What are the qualities of natural honey and how to distinguish it from fake. How to distinguish real honey from a fake

They learned to fake bee honey a long time ago. Previously, to falsify this product, they used ordinary sugar, water, dyes and flavors. This list has grown over time. Now, invert syrup, molasses, various impurities and chemicals are used to make fakes.

Now control over the quality of honey is a state responsibility. But some people prefer to buy not in stores, but from private individuals. Of course, such honey is not tested for quality. In order to independently distinguish natural honey from fake, you should know some tricks.

How to distinguish natural honey from artificial?

Each buyer must learn to recognize real honey from counterfeit. A natural bee product must comply with some mandatory points:

1. Persistent aroma, in which there are notes of wax, nectar, pollen, sweetness.
2. Natural honey can be stored for a long time without changing its consistency.
3. A real bee elixir has a viscous, rather thick consistency, regardless of the time of its collection. When rubbed with fingers, it is quickly and easily absorbed into the skin. In this case, there should be no lumps left.

How to distinguish fake honey from natural?

The first step is to give the product a visual evaluation. A clear sign that explains how to distinguish honey from a fake is a liquid consistency, which indicates that the product was most likely diluted with syrup. Also, the presence of a large amount of white color in honey indicates the dilution with sugar syrup.

Fake honey can give out the presence of the following indicators:

• heterogeneous consistency;
• uneven color;
• the presence of sediment at the bottom of the container.

How else can you distinguish natural honey?

For this, there are special methods of determination, the effectiveness of which has been tested by time.

One of the most accessible methods is the napkin method. For its implementation, it is necessary to drop honey on a paper surface. If the honey is natural, then a wet spot should not form next to the drop. This is a clear indicator of quality. A real bee elixir lays down in the form of a slide, after which it gradually spreads.

A quality product should stretch from a spoon for a long time, forming a thin long thread.

Natural honey can be, as it were, wound on a spoon. With such actions, it will not immediately drain.

Fake or "fake" honey has at least one of the following features:

1. The presence of a sour smell or the complete absence of aroma.
2. Does not cause a slight burning sensation in the throat.
3. Peel off.
4. Foaming.
5. Has a rough texture.

How to distinguish fake fireweed honey?

Fireweed honey is obtained as a result of the collection of nectar from the fireweed flower by bees. Often such a product has a white color and a specific smell. However, it is very different from ordinary honey and all of the above signs of a poor-quality product do not apply to it.

Fake fireweed honey can be identified by the presence of colorants and chemical additives. To determine, you need to take two hundred grams of honey and a little more than a glass of water. Mix thoroughly and add a few drops of ammonia. The subsequent formation of a precipitate indicates that the honey is adulterated.

When buying any kind of honey, you should pay attention to the price. If its market value is clearly underestimated, then most likely the product is of poor quality. At a low price, sugar syrup is often put up for sale, tinted with tea leaves and mixed with a small amount of real honey.

1. The highest quality honey- this is honey in already sealed combs. If the honeycombs are not sealed, then the honey is not mature and, accordingly, does not contain all the useful substances.

2. If it is not possible to buy honey in combs, try to find unfiltered honey, which contains pollen, perga. Such honey will not be clean in appearance, it will contain the remains of pollen and perga.

3. If you buy honey in a store, the very first thing to do is read the label, which sometimes says that there are various additives. In natural honey, of course, there should be no additives.

4. Real honey is viscous and viscous, fake honey or honey that has undergone heating is liquid.

5. Real honey has a slightly floral scent. Fake honey is odorless or may have a slightly sour smell.

6. When heated, fake honey begins to bubble. Real honey is caramelized and does not foam.

Please note that most sell honey in plastic, and plastic releases harmful substances, resulting in intoxication of the body.

7. Real honey never spoils.

8. Pay attention to which honey plants honey was collected from, for ourselves we try to buy honey collected from wild plants that have not been chemically processed. Although there are no guarantees that this honey is environmentally friendly, as there are factors such as: the track, chemtrails, chemical emissions, etc.

9. The naturalness of honey can be checked with bread. Real honey is not absorbed into bread.

The most suitable storage temperature for honey is 5-10 degrees, dry and ventilated. When honey is heated to 37 degrees, volatile antimicrobial substances are lost. Up to 45 degrees - the enzyme invertase is destroyed. Up to 50 degrees - diastasis is destroyed. The sun's rays also reduce the healing properties of honey.

