Determination of the naturalness of honey. Ways to check honey for naturalness at home

Buying honey always requires special vigilance. When choosing a bee product, you need to use all your senses as much as possible: smell, taste, study color and texture. Although, let's be honest, these methods do not give the buyer complete confidence in the quality of the purchased goods. Modern falsifications look very natural, therefore, it is possible to expose an unscrupulous seller without involving experts only with the help of ordinary iodine. How to do it correctly, as well as what the results of the experiment can be - we will tell later in the article.

Unpleasant surprises in honey

Today, many seek to improve their health with natural products. Consequently, the demand for honey is growing, in the unique composition of which the entire periodic table is collected. A pot of this fragrant delicacy, for sure, can be found in every kitchen.

Did you know? In ancient Greece, the immortality of the gods was explained by their addiction to ambrosia. This drink consisted of honey, milk and bee nectar. Pythagoras, Hippocrates and Aristotle spoke about the fact that sweetness produced by bees prolongs life.

Based on this, unscrupulous sellers breed high-quality bee products with various improvised impurities, thus increasing its quantity. In the market, you can be assured of the authenticity of the product, its high quality and omnipotent healing power from all diseases. You should not believe such fairy tales, it is better to see for yourself that you are dealing with real honey.

Indeed, when checking, particles may turn out to be counterfeit:

• starch;
• flour;
• semolina:
• gelatin;
• boiled or raw water;
• sugar syrup;
• powdered sugar;
• molasses;
• saccharin;
• dandelion syrup;
• dried gum (tragacanth);
• wax;
• ash;
• soda;
• paste;
• clay;
• chalk;
• famous fluff;
• food thickeners and baking powder;
• plaster.

As you can see, not all supplements in the surrogate are safe for health. According to experienced beekeepers, a mixture of a small amount of natural honey, water and clay is often found in the markets today. Please note that when producing such "masterpieces", counterfeiters try to preserve the natural honey taste and aroma.
Each of the added third-party ingredients has its own mission in reducing the cost of the bee product, which will be sold at the price of natural. The fact is that these impurities do not have pronounced taste qualities and are easily transformed into a consistency convenient for the merchant. In addition, these are cheap and affordable carbohydrates. Experts call the most harmless way of honey fakes "regrading".

Important! The easiest way to fake light varieties of honey.

This is when cheap varieties of honey are passed off as expensive ones. Often in this role, under the guise of sainfoin, you can be sold a less healing product. Worse, when they begin to dilute it with food and non-food additives. Especially popular among them are starch and flour, which contain amylose polysaccharides. Upon contact with iodine, they form blue clathrates. That is why this medicinal product is preferred as a test indicator.

How to test honey with iodine

If you do not have your own apiary and you go to the market or to the store for honey, then you definitely need to arm yourself with the following knowledge:

Important! High-quality natural honey must comply with the national standard DSTU 4497:2005, which includes only fine particles of dead bees, their larvae, honeycombs, pollen, plant fibers, ash and dust from third-party impurities. In the presence of other impurities, the product is rejected..

Video: how to check honey with iodine

What you need

To conduct this elementary experiment, you need to prepare:

• honey, the authenticity of which we will check;
• glass cup;
• distilled water;
• vinegar.

Checking honey

When this set is assembled, you can proceed to direct verification.

It is carried out as follows:

1. Warm up the water to 25-30°C.
2. Fill a glass with it.
3. Add a tablespoon of bee product and stir until completely dissolved. It is important that there are no lumps or clots in the container.
4. Drop 2-3 drops of iodine into the vessel. Watch what's happening. The outcome of this experiment may be the appearance of a slightly blue color in the honey liquid or specific stains. These are clear signs of previously added starch or flour, which were used to increase the weight of the product or mask its spoilage.
5. Finally, put a few drops of table vinegar into the glass. The hissing and foaming of the liquid will confirm the guesswork about chemical impurities. In this case, we are talking about the presence of chalk, soda, gypsum, lime.

Important! When buying honey, never be tempted by its cheapness. Keep in mind that the process of making this delicacy involves a long cycle and certain costs. Therefore, a priori, such a product cannot be cheap.

