Many foods have the potential to be deliberately adulterated, but those that are expensive and are produced under wide fluctuations in weather and harvesting conditions are particularly susceptible; honey is one such material. Honey is world’s 5th most adulterated food!

There are three basic classes of honey: natural (pure), adulterated and artificial. Natural honey is made from raw honey, adulterated honey contains natural honey but also other ingredients, and artificial honey is made of syrup from sugar or corn, additives and food coloring.

Honey adulteration is nothing new. It has been on the rise when cheap high-fructose corn syrup became widely available. Because both corn syrup and sugar cane are cheaper than honey, they are an easy way to increase honey volume and boost profits. However this is not the only way the honey is adulterated.

Honey fraud can take different forms. For instance, by selling cheaper multifloral honey as single source honey at a higher selling point; by adding sugar syrups to increase the volume, or by harvesting it ahead of time and then drying it artificially in large “honey factories”, to cut time and costs. In all cases, the final product is far from what you think are buying

Let us first understand why honey is adulterated.

Demand is growing because of the increasing preference of consumers for honey and honey-based products, and for the use of honey in tonics, yogurts, drinks, and other products. Honey contains beneficial antioxidants, minerals, vitamins, and proteins, and is more appealing than artificial and sugar-based sweeteners. Many food manufacturers are replacing synthetic and less healthy ingredients with natural, healthier ingredients such as honey.

While the popularity of honey among consumers is constantly growing, the production of honey is unstable. Bee population is declining, like everywhere else in the world, due to pesticide poisoning, pollution, and a loss of bee habitat due to urbanization. All of these factors affect the bees’ immune system, and colonies decline their numbers producing less honey. Productivity per beehive is dropping.

In order to meet supply and demand, and of course to increase profit by scrupulous elements, honey is adulterated.

Most common adulteration method is to add sugar syrup to increase the volume of honey. The problem is that testing for added sugar in honey is neither simple nor cheap. While honey is nutritionally superior to sugar – it’s high in antioxidants for example – chemically‚ it’s very similar to white sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

“Honey is an extremely complex substance and only a detailed analytical chemical laboratory test can fully describe its constituents”.

Basic testing of relative amounts of sugar‚ water content and acidity of honey can be done in any lab‚ but to test if the sugars present in honey are derived from plant nectars and collected by bees‚ and not from sugar cane or corn syrup instead requires sophisticated testing‚ which can only be done in labs with sophisticated equipments. This is normally out of reach for common folks.

Honey adulteration is fraud on a grand scale‚ and it threatens the health of diabetics‚ who can tolerate small amounts of pure honey but not sugar.

Artificial Honey

Artificial honey is the old synonym for invert sugar syrup – a liquid that is produced by chemical methods and has nothing to do with honey bees.

Artificial honey is mostly inverted sucrose from beet or cane sugar. It is produced with or without starch sugar or starch syrup. It is adjusted in appearance, odor and flavor to imitate true honey by adding artificial colorants and falvours.

Depending on the production method, such creams contain non sugar constituents, minerals, sucrose and hydroxymethyl furfural.

Artificial honey contains:

– invert sugar – which is glucose and fructose (≥50%),

– sucrose (≤38.5%)

– water (≤22%),

– saccharified starch products (≤38.5%) – when necessary

Contamination

Contamination of honey can occur from many sources. The following environmental contaminants can reach the raw materials of bee products (nectar, honeydew, pollen, plant exudates) through the air, water, plants, and the soil for transport to beehives and honey by bees.

• Pesticides. Pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, bactericides, and fungicides are used in agriculture to control diseases and pests. In the uttrakhand region this is not a big issue as largely organic farming practices are being followed. This problem is more persistant in the plains areas where more intensive farming practices occur. 
• Heavy metals. Lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd) are the principal toxic heavy metals that affect honey. Lead, originating from vehicle engines, is released in to the air and directly on to nectar and honeydew and it is not usually transported by plants from the soil and on to the nectar. However, cadmium from metal industries and incinerators is transported from the soil to plants to contaminate nectar and honeydew. Only a small proportion of cadmium reaches honey by air, mainly from nearby incinerators. Honey produced from apiaries located in plains, near highway or industrial areas are prone to such contaminants. However Anghaa’s apiaries are located in hills of uttrakhand, where such pollutants are not present.

WHERE CAN YOU FIND REAL HONEY?

Your first priority should be to stick with buying local honey from a single farm or small co-op. This is always guaranteed to be real.

If you don’t know of any local suppliers or have a hard time finding them, please write to us at anghaa, we will be happy to serve you.