How We Caught Fake Honey

Before writing about ways to check honey, I would like to tell you about my personal experience, what kind of fake we came across. We bought a 3 liter jar of honey. On top was honey, about 1/3 of a jar, and on the bottom was sugar mixed with honey. And it was very disappointing, given that we deliberately do not eat sugar.

As soon as the layer with sugar began, it became noticeable in taste and structure. The honey taste almost disappeared immediately, the mass was just sweet and had a slightly pronounced taste of honey. The honey itself was already candied, so the grains of sugar were disguised as crystallized honey.

We wouldn't notice the difference if we didn't eat real candied honey. Such honey has a completely different texture and taste of sugar, it is difficult to explain its properties, but I will try: it is brittle on the teeth, not as hard as ordinary sugar and it feels like sugar has not completely dissolved in honey.

In general, the conclusion from this situation is this: if you buy honey in large quantities, then only from trusted beekeepers, or get yourself bees and already be sure of the naturalness and benefits of the product.

Checking honey at home

I would like to note that the most accurate tests can only be carried out in laboratory conditions.

Viscosity. When determining the quality of honey, viscosity is important. Viscosity is checked with a spoon. The spoon is dipped into honey and rotated around its axis, if the honey does not drain, but wraps around the spoon, then it is mature. In this case, the temperature should not be lower than 20 degrees so that the viscosity does not increase from low temperatures.

Finger check. Put some honey on your finger, if it does not spread, then it is real honey.

Honey can be mixed: sugar, potato syrup, corn syrup, water, honeydew honey, flour, chalk, sawdust, glucose, dextrose and other substances.

1 way to test honey. Distilled water is added to honey so that the honey becomes liquid. Then this liquid is poured into a test tube. An impurity will be detected in the sediment or on the surface.

Flammability test. Take a dry match. Dip its tip directly into honey. Light a match. If the honey is pure, the match will light easily. The flame will also burn from the honey. However, if it contains, for example, water, the match will not burn due to moisture.

Starch test. Add distilled water to honey, stir and add a drop of iodine. If the liquid turns blue, then the honey contains starch.

If you pour some honey on paper and the paper becomes saturated with honey, then the honey contains starch or water.

Chalk content test. Add distilled water to honey, stir and add acetic acid. In the presence of chalk, a reaction will occur and the liquid will foam.

Water content test. Fill a glass with water. Add one tablespoon of honey. Fake or artificial honey dissolves in water. Pure honey will sink to the bottom.

One more way. Put a little honey on a napkin, if it contains water, a wet spot will appear on the napkin.

starch molasses. If cold-made molasses was added to honey, it will not crystallize and will have a viscous consistency. You can also test with alcohol. You need to take 1 part of honey, add 3 parts of distilled water and add ¼ of the resulting mass of 96% alcohol. Shake. In the presence of starch syrup, a milky-white liquid is formed.

If molasses obtained by heating was used as an impurity, then at home it is not possible to determine its presence; for this, an analysis is carried out using barium chloride.

sugar syrup. To determine the presence of sugar molasses, you need to dilute the honey with distilled water to get a 10% solution and add a sample of silver nitrate. In the presence of molasses, a precipitate forms.

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 the most popular of them is considered to be honey - a tasty and very healthy delicacy. But, unfortunately, today it is very difficult to find really high-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 honey of a particular variety, it is useful to read a detailed description of 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 of the appearance and properties of the product should alert the buyer even during a cursory examination, making them suspect a fake:

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

Consistency

Honey purchased in winter is 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 a viscous and dark variety that takes 6-12 months to shrink. With prolonged storage, it forms larger and larger crystals, and also begins to delaminate.

A liquid consistency is characteristic of unripe honey, which flows from the 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 honey or real honey without laboratory tests. 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. In a natural product, the crystals should be small.
• liquid state. Buyers like the product in this form more, although the crystallized one does not lose its useful properties at all. But if there is a demand for liquid honey, it means that scammers organize an offer by dissolving (melting) old honey. It will no longer contain useful substances, only pure glucose. It loses its healing properties at temperatures above 37 degrees, so, by the way, there is no particular health benefit to drinking hot tea with honey, and 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 parts of the bodies of bees float in it, the same wax in fairly large pieces, this means that either the nectar is natural, and the seller is very sloppy, if not unclean, 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 does not store well, quickly turns 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.
• 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 a liter jar by weight there 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.

In today's article we will talk about such a useful product as -.

