Honey. How to distinguish real honey from a fake?
Honey is very useful for colds, it boosts immunity and normalizes metabolism. Especially this product is necessary for children, it helps them to resist diseases and improves brain activity. But all this applies only to natural honey. And recently there have been a lot of fakes on the market that are difficult to identify at a glance. Those who care about their health should know how to distinguish real honey from fake.
When buying in the market, you can come across not only a product diluted with sugar syrup, but also a frank counterfeit. Unscrupulous manufacturers can add molasses, gelatin, starch and even sawdust to increase the volume.
You can fake honey even at the production stage. Beekeepers feed bees with sugar syrup, and they produce a product that contains almost no beneficial substances. This is just a sweet treat. You need to know how to distinguish real honey from a fake, so as not to harm your health. To get more profit, some unscrupulous farmers pull out their honeycombs very early. Honey still does not have time to ripen and remains useless.
How to check if the honey is real during its purchase? With room temperature fake can be determined by the consistency of the product. Try to mix honey - it should not foam and have impurities. If you scoop a little from the jar on a spoon and rotate it, you will see the quality of the product. Unripe honey is liquid and 
will drain from it quickly. This healing product must be tough, roll on a spoon, and if you want to pour it, it should not be torn into drops. A thin even stream forms a small hill on the surface.
Liquid can only be fresh honey. After 3-6 months, it should harden and crystallize. Usually in shops for sale it is heated, and it remains liquid for a long time. But such a product has no useful properties.
How to distinguish real honey from a fake taste? For it to be healing, it must contain only the nectar of plants. Therefore, real honey smells like flowers and has a slightly bitter taste. If you swallow it, then 
feel your throat torn. A fake is just a sweet treat, often with an admixture of extraneous smells and tastes.
If you have already purchased a product and brought it home, how to distinguish real honey from a fake then? The easiest way is to stir it in water. It should dissolve completely. And to check if there are any impurities, drip a little iodine into the solution. If it turns blue, there is starch or flour. Chalk impurities react to vinegar - it foams and hiss.
How to distinguish real honey from a fake yet? Dissolve it with water and add a little liquid ammonia. If molasses is added to it, the solution will turn brown and precipitate will fall out. A simpler way is to put honey on the paper. It should not be absorbed and spread on the surface.
It is very important to know how to determine real honey for those who buy it for treatment. It should have bactericidal properties, so a piece of food, put in honey, should not spoil for a long time. If it is sour, there is foam and signs of fermentation, then the product is not suitable for treatment.
In this article we will talk about how to identify real honey from a fake. Resellers of honey - the phenomenon is frequent and ubiquitous.
Faced with a dealer, you will not know, as they, as a rule, pretend to be a manufacturer. Resellers can "remake" honey in order to diversify their products and attract more buyers. However, unscrupulous manufacturers are on a par with them. In this article we will also talk not only about ways of distinguishing natural honey, but also about which varieties are very difficult to meet, and which ones do not exist at all.
Let's first look at the "types" of fakes. The most "natural" of those can be real honey with various additives (for example, with the addition of essential oil to get a "different grade"). Honey can also be artificial and made from such products that are not nectars from flowers.
The best time to buy honey is from the end of August, beginning of September, after pumping out.
To make a linden, beekeepers use starch, sucrose, and molasses, as well as using other means. Unfortunately, today honey can be forged so professionally that it will be extremely difficult to distinguish it. In particular, some “lovers” (because a real good beekeeper will not do this) prefer to feed the bees with sugar syrup, and then the last ones process it together with nectar. Such a product on the "poor quality" only laboratory and recognizes.
The surest way is to buy from familiar beekeepers you know and trust. However, these are not for everyone. But do not despair, there are several signs, knowing that an ordinary buyer will be able to suspect a low-quality product.
Please note: according to GOST 19792 2001, natural honey should be stored so that direct sunlight does not fall on it and the storage period in an untightly closed container should be no more than 8 months (i.e. selling last year’s honey, beekeepers or resellers violate these rules) .
Visual signs of a fake
Let's see what can alert when choosing honey and with varying probability point to the "fake" product.
Please note: the crystallization process is natural. If sweetness is stored for a long time and such a process is not observed, it means that there is potato syrup in it or it has been thermally processed in the past. Of course, in this case, the purchase has already been made and “too late to drink Borjomi”, but for the future you will know that it is not worth buying from this beekeeper or from the company.
