How to distinguish real honey from fake honey. Natural honey with additives

Liquid natural honey can only be within a month after it was collected. The honey collection lasts from the end of July to the end of September. If in winter they offer you liquid honey, it is most likely unnatural. High-quality real honey should thicken and begin to crystallize by this point.

2. Check if the honey is foaming

If honey foams on the surface, it means that fermentation processes are taking place in it. It begins when the volume of water in honey exceeds 20%. This honey is definitely not natural.

3. Smell the honey

Natural honey always has a characteristic smell. If the honey smells nothing, it has been produced artificially.

4. Check if the honey is stratifying

Take a close look at the container with honey and check if the mass is homogeneous. If the honey seems thicker at the bottom of the jar and thinner at the top, it's fake. Most likely, the manufacturer added an impurity. Often, unscrupulous manufacturers put a mixture of semolina with molasses at the bottom of the can.

5. Pay no attention to the color

Color is not an indicator of the quality of honey, it can only speak about its variety. For example, buckwheat and cherry honey are usually dark brown, while acacia honey is light. Other varieties of honey can be dark amber, amber, light yellow and even almost white.

Honey - healing product which is given to us honey bees. Surprisingly, its composition has not yet been fully studied. There are about a hundred types of this delicacy, but in our area three types are traditional: buckwheat, linden and acacia. All of them differ in their color and taste. Honey is famous for its anti-inflammatory, bactericidal, antibacterial properties. The natural product has an amazing and unique taste and color.

In order to fully enjoy all the flavors and healing qualities golden honey, you need to be able to distinguish real honey from a fake. Not only sugar is added to the counterfeit, but also starch, flour and even chalk. If honey crystallizes, this does not mean that you bought a fake. On the contrary, a natural product will be candied in 1-2 months. This is due to the fact that natural honey contains a lot of pollen. If it does not crystallize, it is most likely that it has been subjected to heat treatment, as a result of which all the useful properties of the product were lost.

Crystallization lends itself to all varieties without exception, beekeepers in this case use the concept of "set honey". The properties of the product after sugaring are preserved. It is difficult to fake, so do not buy in winter liquid product, because you can buy honey that has been melted on steam bath. And in summer, candied honey may not be the first freshness.

It is best to buy honey directly from beekeepers. But if you do not have such an opportunity, and you buy it on the market, make sure that direct sunlight does not fall on the product, which destroys all vitamins and enzymes. Be sure to ask where the honey was stored. It cannot be stored in aluminum, copper dishes, since the acids that make up honey react with the metal, which then accumulates in the body and can cause various diseases. It is ideal if you buy honey in glass, earthenware, wooden or plastic containers.

If you doubt the quality of the purchased honey, do some simple experiments at home:

1. Add a couple of drops of iodine to a cup of honey. If the product turned blue, starch was added to it so that it would not sugar.
   
2. Add a few drops of vinegar. If the honey sizzles, chalk is added to it to increase the viscosity.
   
3. Dip a spoon into the honey and slowly lift it up. Real mature honey will stretch like a thread and, descending, will create a hill, and the thread, breaking off, will stretch up. If the product is not yet ripe, it will instantly spread and form a funnel.
   
4. Rub a drop of honey between your fingers. If it is natural, it will instantly be absorbed into the skin.
   
5. Dip a piece in honey fresh bread. If the bread gets wet, you have a fake or spoiled product.
   
6. Put some honey on blotting paper. If after 3-5 minutes you see a watery spot on the back of the paper, you bought a fake.
   
7. Put some honey on paper and set it on fire. If the honey began to melt, the bees were fed with sugar syrup, and if it changed its color to brown, sugar was added to it. Real honey will not burn or change color.
   

It is best to buy honey in season, it usually begins to be harvested in mid-August. Try to purchase this healing product from a trusted beekeeper you know with a year's supply in advance.

People won't pass by outlet which offers fresh, high quality, very useful product. Fraudsters know this very well and therefore very often offer counterfeit goods to buyers.

It started a very long time ago, since the sugar industry began to develop. The first fakes of honey are regular sugar mixed with water and some aromatics. Usually such a fake is mixed with real honey, for more difficult detection.

Sometimes in such impurities, substances extremely harmful to human health were also found. Nowadays, technology has advanced dramatically.

Now molasses is used for fakes, invert sugar, sucrose, starch and various other fillers. Currently, fakes have reached such a level that they are difficult to detect even in the laboratory.

