Fake honey and how to identify them, how to distinguish from the real one at home? Types and varieties of honey. How to distinguish high-quality honey from a fake

People will not pass by an outlet that offers a 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 were ordinary sugar mixed with water and some aromatic substances. 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, invert sugar, sucrose, starch and various other fillers are used for fakes. 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 of 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. The bees seal the finished product 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 flow, 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 the solution sizzles when adding vinegar essence, there is chalk in honey. If a white precipitate forms in a 5-10% aqueous solution of honey when a small amount of lapis is added, 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 a sample of honey by dropping a thin stick into the container. If it is real honey, then it follows the stick with a long continuous thread, and when this thread breaks, 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, drop a few drops of iodine there. If the composition turns blue, it means that starch has been added to the honey. This is fake honey.

● Find out if there are other impurities in honey

To do this, take a red-hot wire (made of stainless steel) and lower it into honey. If a sticky foreign mass hangs on it, this is a fake for honey, but if the wire remains clean, honey is natural or, in other words, full-fledged.

In a cup of weak warm tea, add a little of what you bought under the guise of honey. If you are not deceived, the tea will darken, but no sediment will form at the bottom.

● Other ways to detect counterfeit

Over time, honey becomes cloudy and thickens - and this is a sure sign of good quality. And not, as many mistakenly believe, that honey has deteriorated.

If, even after years, your honey has not thickened, it means that it contains a large amount of fructose and, alas, does not have healing properties. Sometimes honey during storage is divided into two layers: it thickens only from below, and remains liquid from above. This suggests that it is immature and therefore should be eaten as quickly as possible - unripe honey only lasts a few months.

Careless beekeepers do not take out bees to collect nectar, but simply feed them sugar. Sugar honey is not natural. There is nothing useful in it. Such honey is unnaturally white.

There is no water in real honey. Honey with syrup has high humidity - this can be checked in the following way. Dip a piece of bread into honey, and after 8-10 minutes remove it. Bread will harden in high-quality honey. If, on the contrary, it softened or completely spread, then in front of you is nothing more than sugar syrup.

But no one on the market will allow you to conduct such experiments, but they will give you a try. Often honey is dripped onto a small piece of paper for tasting. This is quite enough to conduct another experiment.

When going to the market for honey, take a chemical pencil with you. Smear honey on a paper with a pencil, you can smear it with your finger, and try to write something on the “honey” strip with an indelible pencil. If after a few seconds an inscription or blue stains appear, you can confidently and loudly inform the seller (so that other buyers can hear) that starch or flour is present in the product. If there is no chemical pencil, a drop of iodine will do. The same blue hue of the proposed honey will unmistakably determine the starch and flour in the product.

WHICH HONEY IS BETTER - MOUNTAIN OR "PLAIN"

Do not fall for the bait when they try to convince you that mountain honey is better than the one that bees collect in our open spaces. Mountain honey has no special advantages over “plain” honey.

The quality of honey and the concentration of useful substances in it depends only on the decency and knowledge of the beekeeper, as well as on the ecological situation in the honey collection area. Here, however, there is a difference between honey collected in a clean environment, and what the bees collected from the beds of an industrial enterprise. But here it all depends on the beekeeper. Conscience should not allow him to earn on "industrial" honey.

Tricks of HONEY SELLERS

First, plug your ears and don't listen to what they tell you. Of course, one honest seller can fall into a bunch of liars, but how do you know that the one who is standing in front of you is honest? Try honey not only from above, but also from the bottom of the jar. Feel free to put your spoon in the jar and don't listen to the salespeople who start yelling, "Don't ruin the product!"

Honey is an antiseptic and a clean spoon in a jar can't ruin it. Another thing is if it was not honey at the bottom.

Do not buy honey on the market without checking or rolled up. The fact that honey is better stored rolled up with a tin lid is a myth.

Crystallization is a natural process of honey, which does not affect its quality and composition of nutrients. Don't let crystallized honey fool you. Do not come the next day to the seller who promised you uncrystallized honey. They will bring the same, but warmed up. You can't heat honey. Those who prefer honey in liquid form should take this fact into account. Put a jar of honey in warm water. When the water cools down, change it. Gradually the honey will melt.

SIGNS OF REAL HONEY

Quality honey does not roll off the spoon too 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 flowing into the jar.

Immerse the spoon into the honey container. Pulling out a spoon, evaluate the nature of the flow of honey. A good one will form a ribbon, sit down in a hillock, and bubbles form on its surface.

