New Test Detects Fake Honey

Sweet Solution to Honey Fraud
By Mike Stones, Food Production Daily, 13-May-2009

French researchers have developed a test to distinguish 100 per cent natural honeys from fake products adulterated with other substances, reports the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

The high price and limited supply of honey has tempted some beekeepers and food processors to sell impure honey containing inexpensive sweeteners, such as corn syrup, inverted syrups and high fructose corn syrup, claims one of the researchers Bernard Herbreteau. Adulterated honey is almost indistinguishable, physically and chemically, from the real thing.

But Herbreteau and his colleagues say their highly sensitive test can put an end to fraudulent honey sales. It uses a special type of chromatography to separate and identify complex sugars or polysaccharides according to their characteristic chemical fingerprints...