Protection of consumers from poor-quality honey was undertaken by the state, but a lot of honey is bought from private individuals and therefore is not subjected to any verification. But impurities in honey, not to mention the fact that they reduce the benefits of this product, can cause direct harm to your health.

That is why you need to know that fakes are divided into:

1. Natural honey with the addition various additives, to increase mass, viscosity

2. Honey made from non-nectar products

3. Artificial honey

The most common honey adulterant is sugar syrup. The same syrup is often diluted with unripe honey to give it the missing sweetness.

First, the honey must be mature. After all, bees work on nectar for about a week: they evaporate water, enrich it with enzymes, break down complex sugars into simple ones. During this time, honey is infused. finished product bees seal with wax caps - it is this honey that has all its useful properties and can be stored for a long time.

Very often, beekeepers pump out honey during the honey collection, without waiting for it to ripen, due to a lack of combs. The water content in such honey is sometimes twice the norm, it is not enriched with enzymes and sucrose, and quickly turns sour.

To determine the maturity of honey, it is heated to 20 degrees, stirring with a spoon. Then the spoon is taken out and rotated. Ripe honey wraps around her. From time to time it can become sugary, this is normal. If you want to return it to its previous state, warm it up slightly in a water bath. But sometimes it provokes further souring.

With the help of simple tests, you can determine if honey is falsified. Flour and starch are determined by adding a drop of iodine to a small amount of honey diluted with water. If the solution turns blue, honey with flour or starch. If when adding vinegar essence the solution will hiss - there is chalk in honey. If in 5-10 percent aqueous solution honey, when a small amount of lapis is added, it drops out white precipitate- Sugar has been added.

DETERMINING THE QUALITY OF HONEY

● By color

Each type of honey has its own unique color. Flower honey - light yellow, linden - amber, ash - transparent, like water, buckwheat has different shades of brown. Pure honey without impurities, as a rule, is transparent, no matter what color it is.

Honey, which has additives in its composition (sugar, starch, other impurities), is cloudy, and if you look closely, you can find a sediment in it.

● By flavor

Real honey has a fragrant aroma. This scent is incomparable. Honey with an admixture of sugar has no aroma, and its taste is close to the taste of sweetened water.

● Viscosity

Take honey for a sample, lowering it into a container thin stick. If this real honey, then it stretches after the stick with a long continuous thread, and when this thread is interrupted, it will completely fall, forming a turret, a pagoda on the surface of the honey, which then slowly disperses.

Fake honey, on the other hand, will behave like glue: it will profusely drain and drip down from the stick, forming splashes.

● Consistency

In real honey, it is thin, tender. Honey is easily rubbed between the fingers and absorbed into the skin, which cannot be said about a fake. Fake honey has a rough texture, and lumps remain on the fingers when rubbed.

Before buying honey in the market in reserve, take the product you like from 2-3 regular sellers. To start with 100 grams. Do the recommended quality tests at home and only then buy it for future use from the same sellers.

● Check if water and sugar are added to honey

To do this, drop honey on a sheet of low-grade paper that absorbs moisture well. If it spreads over the paper, forming wet spots, or even seeps through it, it is fake honey.

● Determine if there is starch in honey

To do this, put a little honey in a glass, pour boiling water over it, stir and cool. After that, there are a few drops of iodine. If the composition turns blue, then starch has been added to it. This is fake honey.

In this article we will talk about how to determine real honey from a fake. Dealers of honey are a frequent and ubiquitous phenomenon.

When faced with a reseller, you will not know, as they usually impersonate the manufacturer. Resellers can "remake" honey to diversify their product and attract more buyers. However, on a par with them there are also unscrupulous manufacturers. In this article, we will also talk not only about ways to distinguish natural honey, but also about which varieties are very difficult to find, and which do not exist at all.

Let's first look at the "types" of fakes. The most "natural" of these can be real honey with various additives(for example, with the addition essential oil to get "another variety"). Also, honey can be artificial and made from products that are not nectar from flowers.

To make "linden" beekeepers use starch, sucrose and molasses, and also use other means. Unfortunately, today honey can be faked so professionally that it will be extremely difficult to distinguish it. In particular, some "amateurs" (because a real good beekeeper will not do this) prefer to feed their bees with sugar syrup, and then the latter process it together with nectar. Only the laboratory will recognize such a product for "poor quality".
Most the right way– buy from beekeepers you know and trust. However, not everyone has these. But do not despair, there are several signs, knowing which, an ordinary buyer will be able to suspect a low-quality product.

