How to identify true and false honey
1: Modern science also confirms the benefits of honey:
1) It can delay the oxidation of low-density lipoprotein and prevent cardiovascular diseases. And the darker the color, the higher the amount of antioxidants it contains.
2)It can help improve the physical strength of fitness people and also accelerate the recovery of muscles after exercise.
3) External use also has bactericidal effect. Applying honey directly to the skin can effectively help wounds heal and reduce the proliferation of pathogens. Research in Turkey points out that applying an ointment made of honey after colon cancer surgery may prevent tumor recurrence and can be used to improve the safety of endoscopic surgery.
2: However, the honey sold in the market is full of fake honey and synthetic honey, leaving consumers at a loss as to what to do. At present, about 70% of the honey sold in hypermarkets and supermarkets is synthetic, using fructose as the main raw material, adding a small amount of cheap honey imported from Vietnam, Thailand and other places, as well as a large number of artificial flavors and colors, and selling it as pure honey. What's more, even the cost of pure honey is saved, and fructose is used as the base, making it look like the real thing and making huge profits. In fact, the production of pure honey by beekeepers is limited. Beekeepers "depend on the weather". Climate, temperature, and environment all affect the flowering period. A bee needs to collect nectar from 2 million flowers to produce 500 grams of honey. At present, domestic people are paying more and more attention to health care, and the demand for honey has also increased significantly. The contradiction between production and demand is very prominent. Many unscrupulous traders and even regular manufacturers have begun to use synthetic honey or even fake honey to pass off.
3: Get rid of 2 major “superstitions” 1. "Seeing is believing" honey is harvested on-site at tourist attractions. Is it necessarily real honey? wrong. Real beekeepers often "live after flowers" and travel north and south during the flowering season, sometimes leaving home for two or three months as soon as they go out. Therefore, it is certainly unreasonable to collect honey at designated spots in tourist areas. Therefore, the beekeeper revealed that if the businessman in the tourist area shakes it off on the spot, it will not be mixed and put into the bucket beforehand.Synthetic honey is "molasses". In order to increase production, some beekeepers feed bees with sugar water to extend their lives. The honey produced at this time does not come from nectar and honeydew. It has a sweet taste but no floral fragrance. Therefore It should not be sold as pure honey. 2. Highlight the special functions of honey named after a certain flower or tree. wrong. These product names are often just gimmicks, so to put it bluntly, as long as there is a forest or flower bush in the honey production area, merchants will claim that the honey they produce is *flower nectar or *tree honey. In fact, the honey collected by bees still mostly comes from other plants, and the taste is not the same. No different.
Four: How to buy pure honey? Many people often have wrong answers, such as real honey will not attract ants, real honey flows slowly, use a toothpick to pick it up into a ball... etc. In terms of physical and chemical properties, sugar composition, HMF (hydroxymethylfurfural) content, enzyme content, and pollen grain content can all identify the authenticity of honey. However, the easiest way for consumers is to dilute it with water.
To identify real honey smartly, brew honey with cold water, pour about half a cup into a glass, and shake quickly.
1. A large amount of foam appears on the upper layer of the liquid and will not subside for a long time. Sometimes the foam can last for 2 hours.
2. The liquid part appears turbid because honey contains protein, pollen, and colloid. But fake honey not only has less foam and fades easily, but the liquid part is also very clear.
3. After brewing with hot water, it tastes sweet and a little sour, because pure honey contains many organic acids and enzymes, but fake honey only has a sweet taste.
4. Seeing whether honey crystallizes is also a way to determine the authenticity of honey. Honey contains high amounts of fructose and glucose. When the glucose content is high, the water is low, and the temperature is low, honey is easy to crystallize, while fake honey uses fructose as the main raw material and will not crystallize. Among them, lychee honey and citrus honey have high glucose content and are easy to crystallize, while longan honey does not. Therefore, liquid honey may have authenticity issues, while completely crystallized honey must be real honey.
Five: Accurately find good honey. After identifying real honey, you can also find good honey based on its color, aroma, and flavor.
1. Look at the appearance: high-quality honey has strong light transmittance and less impurities and foam. The colors of honey from different flower species are also different. For example, longan honey is amber in color, while lychee honey is lighter in color.
2. Smell the aroma: Pure honey has a light floral aroma, while impure honey has an artificial flavor.
3. Taste the flavor: Good honey is refreshing and fragrant in the mouth, leaving a lingering fragrance in the mouth after swallowing, while inferior honey has no fragrance or has a rancid smell.
6: Teach you a few more ways to identify real and fake honey
1: Look at the gloss and color: When viewed with the naked eye, the color of real honey is light white, light yellow or amber, preferably light; the gloss is not very translucent. Fake honey is bright in color, boiled with white sugar or pretended to be syrup, so it looks very clear and translucent, usually light yellow or dark yellow. In addition, pure honey is colorless, and the color of honey is caused by the pollen of different plants contained in honey. Therefore, dark-colored honey is more nutritious than light-colored honey, but dark-colored honey often also contains a strong smell, such as buckwheat honey; light-colored honey generally has a delicate smell, such as lychee honey and locust honey.
2: Identification of impurities: You can insert a red-hot iron wire into the honey. If the honey is steaming, it is real honey, and if it is smoking, it is fake. If it is pure honey, after the wire is pulled out, it will be very smooth and free of impurities. Use chopsticks to pick up the honey. If the honey can be stretched into long strands, it will not flow continuously. If the strands are broken, they will automatically retract and form a ball. The honey is of the highest quality. Mix honey and water in a ratio of 1:5 and leave it for a day. The best product is the one with no precipitation.
3: Identification of water content: Drop honey on white paper. Pure honey will form beads and will not seep out, while honey mixed with water will seep out gradually. The faster it seeps out, the more water it contains.
4: Identification of heavy metals: Take a tablespoon of honey and add it to half a cup of very strong herbal green tea. If the honey is contaminated by heavy metals, the tannins in the tea will react chemically with the heavy metals in the honey to produce gray, brown, or black salts. kind. The darker the color, the greater the degree of heavy metal contamination.
5: Identification of starch content: Put a small amount of honey into a cup, add an appropriate amount of water and boil it. After cooling, add a few drops of iodine and shake well. If the solution turns blue, red or purple, it means that the honey is mixed with starch substances. .
6: Identification of sugar content: Honey mixed with sugar has poor transparency, is not bright, is turbid, and has a poor floral aroma. Honey mixed with brown sugar is darker in color, while honey mixed with white sugar is lighter in color. You can rub it with two fingers to make it feel sticky, and if it has a grainy texture, it contains sugar.
7: Taste identification: Real honey is sweet and delicious, with a slightly sour taste. The crystallized pieces are crispy when put into the teeth and melt when held in the teeth. However, fake honey has a bitter taste, and the crystallized pieces are chewed like sugar and have a crisp and loud sound.
8: Smell and taste identification: Real honey has a light floral floral aroma, while fake honey smells pungent or fruity.
9: Crystallization identification: Fake honey does not crystallize, but the white sugar added to some fake honey will precipitate under certain conditions, forming a precipitate at the bottom of the bottle. It is easy to distinguish between the crystallization of real honey and the precipitation of fake honey. The crystallization of honey is relatively soft and can be easily twisted when placed on the fingers, giving it a delicate feel. The white sugar precipitated from fake honey is denser.When you twist it on your fingers, it feels gritty.