All types of honey have a sweet taste, but some of the varieties have a specific taste. For example, tobacco, chestnut and willow varieties have a bitter taste, while heather is 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 associated with the onset of fermentation, the aroma of caramel is the result of heating, obvious bitterness is incorrect storage conditions for a low-quality product.

The color of honey depends solely on the variety. And there can be all shades of brown and yellow. Do not be afraid of pale yellow, slightly hazy honey - this is normal for acacia.

WHAT YOU NEED TO PAY ATTENTION

Honey should not be stored in metal containers, since the acids contained in its composition can oxidize. This will lead to an increase in the content of heavy metals in it and to a decrease in useful substances. Such honey can cause discomfort in the stomach and even lead to poisoning.

Honey is stored in glass, earthenware, porcelain, ceramic and wooden utensils.

Honey contains 65-80% fructose and sucrose, it is rich in vitamin C, in addition, it contains almost all minerals. Therefore, when using honey with warm water or heating candied honey, do not bring the temperature to 60 degrees - this is the limit after which the structure of honey disintegrates, the color changes, the aroma disappears, and vitamin C, which can live in honey for many years, is destroyed by half or more.

At the end of summer, the markets are flooded with golden jars of honey of various flavors and colors. If you intend to thoroughly buy healing delicacies at the fair, arm yourself with a few rules for choosing it correctly. What should be excellent honey and how to distinguish it from counterfeit, said Professor of the Department of Beekeeping. V. A. Nestervodsky National University of Bioresources and Nature Management Viktor Polishchuk and a beekeeper from the Kyiv region Vladimir Lozovoy.

The fact that in Ukraine there is an extremely wide range of types of honey, while many countries produce only 1-2 varieties, is a fact established by experts, you will not find imported by weight on the markets. But you can add some water to it, replace the nectar processing product and drop it with ordinary sugar syrup, sell 2-3-year-old honey, repeatedly melted and already deprived of any benefit. There are plenty of apiaries and honey reserves today, competition in the market is high and a normal beekeeper seeks to satisfy the buyer, and not to sell the goods at any cost, but there is no guarantee that you will come across a manufacturer personally, who is also conscientious. A self-respecting beekeeper will never mix the remains of honeycombs and dead bees into honey, allegedly as proof that the honey is natural, and the buyer will let him smell and even taste it. By the way, buckwheat honey is becoming almost a rarity - it is now more profitable for farmers to deal not with buckwheat, but with seeds for oil, so the "trend" is the sunflower variety.

Signs of naturalness

Visually. The best honey is so thick that, when poured from jar to jar, it literally folds into a pagoda hill, which needs time to be distributed. This is because it contains no more than 17-20% water, and this is the consistency of syrup, in which 4 cups of sugar and 1 cup of liquid. Whether honey is diluted with water can be determined by weight: a kilogram of honey is placed in a container with a volume of 0.8 liters, and a liter jar of normal honey pulls almost one and a half kilograms. A conscientious seller on the market will allow you to check the consistency of the goods with a stick or a spoon: if the honey is pulled with a thin thread, it is of high quality, and the counterfeit one drips from the spoon and instantly drowns in the mass. In appearance, it will not be homogeneous and transparent, like natural, but cloudy, with sediment at the bottom or exfoliated (often semolina with molasses is placed on the bottom, but only honey on top). Foam is also a bad sign, honey is either unripe or fermented.

Getty Images

Feel and taste. Good honey always scratches the throat with its astringency, and sourness is not felt (it is a sign of an immature or spoiling product). A drop of normal honey, rubbed with fingers, is easily applied and absorbed into the skin, and containing additives simply rolls into rolling pins. Good honey always has a strong, specific aroma, often flowery, pollen, but bad honey smells the less, the more syrup is added to it.

Solid or liquid. The more useful substances in honey, the faster it will harden. When choosing honey, remember that in the summer it should only be syrupy if it is pumped out this season, and only the rapeseed variety from the spring honey plant thickens very quickly and, extracted in the spring, will already be in bars by August (liquid - barely yellow, crystallized - almost white colors). And when going to the market in autumn or winter, consider only candied honey - at this time there is no other normal product (there is also an exception: an acacia variety that keeps a liquid form for a long time). A decent beekeeper is liquid in winter, and in summer thickened honey will not sell: in the first case, it will most likely be melted (and you can only heat it carefully, at a temperature not higher than 37 °, otherwise all the useful properties are in vain), in the second - unmelted, but also last year.

