>>21685393
This meta-analysis slop article is really bad and overestimates consumption based on vague data.
For one, he provides zero evidence for the claim in the abstract that "consumption of honey was comparable to consumption of refined sugar".
The closest he comes to claiming this is that:
> [honey] 6-13 kg per year (Ransome, 1937). Recall that present-day consumption of refined sugar is about 15-23 kg per year
Of course, modern honey is 80% sugar and in ye olde days before the invention of the centrifuge used to separate honey from the frame the water content used to be much larger (depending on the quality of the honey - modern honey would be considered of highest quality and it was a fraction of the extracted honey from a hive whilst low quality honey contained only 25-50% sugar and consistuted a major part of the honey extracted from the hive).
And then, the record doesn't represent the average person but likely a member of the nobility. In fact, most of the evidence presents nobility (since they kept records) which is not representative of honey consumption in general.
He also mentions mead but completely disregards it in terms of sugar consumption. Mead generally contains little sugar (as it is fermented), so any honey used for mead cannot be included in any sort of sugar consumption. He conveniently disregards that mead used to be quite valuable, more than imported wine according to records from the Polish royal court from the 16th century and Teutonic knights' records.
His greatest argument is the British records showing a low price of honey according to around 20 records of sales around the early 1500s. This is dubious evidence, since (1) it is unclear under which circumstances these sales were made (2) it is unclear of the quality or purpose of the honey. Even if the price was generally low, that doesn't necessarily mean it had to be consumed as sugar. There could've been legal context that led to low prices (monopoly).
t. read the study
