No need to blow this out of proportion...
The engine has burned a little oil since new. Literally around 1/4 of my daily commute is on a 6-7% grade. So unless I'm running errands after work, nearly every day the car gets a significant proportion of its driving at 3500 RPM at high load, and at 2800-3800 RPM at 0 throttle (depending on how much I feel like using the brakes). This engine probably works harder on its daily drive than our 7.4 liter big block does while towing a horse trailer.
The car is not abused. Factory fill, two fills of Exxon Superflo, one of Motorcraft, and two of YB Pennzoil, all drawn out to around 6000 miles, when the OLM was at 15%.
You could fault me on three possible things:
1) I left the factory fill in for a full OCI.
2) I left the original filter on for two changes (and regrettably didn't have a filter cutter at the time).
3) I used some amount of SL rated oil on the second or third fill.
(1) and (2) are per Honda's recommendations. I highly doubt (3) matters.
I used to fret about this but our new Mazda3 2.3 is also losing a little oil between changes (too soon to tell how much, it hasn't even had a full length OCI yet), and we saw similar behavior on another previous car as well. I'm getting more inclined to blame it on the commute.