Every two weeks or so the internet will become engrossed in a new food, drink or wellness trend circulating TikTok. Some are worth the hype. Others are questionable, like when users started chugging chlorophyll water after the green pigment found in algae and plants was touted on the video-sharing app as a cure-all for clear skin, body odor, weight loss and even energy levels (research is still preliminary). Others will even give you … diarrhea.
This is where we are with TikTok’s latest viral trend: Frozen Honey.
Per The New York Times, the trend was started by TikTok user Dave Ramirez (@daveyrz), who on July 9th uploaded a video of himself tightly squeezing a frozen water bottle full of honey and taking a bite out of the glob of sugary goop for his 5.5 million followers. Ramirez told the Times he didn’t set out to create a trend, but now a month later, the hashtag #frozenhoney has over 826.9 million views with thousands of users and food TikTokers recording themselves freezing bottles of honey and crushing chunks into their mouths.
Ramirez’s TikTok page is full of similiar gelatin/corn syrup/slime-related “experiment” videos that are popular on the app, presumably for their oddly satisfying or shock-value qualities. It seems his frozen honey video was just another silly experiment that has now morphed into a viral food trend, one that’s being promoted as a sweet and refreshing frozen summer treat. I’m not entirely sure what the appeal of consuming honey raw is, considering it’s entirely too sweet to be enjoyed on its own unless you are six years old or a pants-less bear, but TikTok users seem to be enjoying the snack.
Unfortunately, their beloved frozen honey could be causing a slew of adverse health effects, including diarrhea, stomach aches, bad teeth and bloating.
“Honey is great, but having it in small amounts to sweeten is really a healthy relationship with food, and using it to get a lot of followers and a lot of attention and having it in excess amounts is crazy,” Kristin Kirkpatrick, a registered dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic told NBC News, adding that for those with fructose malabsorption (an intolerance that affects 1 in 3 people), consuming large amounts of honey overtime can lead to a number of gastrointestinal problems.
“I don’t see a huge risk with the short-term aspect for someone who has this fructose malabsorption other than what they’re going to experience, which is awful diarrhea, stomach pain and things like that because they’re not breaking it down correctly,” she said.
If for whatever reason you’re desperate to try a piece of frozen honey, one bite won’t kill ya (though it still might not sit right with your stomach, as some first-time triers have reported). It seems experts like Kirkpatrick are more concerned with creators who are eating honey and high fructose corn syrup in order to amass views and followers, which means consuming larger amounts more frequently overtime.
This might be a good time to recount that age-old internet proverb — don’t believe everything you read on the internet — but we all know that it would be pointless. Hide your honey jars.
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