There’s an Association for Everything: Honey

American Dietetic Association

Enjoy honey as a sweetener in your tea, on your toast, or in your yogurt, but don’t feed it to your infants—so warns the American Dietetic Association. Honey sometimes contains spores of the toxic bacterium Clostridium botulinum, which is harmless to adults and older children but may cause botulism in kids younger than 12 months.

American Apitherapy Society

Here’s a sweet quality of honey from Down Under: Researchers have found that certain bees in Australia and New Zealand produce a type of honey called “manuka” that heals chronic wound infections. It blocks more than 80 species of bacteria and is no doubt useful to the American Apitherapy Society, which educates people seeking alternative forms of therapy through the use of beehive products such as honey, pollen, propolis, royal jelly, and bee venom.

American Beekeeper Federation

Worried about the quality of your honey? The American Beekeeper Federation’s Honey Defense Fund works to protect the amber-colored- sweetener’s image by testing honey samples suspected of being tainted with cheaper imposters. Concerned consumers can submit samples to ABF for testing.