Is there anything called pure Honey – Burning Issues – Free PDF Download

HONEY TEST

• The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) last week released results of an investigation it had conducted into the quality of honey being produced in India.
• It reported that products by many popular brands were not honey, and, in fact, had been spiked with added sugar.

HONEY TEST

• Therefore, they ought not to be branded and sold as honey.
• The CSE also showed that adulteration technology had become sophisticated and there were commercial products available which are designed to cheat the tests that Indian food testing laboratories conduct to ascertain the purity of honey.

Is there anything called ‘pure honey’?

• Over millennia, ‘honey’ was what bees made from plant nectar and people only just squeezed out the contents of honey combs, scrubbed it clean of bees, pollen and other visible residues. This is honey that is either sourced from wild bees or domesticated bees in apiaries. However, none of this constitutes ‘pure honey’, because it is a marketing term and a superficial phrase that masks the complexity that is ‘honey’.

Is there anything called ‘pure honey’?

• India’s food regulator, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), in July published a new set of regulations — the third in three years — called the ‘Revised Standards of Honey’.
• Nowhere does one find the term ‘pure honey’ in it.

How is honey tested?

• Honey is primarily a complex of the fructose, glucose and sucrose sugars. It has a relatively high fructose content, which is why it is sweeter than commercial sugar, which is heavier on sucrose. The latter also breaks down less easily.
• Laboratory tests determine acceptable ratios of these sugars and tolerance limits. There is also a tolerance for ‘ash’ content and HMF (hydroxymethylfurfural), which forms when honey is heated. HMF is actually toxic for bees.

Why does spiked honey matter?

• Honey typifies ‘natural sweetness’. The enzymes that bees use to make honey out of plant nectar render it rich in antioxidants, amino acids and other products that give honey its medicinal properties. This is why honey is part of traditional medicine and has been promoted as an immune system stimulant, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The addition of artificial sugar syrups reduces the concentration of these elements per gram of honey. As a sweetener, honey is digested more easily than sucrose-heavy sugars, but it spikes blood sugar levels the same way commercial sugar does. Therefore, responsibly sourced honey poses similar risks to diabetics as ordinary sugar.

What did the CSE probe find?

• The CSE investigation examined 13 popular brands of honey.
• Four of them failed the tests that are required by Indian law—Apis Himalaya Honey, Dadev Honey, Hi Honey and Societe Naturelle Honey. The testing was done at the Centre for Analysis and Learning in Livestock and Food, Gujarat.

What did the CSE probe find?

• The NMR test is not mandatory in India, but it is necessary for export purposes. By this metric, ten of the 13 brands failed, with only three brands — Saffola Honey, Nature’s Nectar Honey and Markfed Sohna Honey passing.
•  The NMR method relies on establishing a reference database of honey profiles — characteristics of sugar, pollen, oligosaccharides, pollen, etc.— from different geographic profiles. Major deviations from this are labelled suspect.

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