Did you know that honey is the single food that contains all the necessary ingredients for sustaining life? Yes, honey is loaded with nutrients, vitamins, water, and minerals essential for survival. This sweet and magical golden-colored syrup has been blessed with tons of medicinal properties, blessed with an eternal shelf life. 

Honey has antibacterial, antioxidant, and naturally soothing properties. Besides this, it also has healing and immunity-boosting properties, due to which it’s used as a home remedy for cold and cough. People on a weight loss journey prefer honey to reduce their sugar intake. However, to tap out the fullest benefits from this naturally available superfood, it’s also essential to know if the honey you use is pure or adulterated. 
Pure honey is the storehouse of nutrients and health benefits. On the other hand, adulterated honey is not beneficial in any way as compared to pure honey. So, here we bring you the methods and ways to conduct honey purity tests that will help you understand how to test the purity of honey and distinguish between pure and adulterated honey.

How Can You Test Your Honey To Know If It’s Adulterated Or Not? 

Some physical parameters can easily distinguish between pure honey and adulterated honey. 

• While pure honey tends to be highly sticky when rubbed within the fingers, adulterated honey isn’t much sticky as it’s loaded with additives and sweeteners. 
• Pure honey is thick and very dense, due to which it takes much time when transferred from one jar to another. On the other hand, adulterated or impure honey isn’t much viscous and is light, due to which it gets transferred from one jar to another within minimum time.
• The taste of pure honey fades from the tongue within a few minutes. In contrast, the taste of adulterated honey stays for quite a long time due to the sweeteners and sugars used as additives. 
• While pure honey smells like wildflowers and grasses, impure and adulterated honey has a neutral or a sour aroma. 

These are some of the physical methods for honey testing at home. However, there are other methods that you can use to determine the purity of your honey. 

How Is Adulteration Of Honey Done? 

Most of the commercially available honey fail to pass the purity test. Adulterated honey is beneficial in no way as the shelf life is decreased to a few days thus depleting medicinal values. 

Adulteration of honey is generally carried out by adding some easily available material to increase the quantity of the honey. The adulteration strategies involved in the adulteration of honey can be classified into three basic categories: direct, indirect, and blending. Let’s know them in detail. 

Direct Adulteration 

This method of adulteration involves the direct addition of adulterants to the pure form of honey. The adulterants are generally easily available ingredients such as sucrose syrup extracted from beet, corn, maltose, industrial sugar, etc. Direct adulteration is usually done in a specific ratio to maintain the taste, texture, and color. 

Indirect Adulteration 

The indirect adulteration process is associated with the bee itself and a natural frame. The required syrup is fed to the bee for creating the adulterated honey in a natural process. This process follows a similar procedure as pure natural honey in bees’ digestive systems. 

Low-quality honey, industrial sugars, and chemicals are used during this culture. Like the direct adulteration process, the indirect method also has specific ratios while feeding sugar syrup to the bees in the hive. 

Blending  

The blending process is the simplest adulteration method. In this method, the adulterant is honey itself, but with a difference in quality. Low-quality honey, which is less nutritional and already adulterated, is mixed with pure and best-quality honey. As honey has more than 300 varieties, some low-cost honey is blended with pure and high-quality honey. 

Common Honey Testing Methods And Their Reality

Finding good-quality honey is quite challenging. It’s because commercial honey is loaded with ingredients such as glucose solution, corn syrup, and fructose. Thus, before consuming honey from any brand or source, it’s advisable to check the ingredients and label of the brand. If the label contains words such as ‘raw,’ ‘organic,’ ‘forest honey,’ or ‘natural,’ then you can trust the brand to some extent.

But, not all honey brands with such labels turn out to be 100% pure when tested. Thus, it’s wise to conduct some standard honey testing methods to be completely sure if your honey is pure or not. Here OneGreen presents you the top standard honey testing methods you can easily carry out at home. 

OneGreen is Asia’s top brand for sustainable, safe, and natural products. Their marketplace contains a list of products ranging from personal care to baby care. As a marketplace, OneGreen checks the claims made by the brands carefully and onboards only quality brands. So, let’s start this journey without any further delay!

Ingredients Test 

Honey prepared in big factories is usually adulterated and thus contains glucose solution, higher fructose content, and corn syrup. On checking the ingredients of your honey, if you find anything like ‘additives’ or ‘added flavors,’ it means that the honey is adulterated. Pure honey contains only one ingredient, i.e., honey. The presence of any other added ingredient is a clear hint of adulteration. 

Thumb Test 

The thumb test is based on pure honey’s natural, dense, and extremely thick consistency. For the thumb test, take a drop of honey on your thumb and observe it closely. If the drop of honey tends to fall or become runny, then the honey is impure and adulterated. However, this test is not much efficient as it focuses more on the thickness of honey rather than its purity.

Vinegar Test

Take a tbsp of honey in a vessel and add 2-3 vinegar drops for this test. Add some water to the mixture and keep it aside for some time. If the mixture forms a foam rising in the vessel, the honey is impure and adulterated. 

Heat Test

The heat test is based on the caramelizing property of pure honey. Impure honey, on heat treatment, does not show any caramelization. Instead, it forms bubbles due to the addition of excessive sugar, moisture, and water. 

Flame Test 

A flame test is based on the inflammable nature of pure honey. For the flame test, dip the tip of a matchstick in honey and then strike it on the matchbox to light it up. If the matchstick lights up, it indicates that the honey is pure. However, this test is also not much efficient. That’s because it takes into account the amount of moisture present in the honey. Thus, if you test ripe, pure honey, you will get false results as it has a low moisture content which can cause the matchstick to light up. 

Water Test 

Water test, also known as solubility test, is mainly recommended by FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) and is based on the composition and consistency of honey. It isn’t readily soluble in solvents. For this test, you can take some warm water and mix it with a tbsp of honey. If the honey gets dissolved in the water, then it’s impure. However, if the honey doesn’t dissolve and settles at the bottom of the vessel, then the honey is pure. But, this test is also not effective because unripe honey has a much thinner consistency, due to which it’s likely to get false results. Moreover, the addition of adulterants is done to thicken the consistency and make the honey settle down, which makes the results more questionable.

Honeycomb Pattern Test 

The honeycomb pattern test is based on the hexagonal shape, which is much similar to the honeycomb pattern made by honey when allowed to settle down at the bottom of a vessel. For this test, take some honey in a vessel and add water to it. Shake the vessel in a clockwise direction. If the honey forms a hexagonal shape at the bottom of the container, it’s pure. However, this test has no scientific significance as adulterants are dense and show the same nature.  

Besides these, there are other characteristic differences between pure and impure honey. Pure honey, in refrigeration, doesn’t crystallize. Whereas impure honey, on refrigeration, gets solidified with the sugar crystallizing and settling down on the top of the honey layer. However, there are no foolproof honey testing methods to check the purity of honey. Only advanced scientific honey purity tests are the reliable way to determine the adulteration of honey.

What FSSAI Parameters And Laboratory Methods Are Used In India To Check The Purity Of Honey? 

Keeping in mind the increasing adulteration of honey, FSSAI has set some specific parameters for honey to be tagged as “pure honey .”The parameters are mentioned in the table below.

In addition to these parameters, FSSAI also conducts other advanced tests such as hydroxymethylfurfural HMF, pollen test, and electrical conductivity test to assist in honey testing. Hydroxymethylfurfural HMF is used to determine if the honey is subjected to ageing or any kind of heavy heating treatment. The pollen test, which helps in knowing the pollen count of the particular honey, is essential to trace the honey’s biological origin. However, with the rising advanced methods of adulteration, more advanced internationally accepted tests are needed to determine if the honey is pure.

Internationally Accepted Tests To Check The Purity Of Honey 

Pure honey is loaded with nutritional benefits and contains no fat and cholesterol. On the contrary, adulterated honey can lead to severe diseases such as obesity, high blood pressure, Type II diabetes, and hypertension. Thus, it’s essential to know how to test honey’s purity and consume pure honey.

To keep up with the rising development of strategies used in honey adulteration, the Centre for science and environment (CSE) has its own set of parameters for honey testing. That’s because many brands sell rice syrup as honey and also adhere to the FSSAI parameters. Moreover, CSE recognized brands that used adulterants such as C3 sugar, C4 sugar, and foreign oligosaccharides and yet managed to pass the standards set by FSSAI. Thus, CSE has its parameters and internationally accepted tests for honey testing to determine the adulteration of honey. Some of these tests are discussed below.

13C EA/LC-IRMS Test 

Element analysis or liquid chromatography isotope ratio mass spectrometry, also known as 13C EA/LC-IRMS Test is useful for detecting adulterants such as C3 and C4 sugar. This test can’t detect other adulterants such as tailor-made syrup, illegal resin processing, and moisture reduction.

LC-HRMS Test 

LC-HRMS Test, also known as liquid chromatography in combination with the high-resolution mass spectrum, is useful for detecting adulterants such as C4 sugar, C3 sugar, and synthetic sugars, which are tailor-made. 

TMR And SMR (Trace Marker for Rice Syrup and Specific Marker for Rice Syrup) 

TMR and SMR are useful for detecting adulterants such as rice syrup. 

NMR Test 

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, also known as the NMR test, is useful for detecting adulterants such as illegal resin processing, C3 sugar, and C4 sugar.

Final Takeaway 

Adulteration of honey and honey traps are common problems not just in India but also in other nations such as China, Australia, and the Middle East. Thus, as buyers, we must be conscious while buying honey so that we get access to the real nutritional benefits of pure honey. Besides stopping the use of adulterated honey from brands that fail to clear the CSE standards, we should also promote the use of organic, natural, and forest honey which completely stands by international standards.

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