Take into account that polysaccharides have a complex molecular structure. Often its terms can be separated from each other. Therefore, the reaction with iodine does not always occur. Often this happens when honey diluted with starch or flour is subjected to pasteurization.
Heat treatment for some time gives the surrogate naturalness and uniform consistency, and also prolongs its shelf life. After its expiration, this fake is most likely to ferment. It should be understood that there will be no benefit from such honey, since even that small amount of useful substances obtained from a natural product is destroyed in its composition when heated.

How to check honey without iodine: evaluate the appearance

Once in the mall, it is unlikely that you will begin to conduct experiments on the authenticity of the goods with the participation of iodine. Therefore, it will be a good habit to check the product certificate. From these documents you can find out about the quality, variety, timing of collection and the geography of origin of the delicacy. Also scrupulously examine it by external signs and do not refuse the sample.

Did you know? According to legend, the aged Democritus decided to arbitrarily die, denying himself food. To postpone his death for the holidays, he ordered to put a bowl filled with honey in front of him. Inhaling this aroma, the ancient Greek sage was able to live up to 107 years without water and food.

Video: how to check the quality of honey at home

Here are the main characteristics of a bee product that you should check before buying:

Smell

Natural honey has a pronounced fragrant aroma. It can be weak or strong, but always pleasant, gentle and without third-party impurities.

Color

Before going to the market or to the store, you should find out what varieties of real honey are and their color shades. For example, buckwheat is brown, flower is golden yellow, lime is amber, and mustard is creamy yellow. The unnatural whiteness of the product should alert, which indicates sugar syrup in the bee diet. You should not expect a healing effect from such a product. Moreover, it is dangerous for people with high blood sugar levels.
According to the requirements of DSTU 4497:2005, natural honey can be colorless, light yellow, yellow or dark yellow and dark with different shades. You can test it for the content of sugar syrup and an increased level of humidity outside the house using a special chemical pencil. For the experiment, you need to drop a sticky substance on your hand and draw a line on the drop. When a blue-violet color appears, the purchase should be abandoned. Please note that sellers who are aware of this verification method do not allow such tests.

Did you know? In Ukraine, honey production annually reaches 70 thousand tons, which allowed the country to top the list of European producers and take 3rd place in the world. China is the world leader.

Transparency

The genuine product is characterized by transparency until crystallization. If in the summer you are offered to buy crystallized honey, look for a viscous liquid substance, since in this case you are faced with last year's product. Please note that a real bee product forms crystals already at a temperature of 30 ° C, which is not enough for a surrogate.
Be sure to try to rub a drop of goodies with your fingers when buying. In the case of a fake, this can not be done without specific pellets. Such lumps indicate an increased level of moisture. It can also be detected by dropping onto a piece of paper. Then the honey drop will be surrounded by a wet ring.

Consistency

The naturalness of honey is measured by its viscosity. It can be liquid, medium or very dense, depending on the maturity of the product. In any case, when you scoop up a fresh bee product with a spoon, it should not spread to the sides like water. A sign of quality is the formation of a “church” on the surface, which gradually levels off. Each variety has its own texture.

Experts in this regard distinguish 5 groups:

• very liquid - clover and acacia honey;
• liquid - linden, rapeseed, buckwheat;
• thick - sainfoin, dandelion;
• sticky - honeydew;
• gelatinous - heather.

Important! The slower the honey flows in the jar, the less water it contains. This is a sign that he will not ferment. Also make sure that there is no white foam on the surface of the product, and light streaks in the depth.

To verify the authenticity of the purchased product right on the spot, take a plastic bottle of drinking water with you and add the honey variety you like inside. If after stirring you get a homogeneous liquid without sediment and lumps, honey is worth buying.
In the event that the seller tells you about an unusual fashionable variety that is guaranteed to save your family from all ailments, do not rush to buy. First, find out if it is possible in a given area to take bribes from such plants and whether they exist in nature at all. Experts advise buying honey directly from familiar beekeepers. Therefore, if you do not have such acquaintances yet, it is worth acquiring them. Happy shopping and stay healthy!

Sweet, fragrant, with a beautiful amber hue - honey. This is one of the most useful natural products given to us by mother nature. It is used in many fields from to and therefore highly valued for its usefulness and versatility. However, today, in pursuit of profit, many manufacturers act in bad faith, falsifying its quality. In this connection, many people have a question how to understand that the purchased honey is natural? Our article will help answer it.

