If you tell me you believe in the healthful benefits of using raw honey, that's great. But please don't add that you take a dose every morning in your morning tea. Raw, you might well know, just means that the honey hasn't been heated above a certain temperature. So, of course, putting it in tea or baking it in a recipe immediately destroys its “raw” status and any benefits thereof.
I have long resisted putting a “raw” claim on my honey labels for reasons both rational and irrational. For one, I've assumed that it's generally understood that no small reputable beekeeper would provide honey in any other state but how it comes out of the hive.
Another rational reason I dislike the term is that “raw” is legally meaningless. Some honey sellers define it as never being heated above 90 degrees; some stretch that up to 110 degrees; and some realize that they aren't legally prevented from making the “raw” claim no matter what they do.
You can be assured that large-scale supermarket honey isn't raw and has probably been heated up to about 150 degrees. Why would they do that? It isn't because honey needs pasteurization—because of its low moisture, honey doesn't grow bad organisms. (Or good ones either—in order to get it to ferment for wine or beer, you have to add water to it.)
No, industrial honey packers heat honey in order to make it thinner and easier to work with. Honey at room temperature is a pain. It requires more effort and infinite patience as the thick liquid slloooowwwllly drips from one place to another. By heating it, the mass honey factories can pump heated honey out of the combs, down long tubes, through filters, and into jars like water in a few seconds flat. Time is honey!
Honey at room
temperature is a pain.
When I extract honey, it takes more time and more muscle with my hand-cranked centrifuge, but it's worth it. Besides the sometimes-claimed health benefits, honey's fruit and floral flavor notes are easily evaporated away with heat, quickly turning a sublime taste adventure into bland industrial supermarket sugar water.
Still, although claiming “Raw!” should be a marketing advantage, I've resisted for reasons I couldn't quite put my finger on. Finally, I realized why; it's the word. In almost everything but honey, “raw” carries a lot of negative baggage. It implies things like crassness, roughness, immaturity, unreadiness, even danger: Raw meat. Raw deal. Raw data. Raw sensibilities. Raw skin. Raw emotions. Raw language. Raw sex. I fear that for every health food aficionado who would be attracted by the term, others may react, as I did, with an unconscious aversion. So my label still doesn't have the word “raw” on it.