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Is MSG bad for you? Not at all
by Simon Balissat
How is vegan honey made? MeliBio founder told us
4.9.2024
Translation: Jessica Johnson-Ferguson
Darko Mandich has been looking into the negative effects of conventional honey production for quite some time. Now, he wants to give bees a breather. For this purpose, he’s developed bee-free honey.
Twelve years ago, the Swiss film More than Honey revealed how the honey industry’s struggling with major difficulties. Wild bees are dying in great numbers and large-scale businesses have no way of keeping their colonies in a species-appropriate manner.
In this interview, he gives an insight into the process, talks about adulterated honey and reveals which crazy honey combination is particularly popular in the USA.
Now I’m picturing loads of people standing in a field of flowers and scraping the pollen out of the blossom to make vegan honey.
Well, not quite (laughs). We’ve developed a new method in which we use the same plants as the bees. For this purpose, we work together with a large network of plant suppliers. We then extract the necessary ingredients for the honey from the plants. I’d say this gives us a 90 per cent molecular similarity to honey.
Am I right in thinking you use the whole plant?
Correct. The great thing about our method is that we use not only the pollen, but the entire plant. Even the root, depending on the plant. This makes us even more efficient than honey bees.
So you extract the sugar from the plant and make honey from it?
That’s right, but there’s more to it. Obviously, sugar is part of it, but other plant substances also play an important role. Let me give you an example. There are currently 300 different types of honey in the world, four of which we’ve been able to recreate. Our aim is to add many more of them.
Bees regurgitating honey is an important part of its production. How do you imitate that?
We’ll be applying this process to the second generation honey. At the moment, it’s still under development. The culinary honey that’s currently available belongs to our first generation.
Culinary honey?
Culinary honey’s added to food and drinks to sweeten them. It tends to be lighter and more liquid. For our second-generation honey, we want to recreate the processes that happen in a bee’s body. You could say that we’re trying to replicate a honey bee. We’re working on biologically producing certain enzymes that will become part of the composition of our future honey.
Where do these enzymes come from?
We use microorganisms that have always existed in nature. Our research team uses them to simulate the mechanisms that take place in a honeybee’s stomach. The microorganisms then release this enzyme into the honey. The whole process takes place in bioreactors.
Do you use local plants to make your European and American honey?
We’ve definitely taken the differences in taste into account. The honey in the US is based on clover honey that’s popular there, while the European honey was modelled on the Eastern European acacia honey made in late spring.
Are people in the US open to bee-free alternatives?
Less so than in Europe, but I’d say the US is catching up. I feel there’s a greater interest in trying out animal-free products in countries including Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Germany. Perhaps because people in Europe are more willing to change their eating habits when they know what impact they’re having on the environment.
Is honey healthy? After all, it’s mainly made up of sugar.
I’m not going to deny that honey’s 80 per cent sugar. But in a world where we consume a lot of sweets, honey’s definitely one of the healthier options, in my opinion.
I get an immediate craving for sweets, depending on what it’s used on or in.
In the US, honey’s used in many foods, often combined with spicy flavours. That’s why the second product we launched over there was spicy honey. It’s used on pizzas and burgers. Crazy, right?
The Dutch company Fooditive’s currently working on a similar alternative to honey, but uses apple and peach residues. Find out more about it in an article written by my colleague and science editor Anna Sandner.
Header image: Stefanie Lechthaler
Painting the walls just before handing over the flat? Making your own kimchi? Soldering a broken raclette oven? There's nothing you can't do yourself. Well, perhaps sometimes, but I'll definitely give it a try.
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