We all know from childhood that honey is very useful, and regardless of whether we like it or not, we always try to have honey in our house. Many people use honey not only for the treatment of diseases, for cosmetic purposes, for massage, in the preparation of various culinary masterpieces, but also in many other areas of life. Therefore, due to the popularity of honey, people, unfortunately, have learned to make honey without bees and profit from buyers who cannot distinguish real honey from a fake, which not only does not bring benefits, but can seriously harm our health.

So, let's arm ourselves with the necessary knowledge about honey, and find out how to choose real honey and not buy a fake one.

honey classification

Honey is distinguished by:

- origin;
- manufacturing method;
- Color and texture.

Origin:

- Monofloral - formed from the nectar of one plant (linden, maple, buckwheat, acacia, etc.).
- Polyfloral - mixed, formed from nectar from different plants (meadow, steppe, garden, etc.).

Honey is floral and honeydew.

Honeydew honey is produced not from the nectar of flowers, but from honeydew, the sweet juice secreted by leaves and honeydew (excretions in the form of liquid sweet drops of herbaceous aphids, mealybugs, fleas). Honeydew honey is dark in color, viscous, has an unpleasant aftertaste and bad aroma. This type of honey is used for processing.

Bees collect flower honey only from the nectar of flowers.

According to the manufacturing method:

Gravity flowing, freely flowing from the honeycomb, pressed and centrifugal, separated by a centrifuge. This is the purest and most transparent honey. The method of obtaining honey using a centrifuge is the most common.

Color and texture:

The consistency of honey is liquid and thick (as a result of crystallized glucose).

The color of honey depends only on the variety. The color of real honey can be all shades of brown and yellow.

Below are the main types of honey:

Lime. Light yellow, crystallizes easily, has a characteristic odor. It is used for respiratory diseases, good for colds and, including for inhalation. Good effect on the gastrointestinal tract and kidneys. From one linden, bees can collect about 40 kg of honey.

Acacia. Transparent, light, more liquid, with a slight aroma of acacia. Crystallizes slowly. It is used in diseases of the cardiovascular system, gastrointestinal tract and female inflammatory diseases, not only internally but also externally, due to its bactericidal properties.

Buckwheat. Bright brown color, with a characteristic smell and slight bitterness. This type of honey is used in confectionery. Treats diseases of the stomach, blood and skin

Field and meadow. Light amber or brown in color, with a very pleasant smell and taste. It has almost all medicinal properties.

Fruit honey. Collected from berry and fruit crops. Light amber, with a delicate smell and taste. Has dietary properties.

Sunflower. Golden yellow color, pleasant taste, crystallizes quickly. Anti-allergic, but inferior in medicinal properties to the main types of honey.

Types of fake honey:

– natural honey with additives;
- honey from products of non-nectar origin;
- artificial honey.

When buying honey, pay attention to:

Price. If you want to buy honey cheaper, then you can slip sugar syrup for a good price, which will be tinted with tea. This type of fake is mixed a little with real honey, and then it will be difficult to find the difference from real honey. For fakes, sucrose, molasses, starch, chalk and even sand are used. Craftsman beekeepers have learned to fake honey in such a way that it is difficult to figure it out even in laboratory conditions. The most common fake is when the bees are fed with sugar syrup and as a result we get processed sugar, not nectar from the fields.

Color. Unnaturally white honey can be sugary. Unnaturally dark, even dark brown honey can be either melted (with a taste of caramel) or, in the worst case, honeydew (made by bees from insect secretions). Such honey not only does not contain useful substances, but is also harmful to health.

Each variety of honey has its own natural color: flower - light yellow, linden - amber, ash - transparent, buckwheat - any shade of brown.

But any variety, regardless of color, if it is real and pure, will be transparent. While honey with additives will be cloudy and, if you look closely, with sediment.

Smell. If honey has a pleasant rich aroma, then it is real, because in a fake one there is practically no smell, and if it is heard, then it is from sweet water.

Taste. Real honey, when you try it evenly, will dissolve in your mouth without residue, there will be no crystals or powdered sugar on your tongue. Also, after real honey, it will be a little sore in the throat.

All types of honey have a sweet taste, but some of the varieties have a specific taste (tobacco, chestnut and willow varieties have a bitter taste, and heather varieties are astringent). Any deviations in the taste of honey indicate its poor quality. Other taste defects may be due to the presence of impurities. Excessive acidity may be due to fermentation that has begun, the aroma of caramel is the result of heating and melting honey, bitterness is due to improper storage conditions.

Viscosity and consistency. Dip a toothpick into a plate, and if it is real honey, then it should be pulled with a long continuous thread, and when the thread breaks, it will completely lower, forming a small hill on the surface of the honey, which will smoothly and slowly diverge. Natural honey is thin and delicate, easily absorbed into the skin without leaving lumps.

