Cover Story - Your Honey is Fake Honey

Professor Mark Taylor at Macquire University at Melbourne, Australia, has recently conducted a study where he has collected 100 honey samples from 19 countries globally and has found 27% of these samples have adulteration. The testing done by Macquire University is using traditional C4 methods, which check the sugar content in the honey.

 

 

 

 

Gudrun Beckh, Managing Director - Quality services international from Germany warns that C4 testing was invented in the '80s, and it does not give much information about the moisture of honey and is sometimes unreliable. Her company uses magnetic resonance technology machines to detect honey adulteration by checking its moisture and sugar adulteration. Magnetic resonance machines use pure honey benchmarks that are already fed in the system and compare them with sample honey whose testing is required. She says, pure honey has moisture of 18%, which makes it dense, and in adulterated honey, this moisture ratio can go up to 50%.

 

 

She told Sky News Australia that Honey produced in Asia has the highest adulteration, followed by Europe. She also stated more than ten times of manuka honey is sold than produced.

 

 

 

Paul Udy is a beekeeper in Australia, who says that more and more regular honey users are reaching him directly to purchase honey because they have become skeptical about the honey available at the supermarket. One of his customers mentioned that he has diabetes, and he is using honey as a food sweetener and is not ready to risk his health because of honey adulteration as he is not aware of what's in it as an adulteration agent.

 

 

Gudrun Beckh, mentions that it's an everyday challenge for her colleagues to stay ahead of these adulterated honey manufactures as they are developing better and better adulteration mixtures that are becoming difficult to detect in even the most rigorous testing.