Tips to Know Honey is Pure or Adulterated

How to Identify Original & Pure Honey


Original & Pure Honey

For a typical consumer, there is only one method to verify the pure honey; i.e. the use of senses. Concentration and color of honey cannot be a determining factor to guarantee its quality, since they vary depending on the climatic conditions. However, natural honey has a floral aroma and flavor.

Honey is one of the most valuable food products, rich in the most critical of nutrients including organic matters, minerals, natural sugars, vitamins. Honeybees produce honey by collecting pollen and nectar from a variety of flowering plants, and after adding various enzymes and through several chemical reactions, nectar turns into an aromatic, refreshing, energizing, and healing liquid called honey.

Notwithstanding the special place of honey in traditional medicine, its health benefits are mostly neglected in Iran, and it is underappreciated in the family food basket. According to consumers, this negligence is due to adulterated honey brands or lack of quality honey in the market.

Some introduce methods to differentiate pure from adulterated honey; such as the idea that fake honey will crystalize, turn opaque, or settle whereas real and natural honey is always clear. This, however, is not right.

Iranian consumers identify real, pure and natural honey as dark amber color like agate, which is stiff and viscous, if refrigerated for a day, it does not crystallize, and if you pour it, it flows continuously and does not break off.

Some have their own special methods to identify honey, the basis of which is unknown, such as firing matches near the honey or pouring a few drops on the newspaper, none of which has been verified by honey experts and nutritionists.

In fact, it is impossible to accurately and scientifically differentiate natural and adulterated honey using your fingers, spoon or even tasting it. This is only possible by a laboratory device called “refractometer”.


How to identify pure honey?

For a typical consumer, there is no way to identify pure honey except through senses. It means that they see, smell and taste it first. If these were acceptable and honey had the floral taste and scent, it is considered as natural, and they will pay a good price for it.


Crystallization, not a sign of adulterated honey

As crystalized honey looks like sugar, it is presumed adulterated, but this phenomenon is merely the result of “crystallization”.

Honey is actually a solid substance due to its high percentage of sugar content, which is liquid under very mild conditions. This saturated sweet substance must be in fact solid, but it is liquid, so as soon as conditions are prepared, this physical transformation, i.e. crystallization, occurs.

But this has had a significant negative impact on consumers. On the one hand, it creates a big problem for manufacturers in the market for supplying natural honey to the market, and on the other, it creates a suspicion for consumers whether the liquid honey is natural.

It should be noted that the crystallization of honey is not a sign of its poor quality, but some people consider it as artificial or fake.


How to differentiate crystallized natural honey from crystallized artificial honey?

For differentiating natural crystallized honey from artificial crystallized honey, it should be noted that natural honey turns opaque and deposits over time, and its crystals are soft like date syrup natural crystals. It might be stiff when eaten, but you do not feel the crystals in your mouth; unlike crystallized artificial honey, which is as hard as rock candy, hard to spoon some out of the jar, its crystals feel like rock candy, sugar, and crystallized jam under the teeth, and it sticks to the teeth like chocolate.

The most important point is that artificial honey gets crystallized easily without turning opaque or deposition.


Why commercially produced honey does not crystallize?

In order to prevent crystallization of honey, packaging industries usually heat honey, add a small dosage of citric acid per ton, and resort to other measures. All of these, delay crystallization due to impurities introduced to the existing sugar.

In unknown workshops where honey is heated directly or without control, not only honey ingredients are damaged, but also after a certain temperature, a substance called “hydroxymethylfurfural” is produced, which can be toxic if it exceed a specific ratio.


Different types of honey

  • Natural honey is a sweet, viscous food substance produced by honeybees. They produce honey from the sugary secretions of plants (floral nectar), and after the necessary transformations, it is stored in their waxy cells in the hive.
  • Nutritional honey is produced from the sweet and sugary syrup consumed by honeybees in addition to the floral nectar. It cannot compare with the quality and properties of natural honey, but it is sold in many grocery stores to an affordable price.
  • Fake honey; is an adulterated honey-like substance that is industrially produced using commercial glucose, sugar, citric acid, flavors etc. No honeybees are involved in its producion, and it can be easily identified in the laboratory. Fake honey not only has no therapeutic properties, but also is detrimental to human health.

Unfortunately, it is widely produced and marketed, and it is welcomed by consumers due to its affordable price.

Given the cost of natural honey production (the cost of moving, maintaining, developing and equipping apiaries, professional beekeeping wages, packaging, etc.) the price of natural honey should be reasonable.

  • Monofloral honey is a type of honey, which is produced predominantly from the nectar of one plant species, including thyme, acacia, cedar (ash), milkvetch, citrus, etc. This type of honey has therapeutic applications and usually commands a premium price in the market.

Obtaining 100% pure monofloral honey is almost impossible, and in most monofloral honey types, there is a small amount of other flowers of the region.

  • Multifloral honey is a type of honey, which is produced from the nectar of various flowers, or it is a mixture of several monofloral honey types (according to the consumers taste in terms of color, scent, and flavor) produced using specific formula. This type of natural honey also has therapeutic benefits.
  • Waxy honey is rich in pollen, propolis, and natural wax, which is not heated, and is high quality in terms of its properties, flavor and aroma. Since the medications used for treating honeybee diseases might get deposited in the wax, it is advisable to avoid continuous use of this type of honey (up to 10% of consumption).

Unfortunately, self-seekers produce fake wax using artificial wax and paraffin (the primary material used in making candles), and by placing some of these paraffin waxes in fake honey, they mislead consumers.

  • Spring honey is produced late in the spring from citrus, acacia and fruit trees such as apricots, pears, almonds etc.
  • Fall honey is produced from the early summer to mid-autumn by honeybees using nectar of field plants.

Recommendations for honey consumers

Consumers should note that if they want to use honey with warm liquids and foods such as boiling water, milk, porridges and decoctions, be sure to add honey when they are tepid to preserve honey’s therapeutic properties.

Like its color, honey flavor and aroma are proportional to plants from which that honeybee has collected nectar.

In different regions, honey is produced at various concentrations, and this difference cannot be a determining factor to ensure the quality of honey; for example, honey obtained in wet areas is less concentrated. In contrast, honey from mountainous regions is highly concentrated.

Honey color depends on the type of nectar collected by the honeybees, and varies from light yellow to dark red and even black. Geographical area and climatic conditions are also effective in determining its color; so honey color like its concentration cannot be a determining factor to ensure its quality.


Wonders of honey and honeybees

To produce and process each kilogram of natural honey, honeybee must move nectar from 120 to 150 thousand times, and extract nectar from 10 million flowers, and fly a distance equal to seven times around the earth.

Worker bees tend to live for about 45 days, during which they never sleep!

Natural honey is the only food that never rots and it destroys the most potent, powerful, and dangerous germs in less than 48 hours. Therefore, it is the best natural antibiotic that does not harm the body.

Each bee makes only one dessertspoon of honey in its lifetime under optimal conditions if she survives any kind of disaster.

Despite its small body, honeybee has two stomachs; the first one is called the honey sac where a honeybee stores nectar that will be made into honey. Then, she pours it into the existing waxy cells and seals the cell using a specific wax. The second stomach is where she digests her food.