Real honey does not roll off the spoon quickly. Take a tablespoon of honey and turn the spoon over several times in a quick circular motion. Honey will wrap around it, almost not dripping.

Immerse the spoon into the honey container. Pulling out the spoon, follow the flow of honey. A quality one will form a ribbon and lie down in a slide, and bubbles form on its surface.

Natural honey is liquid and crystallized. The crystallization time depends on the colors and on the storage temperature.

Most of the varieties of honey crystallize in November-December. So, buying candied honey at this time, there can be no doubt that it is real. If honey is in a jar and two layers have formed: denser at the bottom and more liquid at the top, then this is a fake. Because few varieties of honey (heather, acacia, chestnut), in which there is a lot of fructose, remain liquid until spring. Natural liquid honey in the middle of winter is a huge rarity. It can be either sugar (the bees were fed with sugar) or melted.

Dip a piece of bread in honey for 10 minutes. In real honey, the bread will harden, and in a fake it will soften. This is a sign that sugar syrup has been added to the honey. Real honey is completely water-free.

Take a drop of honey and sprinkle it with a pinch of starch. If the starch remains on top of the yellow droplet with a white cap, the honey is real; if not, it is a fake.

To a spoonful of honey diluted with distilled water, add a few drops of vinegar. In the presence of chalk, the mixture will boil up due to the release of carbon dioxide.

And if, instead of vinegar, you drop a few drops of iodine and it turns blue, then starch was added to the honey.

Drop honey on paper and set it on fire. Real honey does not burn, melt or turn brown, only the paper around it will burn. If the honey melted, then the bees were fed with sugar syrup, and if it turned brown, diluted with sugar.

Video about the difference between real honey and fake

That's all for today, and in the following articles, dear readers, we will get acquainted with you with methods for storing honey, and also dwell on its beneficial properties.

From a fake, because today on the market you can buy both high-quality and fake ones.

There are so many useful properties of honey that it is simply impossible to list them all. Honey is eaten, used in the cosmetic field, with its help they treat the throat and get rid of hematomas, they are used as an additional remedy in the fight against many diseases from the simplest to the most terrible.

Naturally, such versatility and popularity attracts many scammers and speculators selling low-quality honey. The buyer of honey needs to learn how to distinguish honey from a fake, so as not to get into a mess.

honey groups

Honey is divided into three groups according to:

• Origin;
• Manufacturing method;
• Taste, color and texture.

Origin of honey

1. flower honey harvested only from the nectar of flowers, getting a high-quality, tasty product with many useful properties.

• If nectar is collected by a bee by 50% from a single plant, it is called monofloral.
• If from different flowers growing in a garden or in a meadow, then honey is polyfloral.

2.honeydew honey bees do not produce from the nectar of flowers, but from honeydew (sweet juice that the leaves secrete) and honeydew (discharge in the form of liquid sweet drops of grass aphids, mealybugs, celandine fleas). This type of honey is used for processing.

Manufacturing methods

Depending on this parameter, honey happens:

• Gravity flowing from honeycombs;
• Pressed pressed;
• Centrifugal, that is, pumped out by a centrifuge.

It is the latter method that is used more often and transparent pure honey is obtained.

Consistency, color and taste

Honey is liquid or thick in consistency. The color varies from light yellowish to brown, depending on the nectar collected by the bees from the flowers.

All types of honey have a sweet taste, but some of the varieties have a specific taste (tobacco, chestnut and willow varieties have a bitter taste, and heather varieties are astringent). Any deviations in the taste of honey indicate its poor quality. Other taste defects may be due to the presence of impurities. Excessive acidity may be due to the onset of fermentation, the aroma of caramel is the result of heating honey, bitterness is due to improper storage conditions.

Linden honey

Light yellow, crystallizes easily, has a characteristic smell of linden flowers.

Acacia honey

Transparent, light, more liquid, with a slight aroma of acacia. Crystallizes slowly.

Buckwheat honey

Bright brown color, with a characteristic smell and slight bitterness.

Field and meadow honey

Light amber or brown in color, with a very pleasant smell and taste. It has almost all medicinal properties.

fruit honey

Collected from berry and fruit crops. Light amber, with a delicate smell and taste. Has dietary properties.

sunflower honey

Golden yellow color, pleasant taste, crystallizes quickly. Anti-allergic, but inferior in medicinal properties to the main types of honey.