Getty Images

Check at home. Just in case, do not immediately buy a three-liter jar at an unverified point, but take a mayonnaise jar for testing and experimenting. Honey can be tested with a simple piece of bread. Dip it in the purchase for 10-12 minutes - if it is softened, then you bought a banal syrup, and the bread will harden in natural honey. Honey diluted with water will form liquid spots on a sheet of paper or leak, but a good product will lie unchanged. If you poke honey with the hot tip of a knife, nothing will remain on the metal, while the fake will leave a layer of burnt sugar (as when cooking homemade candies). Dilute a teaspoon of honey in half a glass of hot water: low-quality honey will not dissolve completely, and if you pour a little alcohol into the resulting liquid, it will also become cloudy. A solution of real honey after all these manipulations remains transparent, like a tear, and will fail only if it is honeydew from coniferous trees. By the way, all additives will float or settle if you take distillate for testing. You can drop iodine into the same mixture, and if the seller mixed starch, it will turn blue. And when vinegar is added, bubbles may appear: obvious signs that chalk has got into the honey. The last way is to sprinkle a drop of honey with a pinch of starch. Ideally, the white powder will remain a separate layer, but artificially mixed honey will certainly enter into some kind of reaction with it.

According to the documents. Laboratory studies will quickly find any impurities and excess water in honey, so it would be useful to ask the seller for a veterinary and sanitary passport of the apiary and a certificate of conformity (expert opinion). If it is, it means that the product passed the test without problems, because the control will easily show even an excess of sucrose content by even just 5 percent. The document must have a laboratory seal and a mark on passing radiological control. And make sure that a check is attached to the certificate for payment for research and with a date that matches that indicated in the expert conclusion.

Tatiana Malinovskaya

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 even 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.

What are fakes?

The most “natural” fake is honey with various additives, for example, with essential oil. Such a trick helps unscrupulous sellers pass honey off as another variety.

Also, for the manufacture of fakes, starch, molasses or sucrose and other components can be used. In some cases, honey is forged so professionally that it is simply impossible to find out on your own. So unscrupulous beekeepers feed bees with sugar syrup, which increases the productivity of insects. In this case, only a laboratory helps to identify a fake.

Therefore, in order to get one hundred percent high-quality honey, it is better to buy it from beekeepers you trust.

How to distinguish natural honey from a fake by eye?

Sometimes too low a price indicates a fake. If you suddenly have the opportunity to buy honey cheaper, think about the reasons for the reduced price. Saving, you can buy only a part of real honey, mixed with sugar syrup and tinted with tea.

The liquid consistency of honey may also indicate a fake. This natural sweetness remains liquid for only a few months, then it gradually thickens. So in winter it is almost impossible to find liquid honey if you come across just such a honey - perhaps it is diluted or heated.

Also, a fake may be indicated by the presence of too much white in such a product. This phenomenon may indicate that the sweetness was diluted with sugar syrup.

Insufficient quality honey may look too dark, and it may also have a caramel flavor. A similar phenomenon indicates that the sweetness was warmed up or straightened. So, for example, dark buckwheat honey can be melted and sold as fresh.

Please note that the crystallization of honey is a natural phenomenon. In the event that such sweetness is stored for a long time, it may well be that potato molasses was mixed into it or heat treatment was carried out in the past. Usually this feature becomes apparent after the purchase, but if you find it, you will be able to refrain from buying from this beekeeper in the future. It should be noted that in autumn you can still buy liquid honey - chestnut and white acacia honey.

Also, fermentation, stratification of honey or the acquisition of an ugly forked texture by it can also indicate a fake.

You should not focus on the presence of bee corpses, pieces of wax or grass in honey. They do not indicate the naturalness of the product, because the seller can add them to the product on purpose.

How to identify fake honey at home?

Every year, manufacturers of "fake" bee products invent more and more new methods of masking fakes. However, there are several methods that will help you find out how high-quality honey is in front of you.

mechanical research

Try rubbing honey between your fingers. A high-quality delicacy sticks well, it forms an adhesive film. If you get a fake in your hands, you may have a feeling of excessive moisture. Also, a fake can form a lump that can be rolled in your fingers.

When falling from a whisk or spoon, honey will not splatter. Just put a small drop on a napkin - it should not spread. In this case, the honey will stretch from the spoon with a thin thread, and the last drop will spring and pull up.
A high-quality honey mixture will lie down in a slide, and only then it will spread.

A simple method with iodine and water (or vinegar)

Pour some honey into a glass, pour some water into it. Mix well. If there are additives in the honey, they will sink to the bottom.
Drop a couple of drops of iodine into a glass and stir. If the mixture suddenly turns blue, then starch is present in the honey.
You can also drop a little vinegar into the solution. If suddenly something hisses, it means that there is chalk in the honey.