Natural honey - how to understand

You can figure out whether a natural product is in front of you or a fake, which will bring absolutely no benefit to the body, according to the following signs:

• Use your sense of smell - the smell of genuine honey is fragrant, but not sharp, the aroma of the plants from which it was collected should be felt.
• Real mature honey wraps around the spoon like “folds” when you turn it, and flows off it in a continuous thread, and after a while completely merges with the total mass. The counterfeit will behave differently and quickly drain from the spoon, as it is diluted with water.
• It is also heavy in weight: a liter jar of honey may well weigh one and a half kilograms.
• A quality product should not foam much, otherwise it is unripe or fermented honey.
• Very often, unscrupulous sellers add pieces of honeycomb or pollen to bad honey to give it an authentic look, so you should not focus on these facts.
• A good product never delaminates, so when you see two layers in a jar (thick at the bottom and liquid at the top), this is a fake.
• With the onset of autumn, natural honey is candied, with the exception of only acacia and chestnut honey, they remain in their original form for a whole year.
• If in appearance it is too transparent and has a bright sheen, then you know that the honey was boiled, and all the useful substances evaporated from it.

How to check the naturalness of honey at home

There are several ways in which you can easily check the quality of honey yourself:

• Taste it, the natural one should dissolve completely on the tongue, and it also “pinches” the throat a little.
• Stir a small amount in a glass of clean hot water, if sediment is found at the bottom, then it has additional additives that should not be there.
• Sprinkle a drop of honey with a pinch of starch - on a genuine product, it will remain on the surface.
• Pour about 50 g of honey into a jar, close the lid and heat in a water bath for 10 minutes, while the water temperature should be 45 degrees. Open the lid - the absence of a natural honey smell indicates a fake;
• Heat it for 1 hour at 40 degrees - the natural product will begin to delaminate.
• You can rub a little honey into the skin, if after that grains that look like sugar are felt on it, then you have a poor quality product. Good honey is completely absorbed.

How to test honey with iodine

One of the most famous and simple ways to determine the naturalness of honey is the "test" with iodine. In practice, it is considered the most effective.

For this procedure you will need:

• distilled water;
• glass cup;
• table vinegar.

So, let's begin. Fill the glass halfway with lukewarm water, dilute a spoonful of honey in it and mix very well. Be sure to achieve complete homogeneity of the solution, there should not be any clots and lumps. Add 3-4 drops of iodine there and observe the reaction in the container:

• if the color of the liquid remains unchanged, then there is no doubt about the quality of the purchased product;
• the water in the glass has turned blue - this means that starch or flour has been added to the honey as a thickener.

candied honey

The process of crystallization or, as it is popularly called, "candied" is absolutely natural for this product. And the more glucose it contains, the sooner it happens. The average time frame for this phenomenon is from 2 to 11 weeks. But it is worth remembering that a change in the physical state of honey in no way affects its usefulness and taste.

It can be easily returned to a liquid form only by heating in a water bath, the main thing is to do this at a low temperature. So he will retain all the valuable substances.

Candied honey can be made artificially - just add a little candied honey to liquid honey and stir it every day for a week.

And remember, in order to get a natural and high-quality product that will be good for your health, buy it from trusted beekeepers. And if you buy it at a fair, ask the seller to show a certificate of quality.

Some sellers of bee products, in an attempt to make more money, come up with various ways to increase sales by passing off a fake as natural honey. For these purposes, they use sugar, flour, water, starch and even chalk. Such a product may not harm human health, but the healing properties will be minimal or completely absent.

The purpose of this article is to reveal the secrets of the "miracle alchemists", to help determine the quality and make the right choice of honey that will benefit your health.

First of all, if you want to check honey for naturalness, for example, in the market, and you don’t have the tools you need for this, you can use the simplest visual check for consistency, smell, taste, color.

Appearance

Apply a little concentrate on the skin of the hand, rub this place. Natural honey, which has a pleasant, delicate texture, should be completely absorbed. Carefully consider the structure of the nectar. It always contains particles of pollen, wax and other impurities.