Please note: according to GOST 19792 2001, natural honey must be stored in such a way that it is not exposed to direct sunlight and the shelf life is not sealed. 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 you when choosing honey and, with one or another probability, point to a "fake" product.

• Too much low price. No matter how tempting it is to buy a healing product cheaper, think about why a beekeeper who has spent so much effort should sell good honey"almost for nothing"? There is a big risk that, having saved, you will buy only some part of real honey mixed with sugar syrup and tinted tea. Such a fake is really not very easy to distinguish.
• Liquid honey. The product has a liquid consistency only for a few months, then it becomes thicker. In particular, this form of healing sweetness should alert you if it is winter outside. This means that either the product was diluted or heated, which is also not very good. However, it should be borne in mind that some varieties can remain in a liquid state for a long time. Which ones and why? You will learn about this from the article about.
  

  Attention: an overheated product at a temperature exceeding 50-60 degrees loses its useful properties. Many sellers "forget" about what real honey should be, carrying out such a procedure to give the honey an attractive look.

• Too much white. Such a product has most likely been diluted with sugar syrup.
• Too much dark color, there is a caramel flavor. This sign indicates that the sweetness has been heated or melted. Often such a dark variety of last year's product, such as, for example, buckwheat, can be melted down and sold, saying that it is fresh.

Please note: the crystallization process is natural. If the sweetness is stored for a long time and this process is not observed, then it contains molasses or it was thermally processed in the past. Of course, in this case, the purchase has already been made and it’s “too late to drink Borjomi”, but for the future you will know what to buy from this beekeeper or from the company is not worth it.

Methods of determination

Manufacturers of a "fake" product are honing their skills in disguising a fake every year better and better. Let's see what other methods can be used if natural honey cannot be determined “by eye”.

• Method with a glass, water and iodine. Here is the first and simple method - pour some honey into a glass, and then add some a large number of water. Intervene. When honey dissolves, all additives will settle to the bottom. If a few more drops of iodine are added to the glass and the mixture turns blue, this will indicate the presence of starch.
• The spoon method. This method can be applied only if the room is warm enough (about 20 degrees). Take a spoon and start winding honey around it, spin it quickly. If the product is natural, then it will behave like caramel - twist around the spoon and not drain. Otherwise, the product may leak from the spoon, bubbles will appear, or you may see blotches of a different color.
• Blotting paper method. How to determine the naturalness of honey using paper - put some honey on the paper and wait about 5 minutes. If with reverse side there was no wet spot on the paper, then the honey is of high quality and undiluted. it good way at the fair - you can take honey on a disposable spoon or stick "for testing", and then put it on paper.
• fire method. This method is only suitable for already crystallized honey. Light a piece on fire and watch it burn. If the product is natural, then it will melt quietly. A fake will show itself with crackling and hissing (foreign components will appear).
• The bread method. In this way, you can check whether the sweetness is diluted with sugar syrup. Take a small piece of bread and dip it in honey. Wait about 10-15 minutes. Then take it out and look at it. Good and quality product will not soften the bread, but if sugar water is present there, the bread will soften.

Tip: When making a purchase, give preference only to thick honey. A product with a transparent consistency may mean that the seller has warmed it up.

Non-existent varieties of honey

Some beekeepers or resellers are so imaginative that they begin to literally invent varieties of honey or distribute those that are already incredibly rare and difficult to meet at an ordinary fair. Let's see which "varieties" can also alert.

• From royal jelly. It is incredibly difficult and almost impossible to make such honey in such quantities, so that later it can be sold. One mother liquor contains about 200 grams of milk. Incredible effort is required to make such honey. In most cases, a label with a loud name and incredibly useful properties, as well as a price tag with a “round” number, is glued to a jar with a white product.
• From wild rose, poppy, corn, lupine, hazel. Despite the fact that the flowers of the respective plants do not have nectar, it is not uncommon to find a rosehip product (honey mixed with a rosehip decoction? Only no one will say this).
• Chamomile honey. Such a name should also alert you, there is no such variety, especially on sale.
• May. In May, a professional and responsible beekeeper feeds bees with honey, which, after winter, are just starting to build a colony. It is not possible to collect such a product for sale this month.
• From strawberries, blackberries, blueberries. It is very difficult to make natural bee honey using nectar from these shrubs for sale - they give very meager amount nectar, and, therefore, it is extremely difficult to make honey from it. Another thing is if the bees are fed with the juice of berries, which they process as nectar, but this is a product of lower quality and the sellers hush up the manufacturing method.
• Pumpkin. It is possible to make a product from the nectar of the flowers of this plant, however, it can also be dangerous due to the fact that they are treated with pesticides to control pests.
• From a silver sucker. In this case, even comments are superfluous. There is such a variety, but it turns out so little that it’s not even worth talking about selling.