Some more chemical experiments

Prepare a five to ten percent solution of honey and combine it with medical alcohol in a ratio of 4: 1. When a white precipitate appears, conclusions can be drawn about the presence of sugar syrup in the solution.

Also, methyl alcohol can be added to the honey solution - when a yellowish-white precipitate appears, one can draw conclusions about the presence of impurities in the honey.

The spoon method

This is a simple test method that can be performed in a fairly warm room - with a temperature of at least twenty degrees. Take an ordinary spoon and wind honey around it, making quick rotational movements. The all-natural product will behave like caramel - it will wrap around the spoon and won't drip. If you have a fake in your hands, it may start to flow from a spoon, bubbles or blotches of some other color may appear in it.

paper method

To determine the naturalness of honey using paper - put a small amount of honey on a piece of paper and wait for five minutes. In the event that a wet spot does not appear on the back of the leaf, the honey is of really high quality and has not been diluted. It is quite possible to resort to this method of verification at the fair - take some honey on a stick and put it on a piece of paper.

fire method

This method of determining the quality of honey will help to determine the authenticity of crystallized honey. Set fire to a small piece and carefully watch how it burns. In the event that you have one hundred percent high-quality honey in your hands, it will simply melt. If you come across a fake, it will crackle and hiss (this is how other foreign components will appear).

The bread method

This method allows you to find out if there is sugar syrup in honey. Just take a small slice of bread and dip it in honey. Wait for ten to fifteen minutes, then remove and inspect a piece of bread. A really high-quality product will not soften the bread, and if it contains sugar syrup, the bread will get wet.

advice from beekeepers

When choosing honey, give preference to its thicker varieties. If the product has a transparent consistency, it may well be that it was warmed up by the seller.

What varieties of honey do not exist?

Many beekeepers, as well as resellers, invent varieties of honey or distribute those that are especially rare. Let's take a look at the more troubling options.

Honey from royal jelly. It is very difficult and almost impossible to obtain such honey in such a volume that it would be possible to sell it. One mother liquor contains no more than two hundred grams of milk, and special efforts are needed to create a dessert. But sellers of sweets with such a big name have a reason to put an especially high price on it.

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

You should be alerted and honey from strawberries, blackberries or blueberries. To get natural honey using nectar from these shrubs, you need to spend a lot of time and effort, because they give very little nectar. But unscrupulous beekeepers can feed bees with berry juice, and insects process it like nectar. The resulting honey is not as useful as natural, but the sellers do not talk about it.

Also, do not buy honey from milk thistle, pumpkin and silver sucker. Mentions of the so-called "wild" honey or the predominance of "flower" varieties of honey from the seller can also alert.

More tips from a beekeeper

Be sure to taste honey before buying, and also smell it. Feel free to ask clarifying questions - about when the honey was collected, and about where the apiary is located. Bee products cost a lot of money, so you have the right to full information.

High-quality honey has a pleasant floral smell, as well as a sweet and pleasant taste. There are varieties of bee products that are characterized by a rather original taste. If you are going to buy just such, find out before that what taste and aroma they should have.

But most often, honey smells like a honeycomb - wax, nectar and pollen, as well as sweetness and, of course, honey. A low-quality product may have a particularly strong smell, sometimes there is no fragrance at all.

When swallowed, honey can sting a little in the throat, and also give a slight bitterness.

Be sure to ask about the weight of the purchased honey - one liter of a quality beekeeping product weighs an average of 1.4 kg.

Store the purchased treat in a dark or opaque glass or ceramic container. Close the jar tightly with a lid, because honey can absorb an extraneous odor. It is best that the storage temperature is between five and twenty degrees. In no case should you store honey in the sun.

The benefits of honey are a long and finally proven fact. Firstly, unlike sugar, honey is easily and quickly absorbed by the body due to the presence of fructose in it. In terms of the amount of minerals, it simply has no equal.

In short, these are: organic and inorganic acids, amino acids, nitrogenous substances, disaccharides, minerals, including potassium, calcium, phosphorus, sulfur, chlorine, copper, magnesium, iodine, zinc, etc. Plus vitamins, of which, although not very many, however, they are in perfect combination with other substances needed by the human body. In addition, they are preserved in honey throughout the year, unlike vitamins in vegetables and fruits.

In general, you need to eat honey. However, you need natural honey. That's about it how to distinguish honey from a fake and save yourself from buying counterfeit and will be discussed.