Absolutely pure honey is a sign of an artificial product. If it is cloudy, then this indicates the presence of impurities. Bubbles, foam, fermentation indicate the possible presence of water.

Please note: natural honey, or rather most of its types, crystallize by winter.

Honey always remains liquid from:

• fireweed;
• lindens;
• acacias;
• buckwheat.

Such honey is easier to fake. Counterfeit is usually liquid, which means that it is warm and has dark spots. When heated above 40 degrees, the bee product not only loses its beneficial properties, but can also be harmful.

If you see candied honey in the summer, it means that it is from last year.

Taste and smell

You can determine the quality of honey by sampling. It harmoniously combines sweetness with a slight sourness, burns and tingles a little. Some varieties of honey have a slight bitterness, when heated, caramel shades, a pleasant aftertaste. Non-natural honey does not possess such qualities, besides, if it is sugary-sweet, it means that sugar was added there.

Natural dessert has a pleasant fragrant aroma, artificial has no smell. Some sellers add flavorings to confuse the buyer, but you can still distinguish the fake by smell.

Color and viscosity

Honey has a huge palette of colors and depends on the variety. The color can vary from white to brown, including a variety of yellows and browns. Knowing the characteristics of color and varieties will help you make the right choice.

Colors of honey depending on the variety:

• lime - light yellow;
• May - yellow;
• chestnut - dark brown;
• from sunflower - bright yellow;
• from acacia - transparent, when it begins to crystallize - white;
• burdock - olive;
• crimson - light shades;
• from hawthorn - brown;
• floral - golden yellow;
• buckwheat - amber brown;
• sweet clover - almost colorless;
• from clover - shades of amber;
• mustard - cream with a yellowish tint;
• motherwort - golden.

The fresh product is transparent, uniform in color and has no sediment.

You can check the quality of honey by viscosity. Usually sellers have sample sticks. Dip the stick into the dessert and slowly pull it out. A thin thread should be pulled. If it flows or drips, then it is fake.

The surrogate is coarse in texture, does not absorb into the skin, but rolls and forms lumps. If there are no sticks, then twist the jar. Diluted honey or warmed up will overflow. The correct consistency should be quite viscous. At home, you can rotate the spoon, as if winding honey around it, it will not spill.

Weight check

In order for the goods to weigh more, dishonest sellers often use water and various impurities. A standard liter jar weighs about one and a half kilograms. If you see that the weight is much greater, then the honey is diluted.

If in doubt about the purchase, you can determine the quality of honey at home in more detail.

Determining the presence of sugar

If the dessert is suspiciously white in color, has no pronounced, sugary-sweet taste, lacks the usual astringency, impurities can be detected by the following products:

1. Milk. Add some nectar to hot milk, if it curdles, then it is fake.
2. Tea. Dip a teaspoon of honey dessert into loosely brewed tea. If sediment appears at the bottom, then there can be no question of quality.
3. Bread. Dip soft bread into the mixture for about ten minutes. If the bread is not hardened, but softened, then the composition contains sweetened water.
4. You can check the naturalness of honey for sugar using paper. Use paper that absorbs moisture well. For these purposes, a newspaper, paper towel or napkin is suitable. Put some honey stuff in there. If it smudges, absorbs, or leaves moisture, then it contains water or sugar syrup.

Test for the presence of chalk and starch

To mask the poor quality of the product, increase the weight, viscosity, unscrupulous sellers add chalk chips and starch. So how do you test honey for chalk content?

1. To do this, you need table vinegar or essence. Make a water-honey solution. If, when vinegar is added there, hissing, foaming, bubbles appear, it means that chalk is present in the product. It reacts with acetic acid, which is accompanied by the release of carbon dioxide. When the composition settles, a layer of sediment from chalk forms at the bottom. The low content of chalk is detected only by acetic essence.
2. Ammonia is used to test for starch. The starch content will give off a strong molasses smell. Under the action of ammonia, a brown precipitate precipitates, while the honey mixture itself will acquire the same shade. Sulfuric acid, formed during the processing of molasses, reacts with ammonia. For this test, dissolve the concentrate in water (1: 2), drop ammonia there, 2-3 drops are enough.
3. Iodine can also be a great help in detecting falsification. Dilute honey in ordinary water, drop a few drops of iodine there. The composition turned blue, this is an indicator of the presence of starch or flour. The darker the composition, the more impurities were mixed there.

