Israeli Inspectors Find Fake Honey

On Rosh Hashana, which starts at sundown Sunday, Jews customarily dip apples in honey to signify their hope that the year ahead will be sweet.

In Israel--the biblical “land of milk and honey”--about 1,800 tons of honey are consumed at Rosh Hashana--half the annual total.

But it turns out that not all that honey is the real thing. Israeli government inspectors said Thursday they have found at least 2,000 jars of fake honey in the markets.

“The fake producers capitalize on the holiday season need,” Shimshon Herlinger of Israel’s National Honey Council told Reuters. Perhaps, the news service speculated, Israel should be called “the land of milk and vanilla extract, food coloring, water and sugar.”