5 ways to distinguish natural honey from fake honey!
Natural honey can be distinguished according to the liquid state of the honey, whether it is loose or solid, and the color and taste of the honey. Identifying fake honey and choosing the best honey has always been a consumer concern.
Honey is considered one of the most valuable foodstuffs because of its valuable nutrients such as natural sugars, organic and mineral substances and vitamins, and especially because of its ability to provide part of the daily energy. Therefore, as per the mentioned reasons, it may be abused by the beneficiaries. Below you will learn about the best ways to identify natural honey.
1. Honey maintains its condition in cold water
To distinguish natural honey, pour the honey into a cup of cold water, you will notice that honey maintains its completely viscous state and dissolves strongly and slowly in cold water, but fake honey dissolves quickly in water. Pour the honey vertically into a cup of cold water. If the honey drops do not dissolve and settle at the bottom of the cup, then the honey is original, but if the honey melts when poured into the water, it is less desirable and pure.
2. Natural honey is loose
Another way to identify the natural honey that the bees did not eat that produced the sugar is by its looseness. This looseness is because the main sugars in natural honey are glucose and fructose (small sugar molecules) and when we tilt the bowl of natural honey, these sugars easily move over each other. If bees are given sugar, the sugar, which is sucrose and isosaccharides (more complex sugar), will stick together due to the type of molecules, and because of this, the honey will be a little harder than normal.
3. You should know the natural color of honey
The color of honey varies according to the region and flower to which it belongs. The color spectrum of honey ranges from white to yellow, reddish garnet and even brown.
Acacia honey: white in colour
Spring orange honey: golden yellow
Mazandaran forest honey: greenish yellow
Thyme honey: red agate
European pine honey: brown
All of this is good and natural honey, but their color is different because of the flower the bees feed on. As a result, one way to identify natural honey is to recognize the color of the honey.
4. Natural honey is sugary
Natural and pure honey must be sweetened with sugar. The enzymes and sugar in honey make it sugary. Foreign bodies such as wax particles, flower pollen, or even dust can serve as nuclei of crystallization. The difference between honeydew sugar and the sugar that is created in jam is that the crystals of slushy honey are much smaller than the crystals of sugared jam. Of course, not all sugar is mud and not every mud is a sign of nature.
In order to distinguish crystallized natural honey from honey imitated with sugar, it is necessary to know that only natural honey can gradually turn cloudy and sediment over time, and its sugar is as soft as the natural sugar of palm juice and may be a little coarse when consumed. Yes, but no sound is felt under the teeth. But fake honey sugar is hard like candy and hard to separate with a spoon, and when eaten it looks like candy granules, sugar and sugary jam under the teeth and sticks to the teeth like chocolate.
5. Natural honey does not taste like sugar and dissolves in the mouth quickly
Natural honey, in addition to its special sweetness, has a special taste that is only found in honey, and artificial honey does not have this kind of taste. In order to distinguish natural honey from the fake, it should be noted that the taste of industrial honey is closer to sugar than pure honey.
Distinctive features of natural honey
Sucrose less than 5%
Humidity less than 18.6%
PH between 3.42 and 6.10
Get muddy and sweet
Viscosity when pouring cold water
Reasonable price and not cheap
Methods of fraud in making honey
One way to identify natural honey is to learn about the methods of adulteration. Honey is cheated in so many ways, that even if you are taken to the top of a beehive, you can't be sure if the honey on the wax of those hives is fake or genuine. One of the methods of fraud in making honey is that it dissolves glucose in water and plant sap and turns it into honey. Another method is to feed the bees sugar water instead of the plants. This honey can be identified in the laboratory due to its high sucrose content, but it is almost impossible in honey shops.
