I love honey. It’s my favorite natural sweetener. Come to find out, however, there’s a little problem with honey. It isn’t always honey. Awkward!

Actually, more infuriating than awkward. I was not happy to find out that when I buy honey, it might actually have very little honey in it. Worse, it can have unsafe chemicals in it, such as lead and other toxins. Not what I want to hear about being in what ought to be a really wonderful sweetener. I also don’t like finding out that some honey is just corn or rice syrup with malt sweeteners and a bit of honey. Just goes to show how hard it is to avoid these things.

Two companies, Honey Solutions of Baytown, Texas, and Groeb Farms of Onsted, Mich., have been caught selling honey and lying about the source. They’ve been fined millions of dollars.

The one good thing about this scandal is that it has the honey industry looking at ways to verify that honey comes from where packers say it does. A laser isotope ratio-meter can be used to determine the origin of a sample of honey.

While it won’t protect you from dishonest companies, this could be a good reason to buy local honey when possible. Hopefully, these smaller, local companies are more concerned about providing a good product, rather than selling a low quality imitation.