Chemistry Pencil Test

Another common means of identifying a surrogate is a check with a chemical pencil. Always take it with you to the store, to the honey fair. The essence of this method is to change the color of a low-quality product. To do this, you can put a little substance on a piece of paper and draw a pencil over it. The color has changed - in front of you is a fake.

Checking with improvised means

There are many different ways to expose a fake.

• Copper wire will help determine the quality of honey at home:
  1. heat the wire red hot;
  2. drop it into the test container;
  3. hold for 15 seconds: the wire is clean - the product is real, if there is a sticky mass - there are additives or water.
• Testing with lapis (silver nitrate). Stir honey in water 1:10, lower the lapis there. The appearance of a whitish precipitate indicates the presence of sugar.
• Matches. Light a match and bring it closer to the product, it should melt, after a while hiss. You can put a little experimental composition on paper, then set it on fire. A good product will not burn, color change will not occur. The surrogate will turn brown.
• With stale bread. Dip a little roll in the test container for a while, it should remain stale.
• You can check by heating. If the product is not genuine, it will ignite or begin to char.
• If you put some dessert in a plate, add water and shake it horizontally, you can see a pattern that looks like a honeycomb, which indicates that you have not been deceived.

Any choice must be treated very carefully. If desired, you can conduct a consumer examination to determine the safety and quality of honey by organoleptic analysis:

• microbiological;
• for toxicity;
• for compliance with chemical and physical standards.

The healing properties of honey have been known since ancient times, and since then this bee product has been incredibly popular among the population.

Honey is widely used in the treatment of acute respiratory viral infections, colds, coughs. In addition, the product is very useful for overweight people. In this case, it is recommended to use it with the addition of cinnamon, which will allow you to get rid of extra pounds in a short time.

Traditional medicine has a huge number of recipes based on this unique bee product, however, it must be said that only natural honey has healing properties.

Now, more and more often, unscrupulous businessmen, in pursuit of profit, have begun to engage in falsification of honey delicacy and pass off some incomprehensible substance as a real bee product. So how can you not fall for the bait of these unfortunate merchants and buy really real and high-quality honey?

How to check the quality of honey at home?

Many ordinary people are interested in the question: how to check honey for naturalness? Natural product or not can be determined according to several criteria. To begin with, it is recommended to purchase a small amount of the bee product and check it yourself by all means available to you.

How to determine the quality of honey by external criteria?

An ordinary buyer can determine the quality and naturalness of a product by organoleptic indicators: color, smell, taste. When tasting honey, you should pay special attention to the following properties:

When determining the naturalness of a treat, you the following indicators should alert:

• Complete absence of smell;
• you do not have a feeling of acid and sore throat;
• honey has a color uncharacteristic for this variety;
• liquid honey mass in the autumn-winter period.

Quality bee product viscous, viscous and dense. The moisture content of natural honey is below 20%, that is, it corresponds to the norm. Take a ladle (or spoon), scoop up a treat, lift it up and look at the falling stream. It should descend in a continuous ribbon, forming a hill on the surface. When transfusing a large volume of honey mass, a characteristic creaking is heard. A treat with a low viscosity does not form a hill, but a small funnel.

If you rotate a spoon with a natural bee product from side to side, you will notice that honey with high humidity does not linger on the tableware and flows down. While a viscous delicacy, on the contrary, wrapped around a spoon.

If the bees were fed with sugar syrup, then it is rather difficult to check whether the honey is real. A fake delicacy has all the features of a natural product and is characterized by low acidity, a high percentage of sucrose, as well as a lower content of macro- and microelements and pollen grains. So how do you tell if honey is natural or fake?

There are the following differences between this product and sugar:

• With prolonged storage, the honey mass becomes gelatinous and thick, crystallization is often fat-like;
• such a delicacy has a weak aroma, does not cause a burning sensation, does not sour and has a bland sweet taste.

The organoleptic characteristics of a fake honey treat can be quite weak. Unscrupulous beekeepers practice the joint pumping of frames with natural honey and the so-called sugar frames. At the same time, the appearance and taste of the surrogate improves, which makes it difficult to check honey at home. And yet, is it possible to accurately determine the quality of a sweet medicine at home? Of course, yes, you just need to know how to do it.