Types of fake honey

• Natural honey with additives;
• Honey from non-nectar products;
• Artificial honey.

Natural honey with additives

Often dealers dilute natural honey with additives. It could be sugar syrup tea leaves, starch, chalk, sand and other. Additives may appear unnaturally light or too dark in color or have a caramel-like consistency. Honey becomes cloudy or has sediment.

Honey from non-nectar products

Another type of poor-quality product is honey that is not obtained from nectar. Bees are fed with sugar syrup, receiving processed sugar. To understand how to distinguish honey from a fake, you need to smell it (the smell is similar to sweet water) and try it (sugar crystals or powder will remain in your mouth).

Artificial "honey"

They also prepare completely artificial honey. Sugar syrup with acid is boiled, it is purified with soda, starch and various flavors are added. All this has a sugary taste, may exfoliate or have lumps.

Also, a suspiciously low price indicates a sure sign of a fake. Honey is a costly product and, therefore, expensive. Having met honey at a seductive price on the market, it is best not to rush to buy it, but first think: why does the beekeeper, having spent so much effort to obtain honey, sell it so cheaply? The likelihood that this is a low-quality product, consisting of additives to natural honey, or, even worse, completely artificial, is very high.

How to distinguish honey from a fake on the market

Every year the number of unscrupulous manufacturers and resellers is only growing. And it becomes more difficult to distinguish a natural product from an artificial one. Often visually it is even simply impossible to do. Therefore, other ways have been devised to distinguish honey from a fake.

For an ordinary buyer, there are several simple ways to distinguish honey from a fake.

• Real honey, when you try it, will dissolve evenly and without residue in your mouth, there will be no crystals or powdered sugar on your tongue. Also, after real honey, there will be a little tickle in the throat.
• You can calculate a fake using a glass of water and iodine. Add a little honey to a glass, then water and stir it all. Additives in this case will settle at the bottom. If, when a drop of iodine is added to the solution, the color of the solution turns blue, then starch is present in the "honey".
• You can use the method with a spoon, winding honey on it quickly. Natural honey will become like caramel, twisting without dripping from a spoon. And if it drains, and even bubbles or changes color, then there are obviously additives.
• If honey is allowed to drain from a spoon, natural honey will flow in a continuous stream and lie down in a hill, an intermittent stream and the absence of a slide indicate a fake.
• If you drop a little honey on the paper and leave it for five minutes, the appearance of a wet spot on the reverse side will give out a fake (diluted honey).
• If the surface of the honey is sprinkled with starch, the resulting white film will show that the honey is real. If the starch is absorbed, it is a fake.
• Crystallized honey is sometimes tried to be set on fire. Normal melting will show that the quality is good, and hissing and crackling will indicate the presence of additional components.
• Having smeared a small piece of paper with honey, it is set on fire. A good product will not burn, melt or turn brown.
• Add vinegar to a spoon with honey, if it foams, this means that chalk is present in the "honey".
• A good way to distinguish natural honey from a fake is a regular piece of bread. Dip it in honey for 10-15 minutes. If after this time the bread remains not softened, then everything is in order. If the bread is softened, sugar water is added to the "honey".
• Some scammers manage to add gelatin to increase viscosity. To check honey for the presence of gelatin to 5 ml. aqueous solution of honey add 5-10 drops of 5% tannin solution. The formation of white flakes will indicate the presence of gelatin in honey.

What varieties of honey do not exist?

Some varieties of honey, by their name, should cause caution. Consider several non-existent varieties of "honey".

It is impossible to purchase honey from wild rose, chamomile, corn, lupine, hazel or poppy. The flowers of these plants do not produce nectar.

Honey from royal jelly does not exist, there is a mixture of royal jelly with honey, but it is very difficult to make it at home, and almost impossible to sell.

May honey in the northern regions of Russia - a real beekeeper will not collect in the month of May, since the bees only feed at this time.

From, strawberries, blackberries - plants contain nectar in very small quantities, so it is very difficult to make it for sale. Such honey on the market indicates that the bees were fed with the appropriate juice, which means that the product is of poor quality and it is better not to buy such honey.

You can get honey from pumpkin, but due to the presence of pesticides in it, it can be dangerous.

Real honey has a floral aroma, a pleasant taste, which can be slightly bitter and sore in the throat. Armed with ways to distinguish honey from a fake in appearance and all of the above parameters, you will not fall for a fake, and will use only a high-quality natural product.

When choosing honey for yourself, prefer thicker varieties. If the product has a transparent consistency, it may well be that it was warmed up by the seller.