How pure is the honey that’s sold in the Indian market? What consumers can do to test the purity of honey

Serious doubts have arisen over the purity of natural honey brands sold in the Indian market. Consumer Voice tested 10 well known brands of honey as per the latest standards notified by Food Safety and standards Authority of India ( FSSAI) and other national standards. The test results have raised dark clouds over the purity of natural honey sold in the Indian market. These new standards come in to effect from 1 Jan 2019.

Natural honey is produced by honey bees from nectar of plants which bees collect. Combining with specific substances of their own the bees deposit, hydrate and store it in honeycombs to ripen and mature. 76-80% of honey is composed of natural glucose and fructose, pollen, wax and mineral salts. Honey is often adulterated with added cane sugar, high fructose corn syrup, potato syrups or inferior quality honey with high water content to make undue profit by businesses. These added sugars have a different biochemical pathway than one in natural honey. FSSAI has recently notified new honey standards which enable tests to detect added sugar( known as C4 sugars) and hence purity of honey.

Consumer Voice tested the purity of 10 leading brands: 24 Mantra ,Baidyanath, Dabur, Fresh & Pure, Hitkary, Himalaya, Khadi, Patanjali, Reliance and Zandu. The latest standard notified by FSSAI is able to detect added sugar. It specifies that C4 sugars cannot exceed 7%. These tests in a government-owned NABL accredited lab found that only Zandu (2.19%) had C4 sugars within prescribed limits. 24 mantra had 12.27%, much above the limit. All other eight brands did not show existence of proteins on the basis of which C4 sugars can be detected. The absence of proteins in these tests signifies that the honey may not be pure.

Scientific developments have devised new methods to test and beat adulterators. These methods are done us- Take a tablespoon of honey and put it in a glass of water. If the honey dissolves, then it is not pure. Pure honey should stay together as a solid when submerged in water. Take a bit of honey and mix it with water. Then place four or five drops of vinegar into the solution. If it turns foamy, the honey might have been adulterated with gypsum. Scoop a bit of honey into a spoon and let it fall from the spoon. Honey with high water content will fall quickly. Mature honey of good quality will stay on the spoon or fall very slowly. Light a match and try to burn some of the honey. If it lights and burns, then it is pure. Impure or low-quality honey often contains extra water that keeps it from burning. If you have iodine at home, take some honey, mix it with water, and add a few drops of iodine. If the solution turns blue, then the honey has been adulterated with some sort of starch or flour. Take a small piece of old, hard bread and submerge it in the honey. If, when you remove it 10 minutes later, the bread is still hard, then the honey is pure. If there is a lot of water in the honey, the bread will soften.