Some beekeepers add various powdered substances (starch, chalk, flour and even sand) to honey to increase the mass of the bee product and its viscosity. If you are interested in the question of how to determine the quality of honey at home in order to detect insoluble impurities, you can just dissolve the product.

To do this, you need to collect warm water in a transparent container and put 2 tbsp. l. bee product, mix thoroughly. After about an hour, all insoluble impurities (if any) will settle down.

Humidity of honey

Specific gravity of honey mixture determines its quality. The more water is contained in the product, the less dry residue it contains, which means that the specific gravity is also less. So how do you determine yourself?

In fact, everything is very simple. It is necessary to take a transparent container and weigh it. Then put some kind of mark on the surface of the jar and pour water to the specified level. Carry out the weighing again. The resulting difference is the amount of water. Now, in the same jar (wiped dry), pour the honey mass up to the mark and weigh the product. It is necessary to subtract the figure of the first weighing from the result obtained and in the remainder you will get the amount of honey, which should then be divided by the indicator of the amount of water - this is the specific gravity of the honey delicacy.

Humidity up to 20% is considered normal, which corresponds to specific gravity 1.4 kg. If, as a result of the experiment, you got a lower value, then the product contains a large amount of water, which can cause fermentation.

How to check honey for naturalness at home in non-traditional ways?

In addition to the above, there are also so-called non-traditional methods for checking the quality and naturalness of the bee product. In the beekeeping literature, nothing is said about such methods, so it is impossible to say with absolute certainty that they are reliable. However, you can try.

Of these here non-traditional methods for determining quality honey products include the following:

How to test honey with additional substances?

The naturalness and quality of honey products can be determined using various substances found in almost every home.

How to check honey - real or not - with iodine?

Some unscrupulous beekeepers add starch and flour to honey to create the appearance of a crystallized product. The quality of this honey can be checked reaction to iodine.

In a small amount of water, it is necessary to dissolve a little bee product and add iodine (5 drops) to it. If the composition turns blue, then the sample contains starch or flour.

Testing with ammonia

Sometimes, in order to increase the viscosity, beekeepers add starch syrup to honey. It can be detected by the residues of sulfuric acid used in the process of saccharification of starch. How, then, to determine the quality of honey products?

Here ammonia will come to the aid of the layman.

• Dissolve honey (1 part) in water (2 parts);
• take 2 ml of solution and add ammonia (8 drops) there.

If the mixture contains starch, it will turn brown, and a brown precipitate containing ammonium sulphate will appear at the bottom.

How to determine the presence of chalk in a product using vinegar?

Some so-called beekeepers add to the product powdered chalk. This is done in order to increase the weight and density of the honey delicacy. Such a mixture can cause serious harm to health.

The presence of chalk in the honey mass can be determined using vinegar essence. A few drops of acid are added to the test sample. If a sizzling reaction occurs with the release of moisture, then the delicacy contains chalk additives.

How to check the authenticity of honey using lapis?

There is also such a method of falsifying a bee product as adding sugar syrup. To detect a fake, you can use a solution of silver nitrate (lapis).

Dissolve honey (1 tablespoon) in ten tablespoons of water and add lapis. If the honey mixture contains sugar, a precipitate of silver chloride, white in color, will fall to the bottom. There will be no sediment in a quality product.

Checking with a chemical pencil

You can check the naturalness of the honey product and with chemical pencil. To do this, put a small amount of honey on a piece of paper and draw a line. If a colored trace remains, then the product may contain various impurities or sugar syrup. In the same way, you can try to determine the moisture content of a honey treat.

However, this method of determining the quality of honey raises some doubts. In 1972, V. G. Chudakov made a simple experiment. He subjected to research 36 varieties of bee products, 13 of which were falsifications. Pencil testing showed identical results on all 36 samples. From this we can conclude that the chemical pencil does not contribute to the identification of a fake.

There are many more ways to check honey for quality. However, they are more difficult to use and cannot be done at home. If you have researched a sweet delicacy using the above methods and made sure that you have real high-quality honey, you can safely go to the same store and purchase the right amount of delicious medicine.

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