Methods of determination
Producers of the "fake" product are sharpening their skills in disguising a fake, every year better and better. Let's see what else you can use the methods, if "by eye" to determine the natural honey fails.
- Method with a glass, water and iodine. Here is the first and simple method - pour a little honey into a glass, and then add a small amount of water to the same place. Stir. When honey is dissolved, all additives will settle to the bottom. If you drop a few more drops of iodine into the glass and the mixture turns blue, this will indicate the presence of starch.
- Method with a spoon. This method can be applied only if the room is warm enough (about 20 degrees). Take a spoon and start winding honey on it, rotate it quickly. If the product is natural, then it will behave like caramel - curl around the spoon and not drain. Otherwise, the product may drip from the spoon, bubbles will appear or you will be able to see blotches of a different color.
- Method with blotting paper. How to determine the naturalness of honey using paper - put some honey on the paper and wait about 5 minutes. If there was no wet spot on the back of the paper, then the honey is of high quality and undiluted. This is a good way at the fair - you can take honey on a disposable spoon or stick for a sample, and then put it on paper.
- Method with fire. This method is suitable only for already crystallized honey. Light a piece and watch it burn. If the product is natural, then it will calmly melt. The counterfeit will show itself by crackling and hissing (foreign components will appear).
- Method with bread. This way you can check if the sweetness is not diluted with sugar syrup. Take a small piece of bread and dip in honey. Wait about 10-15 minutes. Then reach out and look at it. Good and quality product bread will not soften, but if there is sugar water there, then bread will soften.
Tip: when making a purchase, give preference only to thick honey. A product with a transparent texture may indicate that the seller has warmed it.
The benefits of honey - this is a long and definitively proven fact. Firstly, honey, unlike sugar, is easily and quickly absorbed by the body due to the presence of fructose in it. By the amount of mineral substances it simply does not have equal.
In short, these are: organic and inorganic acids, amino acids, nitrogenous substances, disaccharides, minerals, including potassium, calcium, phosphorus, sulfur, chlorine, copper, magnesium, iodine, zinc, etc. Plus vitamins, which, although not very much, however, they are in perfect combination with other substances needed by the human body. In addition, they are stored in honey throughout the year, in contrast to vitamins in fruits and vegetables.
In general, you need honey. However, you need natural honey. That's about how to distinguish honey from fakeand save yourself from buying counterfeit and will be discussed.
Warming up honey
The most basic and frequently used way to make honey attractive is to warm it up. It seems to have long been known that when honey is heated above 40 degrees, enzymes are destroyed in it, therefore its benefits are significantly reduced, and when it is heated above 60-80 degrees, carcinogens are formed in it. Nevertheless, at any time of the year, liquid honey can be found on the market, usually advertised as "May". Well, if it is heated in a water bath without exceeding the allowed temperature. But will everyone bother with this?
In this case distinguish natural honey not that hard. It is enough just not to buy suspiciously liquid off-season honey. If he didn’t sugared by October, it’s worth to suspect that something was wrong. About a month or two after harvesting, any honey crystallizes, even May honey, contrary to popular belief that May honey remains liquid year-round. Even as it crystallizes, just a little longer.
Honey sold in supermarkets looks very strange - in neat plastic jars, a neat little yellowish “honey” flaunts year-round ... To give a beautiful presentation, it is heated to high temperatures and poured into prepared containers. Naturally, nothing good can happen after this procedure.
Top dressing of bees with sugar
Top-feeding of bees with sugar is a very common method of falsifying honey. Bees, like us, love to be lazy. Why fly far and look for flowers if you are presented with sugar syrup on a silver platter? Such honey is not harmful, and even a little more useful than the sugar itself, from which it is made, since the bees have already processed it. However, it will not be of significant benefit, naturally, due to the absence of useful substances.
It is possible to determine such honey to taste and smell - they will be not pronounced, weak. To try to distinguish honey from a similar fake on the market, you can try to compare to taste several versions of honey from different sellers - there must be at least one natural one! Although of course this is not an easy task.
Impurities in honey
For the amount of honey can mix a variety of components: starch, flour,
Iodine in aqueous solution natural honey (not blue)
potato, corn, and other porridges, as well as sand, chalk, sawdust, etc. Brrr ... Determining these impurities is easy enough: you need to dissolve honey in water - the impurities will precipitate or float on the surface.
To choose good honey already on the market, you can do a few simple manipulations, taking with you in advance a jar of ordinary water, and iodine.
If iodine is dropped into this solution, it is possible to determine from the color whether flour or starch is present in the honey you buy (the solution turns blue).
Fortunately, such a fake is not very common. You can "run into" in spontaneous markets, where the seller sells irregularly: sold-left. Sellers selling constantly in one place, most likely will not go to such scams. Reputation is more expensive.
It is more difficult to detect the addition of sugar syrup. However, it is possible. You need to take 5-10% solution of lapis (silver nitrate) and add to honey. If there is no sediment - high quality honey. There are more similar methods of verification. I think that chemists themselves know them, and it will be too difficult for non-chemists to check the purchased honey in this way.
Absence of honey in honey
The coarsest fake honey that I had to face was the complete absence of honey in honey. Yes, yes, sugar syrup was simply made, something odorous was added (like rose aromatic oil) and pieces of honeycombs and dead bees were thrown “for beauty”. Here we are not talking about any quality checks - all these tests fail. Of course, to understand that this is not honey at all - not difficult, provided that you have tried real honey. But even buy it! In my case, this “beauty” was given for honey to Iranians who did not see the “right” honey in their eyes. Well, they do not have bees.
Where to buy honey
In order to have the least chance to get on poor-quality honey or counterfeit, it is worthwhile to find “your” beekeeper and buy honey only from him. Maybe it lives with you nearby, or maybe you will get to know it on the market and become a regular customer. So you will have confidence in the benefits and quality of the purchased product, and the “national producer” will find its “national consumer”.
Buying honey in the supermarket is not worth it. Most likely, this product will not bring you harm, however, there will be no benefit from it either.
No spontaneous markets, gypsies under the house or grandmothers on the porch of your office. After all, you buy honey for health - spend a little time on it to eat it with pleasure and confidence in its quality and benefits.
Unfortunately, fake honey on the shelves of stores is present in large quantities. It would be naive to believe that at least at specialized fairs you will be protected from falsification: beekeepers quite often sin by “putting on” their product for the sake of getting maximum profit.
How to distinguish fake honey from the present
It is possible to distinguish real honey from fake honey according to the characteristic features of both, and using several simple methods, even at home.
If earlier fake honey was prepared elementary - from sugar syrup richly flavored with flavors with a minimal amount of real honey for taste, now the methods of falsification have become more sophisticated.
Three main modern methods of making fake honey
1. To increase the viscosity and weight of this honey, starch, flour, chalk, and even such absolutely inedible components as sawdust and sand are added to it.
2. To increase the return from bees, especially with a lack of pollen, they are heavily fed with sugar syrup.
3. Counterfeit honey, which does not contain a single gram of real honey, is made from invert sugar (sugar decomposed by acid reaction to glucose and fructose), from sucrose or molasses, to which flavors, thickeners and artificial colors are added.
Note: it is not always possible even to a specialist to distinguish real honey from fake honey right at the counter, and therefore, if you need a lot, first buy 100 grams, which you can check at home, or take it to the laboratory.
So, how to distinguish real from fake honey at home
1. Put in a jar of honey a well-warmed stainless steel wire: fake honey will drain, and real honey will remain on the surface.
2. Drip honey on a piece of paper. If it is diluted, then a wet spot will spread around the drop.
3. Bring a lit cigarette lighter or a match to the surface of the honey. Fake honey will hiss and melt immediately.
4. Stale bread dipped in good real honey will not soften even after 10 minutes.
5. Real honey when diluted with water does not form a precipitate.
6. Put a couple of drops of tincture of iodine in the honey solution. If the solution turns blue - honey is fake. Iodine, by the way, is a universal thing in terms of exposing fakes: you can read about how to check gold for authenticity with the help of iodine.
7. Put some vinegar essence in the honey solution. Foam is a sure sign of fake honey.
Some more signs of real and fake honey
| Real honey | Fake honey |
| Characteristic honey smell (unless pollen was collected from ivan tea) | The smell is absent or has a sour tint. |
| Quite thick, when poured out pulled into a trickle, forming on the surface of the hill | Liquid, dripping down, instantly spreading over the surface |
| It has a delicate texture: it is absorbed between the fingers when rubbed. | The texture is rough, when rubbed forms lumps |
| Contains natural impurities: microparticles of wax, pergoy, propolis, pollen | - |
| Slightly burns the throat | - |
| - | Exfoliates |
| - | Foam on the surface |
Honey, who does not love him? Both children and adults not only like it very much, but also are useful, unlike sugar, for health. Honey has always enjoyed and is deservedly in demand among buyers.
People will not pass by the outlet, which offers a fresh, high-quality, very useful product.
Fraudsters know this very well and therefore very often offer counterfeit goods to customers.
It began a long time ago, since the sugar industry began to develop. The first fakes of honey are ordinary sugar mixed with water and some aromatic substances. Usually such a fake is mixed with real honey, for more difficult detection.
Sometimes substances that were extremely harmful to human health were found in such impurities. In our time, technology abruptly rushed forward.
Now molasses, invert sugar, sucrose, starch and various other fillers are used for fakes. At present, the fakes have reached such a level that they are difficult to detect even in laboratory conditions.
Consumer protection from poor quality honey assumed the state, but a lot of honey is bought from private individuals and therefore is not subjected to any verification. But the impurities in honey, not to mention the fact that they lower the benefits of this product, can cause direct harm to your health.
That is why you need to know that fakes are divided into:
Natural honey with the addition of various additives to increase the mass, viscosity.
Honey made from products not of nectarine origin.
Artificial honey.
The most common forger of honey is sugar syrup. The same syrup often dilutes unripe honey to give it the missing sweetness.
First of all, honey must be mature. After all, the bees work on nectar for about a week: they evaporate water, enrich them with enzymes, break down complex sugars into simple ones. During this time, honey insists. The finished product of the bee is sealed with wax caps - it is this honey that has all its useful properties and can be stored for a long time.
Very often, beekeepers siphon off honey during honey collection, without waiting for it to mature, due to the lack of honeycombs. The water content in such honey is sometimes twice the norm, it is poorly enriched with enzymes and sucrose, quickly acidifies.
To determine the maturity of honey, it is heated to 20 degrees, stirring with a spoon. Then the spoon is taken out and begin to rotate. Mature honey wraps around her. From the time it can sugared, this is normal. If you want to translate it into former state, heat slightly in a water bath. But sometimes it provokes further souring.
With the help of simple tests, you can determine whether honey is not falsified. Flour and starch are determined by adding a drop of iodine to a small amount of honey diluted with water. If the solution turned blue, honey flour or starch. If, when adding vinegar essence, the solution starts to sizzle, there is chalk in the honey. If a 5–10 percent aqueous solution of honey adds a white precipitate when a small amount of lapis is added, sugar is added.
How can you determine the quality of honey?
By color.
Each variety of honey has its own color, unique to it. Flower honey - light yellow, lime - amber, ash - transparent, like water, buckwheat has different shades of brown. Pure, no impurities, honey, as a rule, is transparent, whatever color it is.
Honey, having in its composition additives (sugar, starch, other impurities), is unclear, and if you look closely, you can find a precipitate in it.
By flavor.
Real honey has a fragrant aroma. This smell is incomparable. Honey with an admixture of sugar has no aroma, and its taste is close to the taste of sweetened water.
By viscosity.
Take honey on test, having lowered thin stick in capacity. If this is real honey, then it will follow a long, continuous thread, and when this thread is interrupted, it will completely fall, forming a pagoda on the surface of the honey, which will then slowly disperse.
The fake honey will behave like glue: it will flow abundantly and drip down from the stick, forming a spray.
By consistency.
In this honey it is thin, tender. Honey is easily pounded between fingers and absorbed into the skin, which cannot be said about fake. The falsified honey has a coarse structure, with rubbing on the fingers, lumps remain.
Before buying honey in the market, take the product you like from 2-3 regular sellers. To start, grams are 100. At home, do the recommended quality tests and only then buy it for the future from the same vendors.
Check if water and sugar are added to honey.
To do this, on a sheet of low-grade paper, which absorbs moisture well, drip honey. If it spreads on the paper, forming wet spots, or even seeps through it - this is fake honey.
Determine if honey is starchy. To do this, put in a glass of honey, pour boiling water, stir and cool. After that, put a few drops of iodine there. If the composition turns blue, then starch is added to the honey. This is fake honey.
Find out if there are other impurities in honey.
To do this, take the red-hot wire (stainless steel) and lower it into honey. If a sticky foreign mass hangs on it, there is a fake honey in front of you, but if the wire stays clean, natural honey or, in other words, full-fledged honey.
What should I look for after buying honey?
Honey can not be stored in a metal dish, because the acids contained in its composition, can give oxidation. This will lead to an increase in the content of heavy metals in it and to a decrease in nutrients. Such honey can cause discomfort in the stomach and even lead to poisoning.
Honey is stored in glass, earthenware, porcelain, ceramic and wooden dishes.
The composition of honey is 65-80% fructose and sucrose, it is rich in vitamin C, in addition, it contains almost all minerals. Therefore, using honey with warm water or warming candied honey, do not bring the temperature to 60 degrees - this is the limit after which the structure of honey decays, its color changes, the aroma disappears, and vitamin C, which can live in honey for many years, is destroyed by half or more.
How else can you tell a fake?
In a cup of weak warm tea, add a little of what you bought under the guise of honey. If you are not deceived, the tea will darken, but no precipitate forms at the bottom.
Over time, the honey becomes cloudy and thicker - and this is a sure sign of good quality. And not, as many mistakenly believe that honey is spoiled.
If even after years your honey is not thickened, it means that it contains a large amount of fructose and, alas, does not possess healing properties. Sometimes honey during storage is divided into two layers: it thickens only from below, and remains liquid from above. This suggests that it is immature, and therefore it needs to be eaten as quickly as possible - immature honey is stored for only a few months.
Careless beekeepers do not take out bees to collect nectar, but simply feed them with sugar. Sugar honey - unnatural. There is nothing useful in it. Such honey is unnaturally white.
There is no water in real honey. Honey with syrup has increased humidity - it can check as follows . Dip a piece of bread in the honey, and take it in 8-10 minutes. In high-quality honey bread hardens. If, on the contrary, softened or completely crawled, then before you is nothing like sugar syrup.
But no one in the market will allow you to conduct such experiments, but they will give you a try. Often honey is put on a small piece of paper for tasting. This is quite enough to conduct another experiment.
When going to the market for honey, take it with you. indelible pencil. Spread honey on a piece of paper with a pencil, you can spread it with a finger, and on the honey strip try to write something with a chemical pencil. If after a few seconds, an inscription or a blue color appears, you can confidently and loudly inform the seller (so that other customers hear) that there is starch or flour in the product. If there is no chemical pencil, it will do. a drop of iodine. The same blue tint in the proposed honey will accurately determine the starch and flour in the product.
Which honey is better - mountain or, let's say, flat?
Do not fall for the bait when they try to convince you that mountain honey is better than the one that bees collect in our open spaces. Mountain honey has no special advantages over the “plain” one.
The quality of honey and the concentration of useful substances in it depend only on the honesty and knowledge of the beekeeper, as well as on the ecological situation of the honey collection area. Here, however, there is a difference between honey collected in a clean environment, and the fact that the bees collected from the beds of an industrial enterprise. But here it all depends on the beekeeper. Conscience should not allow him to earn on the "industrial" honey.
The sellers of the useful product exists a few tricks.
First of all, cover your ears and do not listen to what they tell you. On a bunch of liars, of course, one honest seller can get caught, but how do you know that the one who stands before you is honest? Try honey not only from above, but also from the bottom of the can. Do not hesitate to get into the jar with a spoon and do not listen to sellers who will start shouting: “Do not spoil the product!”
Honey is antiseptic, and a clean spoon in a jar cannot spoil it. Another thing, if the bottom was not honey.
Do not buy honey on the market without checking or rolled up. The fact that honey is better kept rolled up with a tin lid is a myth.
Crystallization - the natural process of honey, which does not affect its quality and composition of useful substances. Do not be confused by crystallized honey. Do not come the next day to the seller, who promised you not crystallized honey. Bring the same, but warmed up. And you can not warm the honey. Those who prefer honey in liquid form should take this fact into account. Put a jar of honey in warm water. When the water has cooled, change it. Gradually, the honey will melt.
This honey has the following characteristics:
Quality honey does not roll off the spoon too quickly. Take a tablespoon of honey and turn the spoon several times with quick circular motions. Honey will roll on it, almost not flowing into the jar.
Immerse the spoon in a container of honey. Pulling out a spoon, evaluate the nature of the swelling of honey. A good one will form a ribbon, will sit down on a hill, and bubbles will form on its surface.
All types of honey have a sweet taste, but some of the varieties have a specific taste.
For example, tobacco, chestnut and willow varieties have a bitter taste, and heather has a tartness. Any deviations in the taste of honey indicate its poor quality. Other defects in taste may be due to the presence of impurities. Excessive acidity can be associated with the beginning of fermentation, the aroma of caramel is the result of heating, the obvious bitterness is the wrong storage conditions for a poor-quality product.
The color of honey depends solely on the variety. And there may be all shades of brown and yellow. Do not be intimidated by pale yellow, slightly muddy honey - this is normal for acacia.