R.A.W. Honey

RAW Manuka Honey from Manuka Doctor

In the honey industry, especially in New Zealand, there has been an insurgence of honey products being labelled as “raw” and for each brand that applies this term, there is a different definition of what “raw” means to them. In essence, multiple conflicting “definitions” of “raw honey” exist, that have been made up by the producers, suiting their existing practices. Without a set definition, it has been a free-for-all to apply the descriptor “raw” to their honey products at will.

For us at Manuka Doctor, we didn’t want to label or just apply the term “raw” without having a robust understanding and definition that we could attribute to it. This led us to finding an organisation that provided certification which applied a systems-based approach to establish a standard which we felt would make our customers feel they were getting the best quality products.

Manuka Doctor is proud to announce that we are the only honey company globally to carry the “Certified R.A.W” Certification mark.

The C.L.E.A.N. & R.A.W. food certification was facilitated by Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, an MIT trained Systems Biologist who graduated from the Department of Biological Engineering, formerly known as the Department of Food and Nutrition Science.

A Systems Based Approach

The consortium of industry leaders, with the leadership of Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, employed a multi-criterion, systems-based approach in arriving at the critical elements underlying the Certified R.A.W. standards. Three important principles emerged from this systems-based analysis. One principle was that the product must be Minimally Processed, second, the ingredients in the product must be Bioavailable, and the third was that it should be Safe.

What Is Certified R.A.W.?

For products to be Certified R.A.W.:

  • They must be "Real." The Real element was captured by the criteria that the product must be 100% safe and must have all non-GMO ingredients.
  • They must be "Alive." The notion of Alive was denoted by the level of bioavailability of the combination of ingredients in the product, determined using a bioinformatics approach currently enabled through the CytoSolve® technology.
  • They must be "Whole." The element of Whole was captured by two criteria:
    • - The level of organic ingredients
    • - The ANDI nutrient score

We will be rolling out the new labels starting from October 2022 through our major retailers, so you can expect to start seeing these on your shelves soon.

Certified Raw Manuka Honey

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