How to taste pure honey

The term “adulterated honey” implies that glucose, dextrose, molasses, corn syrup, sugar syrup, invert sugar, flour, starch or any other similar product has been added to the honey, other than the floral nectar collected, processed and stored in the honeycomb by honey bees. Legal standards and requirements for food, including honey quality, and honey adulteration testing vary widely between countries and some may not meet the wishes of all consumers around the world.

Personally, when selecting honey at the store, I find it nearly impossible to tell the bad from the good just by looking at the honey content through the bottle or studying food and nutrition labels. My opinion is always: go to the trusted or better known brands. We all know that a “pure honey” label is no guarantee at all that it’s not diluted with water and then sweetened with corn syrup; it only promises that there is actual pure honey inside, without suggesting its quantity.

The law does not require a “pure honey” label to say how much pure honey is in the bottle. Some brands of honey that you get in supermarkets do not have any list of ingredients and this is enough to make me suspicious of the quality. Also, prices are not always a good indicator of honey quality. In cases of food fraud, manufacturers may mix different floral honey blends and sell them as more expensive varieties, such as Manuka honey. And so-called “local honey” may not be local honey produced and processed locally, but cheap, low-quality honey imported from other countries but bottled and distributed locally.

A common misconception is that granulated or crystallized honey is proof of adulteration with sugar water. The truth is that honey is a supersaturated solution of sugar and can granulate whether it is adulterated or not, so crystallization is normal, especially in temperate climates. Also, some honeys from certain floral sources are especially prone to crystallization. Buy honey in honeycomb is a way to ensure a quality product. The comb honey is sealed in the hive by the bees; therefore, consumers can be sure that the honey has not been adulterated with sugar water. However, to boost honey production, some irresponsible beekeepers feed their bees sugar syrup so that the bees can turn the syrup into “honey”. What these bees produced is adulterated honey, very clear and liquid, like syrup.

Some websites teach that ants don’t like raw honey and won’t hang around for it. I don’t understand or believe this, there is no reason why ants would prefer processed sugar to honey. Also, I was wondering how to invite ants to a honey evaluation (“ant-free” mean pure honey?). The reason why one sweet liquid is more attractive to ants than another may also be due to the density of the liquid and we know that the viscosity of honey varies depending on its floral type. Another test that is commonly discussed on the Internet is the flame test, which involves lighting a cotton swab dipped in honey with the flame of a match. It is believed that honey will burn if it is pure. I have tried this method many times using different types of honey, some of which I was pretty sure were pure honey (e.g. honeycomb honey), but the result I got was never consistent, and seemed to depend a lot on how much was dipped in. honey and how long the honey was exposed to the flame.

There is another simple way I have tried to check the purity of honey: Watch how liquid honey falls into a glass of water. Pure honey does not dissolve immediately in water; you’ll notice that it takes a bit of effort to stir it into the water to dissolve the lumpy bits, whereas sugar tends to dissolve easily in a jiggery when you drop it into the water. However, the test result is sometimes not so clear because different varieties of honey have different viscosity, some are denser and thicker than others, and obviously honey in cream form, even if it is adulterated with another substance, it will not dissolve as easily as liquid honey in water. .

It is suggested that people who are used to tasting honey may find it easier to spot any added sugar. But frankly, because there are too many varieties and floral blends, and the amount of adulteration may not be enough to affect the taste and aroma of honey, even though I drink honey frequently, I’m still not 100% sure of my suspicion. sometimes.

Therefore, it is difficult to be absolutely sure of the authenticity of honey, unless from home you can carry out scientific laboratory tests such as spectroscopy, a method that uses the principle of interaction of light with matter to differentiate substances or perform carbon isotope ratio analysis to determine if sugars were added to the honey (don’t bother if this jargon sounds totally foreign; as a consumer, I’m not familiar with it either). However, of all the ways of checking that were discussed above (labels, pouring, dissolving honey, etc.) if you have reason to suspect that honey is diluted and corn syrup has been added to it, my stance is: stay away from those marks. It’s better to err on the side of caution than sorry… well, chances are you won’t get sick from drinking adulterated honey, but you know that adulteration with cheaper sugars lowers the natural value of honey and this doesn’t No It helps justify the amount of money you pay.