Honey is an amazing, refined elixir to the body with natural ingredients made by nature — containing abundant nutrients, living enzymes, and minerals.
However, after all these are put together, we still have the
biggest problem which is the purity and quality of honey.
It is really important to know if honey is pure or not
before buying it, even though it can be quite challenging to differentiate
between pure organic honey and adulterated honey.
If you want to enjoy the taste and health benefits of honey
then its purity is a must. It will be good to understand that the best quality
of honey comes from bees on natural vegetation and not factories.
There are many ways we can detect pure honey from
adulterated honey, and we may not be able to list all the methods because some
people will prefer to test their honey in laboratories. Nevertheless, the
testing methods below are simple, yet very effective.
The Water Test
Take a teaspoon of the honey and put in a glass full of
water.
Fake or adulterated honey will dissolve in the water while
pure honey, which has a more dense texture, will settle right at the bottom of
the glass as lumps.
The same is the case with blotting paper or a white cloth.
If you pour pure honey on either, it will not get absorbed or leave
stains.
The Thumb Test
Place a small amount of honey on your thumb and check if it
spills or spreads around like any other liquid.
Pure natural honey has good density and stickiness, so when
applied to any surface it does not drip or run down. If it does, it may not be
pure.
Pure honey is thick while impure honey will be runny. Pure
honey sticks to the surface it is applied to and doesn’t drip
off. Moreover, the taste of impure honey may linger due to the presence of
added sugar.
Vinegar Test
Vinegar and honey mixed together can be an easy hack to spot
fake honey from pure honey.
To perform this test, try mixing a few drops of honey into a
solution of water and vinegar.
If the mixture starts to foam, it might be a sign that the
quality of your honey has been contaminated and you are not having the real,
pure one.
The Heat Test
If you heat pure honey, it will caramelize quickly and not
become foamy. But, in case of impure honey, it may not caramelize and become
bubbly on heating.
A lot of the differences between pure and adulterated honey
can also be identified just with the naked eye by examining its physical
properties.
Pure honey is dense and trickles only into a stream. It has
a soft texture, will never separate into layers, and offers a distinct sweet
aroma. Raw honey, which is honey in its purest form, often leaves a slight
tingling feeling or a mild burning sensation in your throat when consumed.
Take a few samples of honey and heat it. Pure honey should
caramelize and does not foam, while impure honey may not caramelize.
Paper Test
Take a paper towel or a napkin and place some drops of honey
on it. The honey will remain solid and should not get absorbed if it is pure or
else it will get absorbed and wet the paper.
The Flame Test
Take a dry matchstick and dip it in honey. Strike the matchstick
against the matchbox. If it lights, your honey is pure.
If it doesn’t light, it may be adulterated and may also
contain some amount of moisture added during contamination.
You may have not known this, but pure honey is inflammable.
Therefore, we request that you take utmost caution while performing this test
and do it at your own risk.
Bread Test
Take the honey sample and spread it on a slice of bread. If
the honey is in a pure form then it will become crispy or crunchy on the top of
the bread slice within a few minutes.
However, if the honey is impure, it will make the bread
soggy because of additives.
When spread on a slice of bread, the slice of bread hardens
in minutes, meanwhile with impure honey the bread gets wet due to moisture in
the honey.
It’s not over. There’s more…
While the methods above are effective, other methods to test
pure from fake honey exist, such as:
- Taste: The
taste of pure honey vanishes in a matter of minutes, though heating and
cooling many times may alter the taste. On the flip side, the taste of
fake honey remains longer because of the presence of sugar.
- Stickiness: Pure
honey is not sticky if rubbed between fingers but fake honey may be sticky
due to additional sweeteners.
- Thickness: Pure
honey is fairly thick and takes time to move from one surface or jar to
another while fake honey is very light and runny.
As a matter of fact, to the naked eye, it is sometimes
almost impossible to identify the quality of honey packed in a jar. The color
and texture of honey don’t usually reflect its quality rather they often
represent the variety and geographical location of the flowers and plants where
the honey was harvested.
How to recognize or ensure that you are purchasing honey of
good quality?
Make sure that you only source from tested and trusted suppliers.