Also, you should be alerted by the mention of wild honey and too large a selection of "flower" varieties from the seller.

Remember: always taste and smell the product before buying. Feel free to ask questions - when was the collection, where is the apiary. You pay money (and sometimes a lot), so you have every right to find out everything.

Real honey has a floral aroma, sweet and pleasant (there are some varieties whose taste is quite original, but if you are going to buy such, then find out first on the Internet what exactly the taste and smell should be). If swallowed, it may "pinch" the throat a little and have slight bitterness. See how fake fakes are determined at home and in the laboratory and how even well-known companies deceive consumers

Probably everyone has heard about the benefits of bee products. Such natural gifts can heal the body, prevent a variety of diseases and pathologies, and also treat some of them. Medications based on bee products can be purchased at any pharmacy or prepared at home.

And honey is rightfully considered the most popular of them - tasty and very healthy treat. But, unfortunately, today it is very difficult to find really quality honey. Therefore, the topic of our today's conversation will be honey fakes and how to determine them. Let's talk about how to distinguish a fake honey from a real one.

Fake honey can be purchased anywhere - both from resellers and from manufacturers. At the same time, the average consumer will not even be able to distinguish them from each other. Let's try to understand not only the differences between real honey, but also the variety of existing fakes.

How is natural honey faked?

The current fakes can be divided into three groups:

• Natural with the addition of foreign substances designed to increase the total volume and density of the mass;
• Products obtained from a mixture of sugar and water, with the addition of dyes and flavors;
• Sugar.

Natural honey: signs of a quality product

Before buying a particular variety of honey, it is useful to familiarize yourself with detailed description it in a reference book or other specialized literature. Each variety has certain qualities: appearance and color, aroma and taste, consistency.

Appearance, color

Pure honey is always transparent and clear. Its viscosity can be studied by lowering a thin needle or stick into the dish, after which it will stretch with a long thread, and if interrupted, it will fall entirely, forming a “turret” on the surface of the product. A fake will behave more like glue, dripping and dripping from the knitting needle, it can even create splashes.

You can distinguish natural honey by its density, which must correspond to the varietal characteristics. At a temperature of 20°C, a quality product, when wound on a spoon, is wound like a ribbon in a long strip and is interrupted at a certain moment. Its structure is quite delicate, when rubbed in the palm of your hand, it is absorbed into the skin.

High-quality flower honey contains no more than 5% sucrose, honeydew - no more than 10%. Increased quantities can only be determined within the walls of the laboratory. Some Features appearance and the properties of the product should alert the buyer even at a cursory examination, forcing them to suspect a fake:

• the smell of stale honeycombs;
• unexpressed fresh taste;
• too liquid consistency fresh honey or sticky, sticky and thick for a long-term stored product.

Consistency

Honey purchased from winter time usually hardened. If the product remains plastic in this season, it most often means that it is diluted or heated. There are varieties that do not shrink longer than others, but they are difficult to distinguish from a fake:

1. May honey contains a large amount of fructose, so it does not get candied for a long time. This is the earliest variety, one of the most beneficial to human health, but it is he who often turns out to be a fake.
2. Acacia honey also contains a significant proportion of fructose and water, therefore it is able to maintain plasticity for up to 1-2 years.
3. Greek honey is a great value, pine and thyme varieties are especially popular. They thicken only six months after collection, and under certain conditions, they can retain a liquid consistency for up to 1.5 years.
4. Chestnut honey is viscous and dark grade, the shrinkage of which takes 6-12 months. At long-term storage it forms ever larger crystals and also begins to delaminate.

The liquid consistency is characteristic of immature honey, which flows down from cutlery, without forming a viscous thread. It is pumped out in case of a shortage of combs, it is not complete and biologically active, contains too much water and cannot be stored for a long time. Fermentation processes quickly begin in it, since the product is not sufficiently enriched with sucrose and enzymes.

