instinctively that these shoo nasties killed or at least lulled to sleep botulism spores? 

Legend has it that Alexander the Great was buried in an sarcophagus filled with honey so as to preserve his mortal remains.  If that is true it is a powerful statement to the true antibiotic properties of honey.  In that case honey is antibiotic enough for me and honey should be antibiotic enough for the most picky of eaters.   

Online Kathyp

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Someone really ought to tell them that the world of Ayn Rand?s novel was not meant to be aspirational.

Offline Javin

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #54 on: July 22, 2012, 11:52:48 pm »
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/06/12/154593662/to-sniff-out-childhood-allergies-researchers-head-to-the-farm

 :evil:

HA! 
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"It looks like with our modern conditions and cleanliness that we have fewer and fewer germs to fight off," Nish says. Our immune systems protect us by learning to fight off foreign invaders, whether they're harmless or not. We can't train our defenses if we don't get exposed.

Quote from: Javin
On a much broader scope, in modern society, there's a ridiculous push to eliminate all bacteria from our diets and environments "coz bacturra's bad."  I personally firmly believe that this is directly related to the autoimmune disorders that are so much more prevalent today.  The anti-honey craziness is just a small portion of this overarching problem.  Immune systems cannot be strengthened without exposure to bacteria.

I'll have to look into this "hygiene hypothesis".  Makes too much sense.

Offline kingbee

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #55 on: July 23, 2012, 10:27:41 pm »
Unfortunately there is a lot of deceptive or even outright false information out there and diet authors, TV personalities, and seminar lecturers all are trying to turn a buck off our ignorance.  This "Mommas don't let your babies grow up to eat honey." business is just one tiny tiny part of the problem.  This American problem is not even a new problem.  if you will look at the history of food fadism you'll discover a whole rogues gallery of ner-do-wells and even the occasional criminal.  We're speaking of the likes of men like The Rev. Sylvester Graham, Doctor Benjimin Rusk, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, and a host of other charlatans.

I am including the little gem of a link shown below to prove to some that much of the wonderful, great sounding, shiny new 21st Century advice so many of you hear and heed is little more than a dangerous bunch of hokum bunk.
 
http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/baby-breastfed-by-vegan-mother-dies/

The infant above died (if that is a foreign concept to some it means the child assumed room temperature) and it died at less than one year of age from being fed a fad diet of nothing but good old fashion pure 100% natural mothers, milk.  No honey for this baby.  Now I want you to find me a case of a child assuming room temperature because it ate a little honey.  This is not aimed at anyone poster in particular, but some of us really really need to get out more.

The link below proves the mother of the dead child did NOT eat honey as per her own statements to the authorities.
http://www.vegetus.org/honey/honey.htm

Offline buzzbee

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #56 on: July 24, 2012, 08:10:43 am »
It seems this thread is bringing out behavior that is not looked at favorably here at Beemaster. Lighten up a bit and refresh your self of the rules here:
http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/board,97.0.html
We have seen a few long time posters push the limits thinking they were immune,but have found out otherwise. If you can't get your point across without name calling,perhaps take a minute and evaluate what your point is. You may have a more sensible response.
Keep it civil and polite.Personal attacks and name calling have a short life here.

Offline Michael Bush

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #57 on: August 09, 2012, 01:10:00 pm »
I thought it was ridiculous when after Milena of people putting honey in infant formula they decided to target honey as a source of botulism when it's in every raw food.  But when they kept escalating it from 6 months, to a year to two years it was even more ridiculous.  It is probably wise not to feed any raw food (including honey) to a baby under six months as they don't have the acidity in their digestive system to break the spores down and botulism can live in their gut.  Once their digestive system changes over to solid food it is far to acidic to be an issue. But they are all getting exposed anyway by the dirt in the air and on the floor...

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Offline JPBEEGETTER

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #58 on: August 09, 2012, 01:25:16 pm »
SICK  SICK  SICK........the reason all the bot & ecoli   come from Ca. is because they fertilize with raw cow poop... should be at least 1 yr old or more...

Offline kingbee

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Re: Honey Kills Babies!
« Reply #59 on: August 09, 2012, 01:52:59 pm »
.... the reason all the bot & ecoli   come from Ca. is because they fertilize with raw cow poop...

You're not blaming that wonderfully healthy organic food are you?   :evil:  :roll: