Over the years, because of the preference for healthy living by most consumers globally, the demand for honey and honey-related products has been growing exponentially.
Unfortunately, this demand has also seen the emergence of unscrupulous traders who have been blending cheap sugar or other sweeteners into their honey in order to lower their costs and improve their profits. Then they label their product as “pure honey” without disclosing the added ingredient(s). This practice misleads consumers into buying something they may not have otherwise chosen to buy. This purposeful mislabeling is a form of “food fraud” and it’s a big problem.
Beyond this, most of these products end up being more harmful than the table sugar that consumers are trying to avoid.
What is pure honey?
Pure honey is a natural product made by honey bees and should not come from a factory. The most common references to real and pure honey are organic and natural honey. By just looking at honey on the shelves, it is almost impossible to tell whether the honey is pure or fake. Pure honey is made by bees that fed only on organically grown flowers.
What is fake honey?
Also referred to as impure, artificial, or adulterated, fake honey is ‘honey’ that has added glucose, dextrose, molasses, sugar syrup, invert sugar, flour, corn syrup, starch, or any other similar product, other than floral nectar.
The following test will help you distinguish between pure and fake honey.
1) Stickiness
Pure Honey: It tends not to be sticky if you rub it between your fingers.
Fake Honey: It is fairly sticky because of the high percentage of added sweeteners and additives.
2) Thickness
Pure Honey: It is very thick and takes a tad bit of time to move from one side of the container to the other.
Fake Honey: It is very lightish and moves really quickly inside the jar. Not dense at all.
3) Taste
Pure Honey: Contrary to a common belief, the taste will go away very soon in a matter of minutes. Also if you heat and cool pure honey, you will alter the taste and kill all healing and nutritional values.
Fake Honey: An extensively sweet taste remains due to added sugars and sweeteners in the honey.
4) Aroma/Smell
Pure Honey: If experienced, you can actually smell the aromas of certain flowers and wild grasses.
Fake Honey: There is mostly none or just an industrial sour smell.
5) Heating
Pure Honey: Upon heating, pure honey caramelizes quickly but does not make foam.
Fake Honey: Forms foam and becomes bubbly because of the added moisture, sugars, and water.
6) Dissolving Method
Pure Honey: Doesn’t get dissolved in water immediately and lumps and the bottom. Gets diluted when stirred for a while. Mixing in equal amounts of honey and methylated spirits, honey settles at the bottom.
Fake Honey: Gets dissolved very fast when added to water because of additives. Dissolves in methylated spirits while making the solution milky.
7) Bread test
Pure Honey: When spread on a slice of bread, the bread will become solid in a few minutes.
Fake Honey: It will wet and moisturize the slice of bread because of additives.
8) Impurities
Pure Honey: Presence of impurities: dirty-looking particles, pollen, and bee body parties
Fake Honey: Absence of impurities
Good to know
Raw, local, and organic honey is most likely to have the pollen that you would expect it to. Even without its pollen, honey offers a slew of benefits from antibiotic wound-healing properties to soothing sore throats. All this said, it is important to note that honey is not considered a “health food” and it should also never be fed to infants under one year of age.
Honey is not a “health food”
While honey is certainly healthier than white sugar, corn syrup, and other non-natural (refined) sweeteners, it is still a sugar and is not considered to be considered a “health food”.
Honey does contain trace amounts of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, enzymes, and other nutrients. But it is also high in fructose and glucose, which makes it high in calories and carbohydrates. Like refined sugars, honey (and most other natural sweeteners) can still contribute to weight gain and other unhealthy conditions. As such, it should be used sparingly.
Honey should never be fed to infants
Honey may contain Clostridium botulinum spores that can cause “infant botulism” in babies under one year of age. While we are all routinely exposed to these spores in dust and soil, our gastrointestinal tract has developed enough after our first 12 months of life that we are not typically affected. However, infants need time to build their gut walls and the beneficial bacteria that help to combat these spores.
Infant botulism is rare but serious. While most cases have actually been traced back to dust (not honey), it is still considered unsafe to feed honey to infants under 1 year of age. This said, honey, is considered safe for moms to consume during lactation, as the spores are not transmitted in breast milk.
Raw honey
Raw honey is closest to how the honey would exist naturally in the beehive. It is harvested by extraction, settling, or straining. Some raw honey is minimally heated, just enough to get the honey into the jar and never above 118-degrees, which is the temperature that kills the healthy enzymes we want. It may also be minimally filtered to remove the larger bits of honeycomb or wax, but the pollen and propolis remain intact.
At Nutri health, we are proud of our Nutri Honey product that is unfiltered, unprocessed, and unheated. Feel free to call us on 07722 849 229 to order yours.