Determination of the quality of honey by external signs

It is possible to determine that you have fake or real honey in front of you without laboratory research. Our advice regarding the characteristic external signs of bee nectar will not let you get into a mess:

• Taste. Try the product first. If it dissolves without residue, there are no strong sugar crystals left on the tongue, and the throat is torn from a tart aftertaste, then it is of high quality. Moreover, do not be shy and take it out with a spoon from the very bottom (it is at the bottom of the jar with counterfeit that there can be molasses). And if the seller is against it, it is better to bypass such honey.
• Smell. Real nectar will definitely have a characteristic fragrant floral aroma. The fake one has no smell.
• Crystallization. If you see large and hard crystals in candied honey, then most likely it is a fake, fermented by bees from sugar syrup. AT natural product crystals should be small.
• liquid state. Buyers like the product in this form more, although the crystallized one does not lose its useful properties. But if there is a demand for liquid, it means that scammers organize an offer by dissolving (melting) old honey. It will no longer be useful substances only pure glucose. He loses his healing properties at temperatures over 37 degrees, so by the way, there is no particular health benefit to drinking hot tea with honey, not with sugar. Only acacia, heather and chestnut nectar are candied later than all other varieties, and can remain liquid throughout the year (they have more fructose). Any other real honey cannot be liquid in winter. If you see such a product on sale, it means that it was either melted down, or it is falsified (fermented by bees not from nectar, but from sugar syrup or honeydew). If you have a liquid product in front of you, sealed in honeycombs, you can be sure that it has not been melted. True, from a fake (the bees could be fed with syrup) they are still not insured.
• Transparency, the presence of sediment and delamination. Honey, of course, is transparent as long as it is in a liquid state. But if it is ultra-transparent, and you can even see the bottom of the jar through it, and the nectar also casts amber, having a bright sheen and caramel taste, then most likely you are dealing with an overheated product. Acacia honey can be transparent and slightly cloudy, all other varieties are either transparent (while still liquid) or crystallized. If there is sediment or stratification in it (the substance is denser at the bottom than at the top), then this is definitely due to impurities. This happens if, for example, scammers put molasses mixed with semolina on the bottom of the jar, and poured real honey on top.
• impurities. In a natural product, if you look closely, you can see pollen and wax particles. Buy such honey calmly. But if blades of grass and body parts of bees float in it, the same wax is enough large pieces, this means that either the nectar is natural, and the seller is very sloppy, if not unscrupulous, or he deliberately added all this garbage to give credibility to his fake or low-quality product. In any case, it is better to refrain from buying.
• Presence of foam. Such honey is not worth buying, it began to ferment or was pumped out immature. In high-quality foam, there should not be.
• Fluidity. A good product does not have high fluidity, but sour, immature (it is poorly stored, quickly sour) or diluted with honeydew - yes, because it contains a large amount of water. It is because of her that a fake product, if dropped on low-grade paper that absorbs moisture well (for example, newsprint or toilet paper), will spread over it or even seep through, forming wet spots around. Poor-quality honey cannot be wound on a spoon, it will drip, making splashes and bubbles on the surface of the rest of the substance. But the real one, if you lower a clean wooden stick into it, and then lift it up, it will follow a long, uninterrupted thread, which, having broken, will go down whole, forming a hill.
• absorbency. If you try to rub a drop of honey between your fingers, then the natural one will be absorbed into the skin without residue, and the fake one will leave a rolling lump on your fingers.
• The weight. In a jar with a volume of 800 ml, a product weighing 1 kg should fit. If not, then it means that it has a lot of water in it (i.e. it is immature or diluted). And in liter jar by weight should be at least 1 kg 400 g of bee nectar.
• healing. Motherwort honey is soothing, while raspberry and linden are good for colds. But being at the counter, you will not be able to test these qualities. But if at home you felt the corresponding effect (for example, raspberry should definitely throw you into a fever), then return to the seller and stock up on such goods for future use. Better yet, take the coordinates of this beekeeper so as not to miss the opportunity to buy a worthy product in the future.
• caked honey. It happens that the market sells the product in pieces. That is, it was so packed that a jar is no longer needed for its storage, and it is rather difficult to cut such a monolith even with a knife. It is clear that this is not a product of the current year, and maybe not of the past. If you trust the beekeeper, then such honey can be bought, but, of course, it is cheaper than fresher. But from unverified sellers, it is better not to take a caked one. The fact is that honey absorbs the smell and moisture. If stored in bad faith, it may contain unknown and not useful components.
• honeydew honey. If you set out to find such a product or, on the contrary, do not want to buy, then remember that it differs in that it does not have the usual honey smell, it is brownish, dark, sometimes even greenish in color. Its taste is very sweet, but there is no characteristic nectar taste. Honeydew honey remains liquid for a long time, it is hygroscopic and therefore it is poorly stored, quickly turns sour.