Warming up honey

The most basic and often used way to make honey attractive is to warm it up. It seems to have long been known that when honey is heated above 40 degrees, enzymes are destroyed in it, therefore its benefits are significantly reduced, and when it is heated above 60-80 degrees, carcinogens are formed in it. Nevertheless, at any time of the year, liquid honey can be found on the market, usually advertised as "May". It is good if it is heated in a water bath without exceeding the allowed temperature. But does everyone bother with it?

In this case distinguish natural honey it's not that hard. It is enough just not to buy suspiciously liquid out of season honey. If he has not sugared by October, it is worth suspecting something was wrong. Any honey crystallizes in about a month or two after harvest, even May honey, contrary to the popular belief that May honey remains liquid all year round. It also crystallizes, just a little longer.

The honey sold in supermarkets looks very strange - in neat plastic jars, neat, thin, yellow “honey” flaunts all year round ... To give a beautiful presentation, it is heated to high temperatures and poured into prepared containers. Naturally, nothing good can come of this procedure.

Feeding bees with sugar

Feeding bees with sugar is a very common way to adulterate honey. Bees, no worse than us, love to be lazy. Why fly far and look for flowers if you are presented with sugar syrup on a silver platter? Such honey is not harmful, and even a little more useful than the sugar itself, from which it is made, since the bees have already processed it. However, there will be no significant benefit from it, naturally, due to the lack of useful substances.

You can determine such honey by taste and smell - they will not be pronounced, weak. To try to distinguish honey from a similar fake on the market, you can try to compare the taste of several honey options from different sellers - at least one must be natural! Although of course this task is not an easy one.

foreign matter in honey

For quantity, a variety of components can be mixed into honey: starch, flour,

Iodine in an aqueous solution of natural honey (not blue)

potato, corn and other porridge, as well as sand, chalk, sawdust, etc. Brrr ... It is quite easy to determine these impurities: you need to dissolve honey in water - the impurities will precipitate or float on the surface.

To choose good honey already on the market, you can do a few simple manipulations, taking a jar of plain water and iodine with you in advance.

If you drop iodine into this solution, then by color you can determine whether flour or starch is present in the honey you buy (the solution will turn blue).

Fortunately, such a fake does not occur too often. You can “run into” in spontaneous markets where the seller trades irregularly: he sold and left. Sellers who constantly trade in one place will most likely not fall for such scams. Reputation is more valuable.

It is more difficult to detect the addition of sugar syrup. However, this is also possible. You need to take a 5-10% solution of lapis (silver nitrate) and add to honey. If there is no sediment, the honey is of high quality. There are other ways to check. I think chemists themselves know them, and it will be too difficult for non-chemists to check purchased honey in this way.

Lack of honey in honey

The most crude fake honey that I had to face is the complete absence of honey in honey. Yes, yes, sugar syrup was simply made, something odorous was added there (like aromatic rose oil) and pieces of honeycombs and dead bees were thrown “for beauty”. Here we are not talking about any quality checks - all these tests will fail. Of course, it is not difficult to understand that this is not honey at all, provided that you have tried real honey. But they even buy it! In my case, this "beauty" was passed off as honey to the Iranians, who had not seen the "correct" honey in their eyes. Well, they don't have bees.

Where to buy honey

To have the least chance of getting low-quality honey or fake, you should find "your" beekeeper and buy honey only from him. Maybe one lives nearby with you, or maybe you will meet him in the market and become a regular customer. So you will have confidence in the benefits and quality of the purchased product, and the "national manufacturer" will find its "national consumer".

Buying honey in the supermarket is not worth it. Most likely, this product will not harm you, but there will be no benefit from it either.

No spontaneous markets, gypsies under the house or grandmothers on the porch of your office. After all, you buy honey for health - spend a little time on it to eat it with pleasure and confidence in its quality and benefits.

Storage of honey

It is best to store honey in a dark or opaque glass (ceramic) container. The vessel must be tightly closed with a lid, because. honey has the ability to absorb odors. It is optimal if the storage temperature is between 5 and 20 degrees. It is absolutely impossible to keep honey under the influence of sunlight.

Naturally, during storage, honey “saccharides”. If you like liquid honey, you can warm it up a little in a water bath. Its temperature should not exceed 40 degrees.

Honey cannot be attributed to those products that pregnant women or children should not eat, but it is better to do this with caution, because honey is quite allergenic.

Ksenia Poddubnaya

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 a fake.

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 quickly and easily absorbs 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.