{"id":15843,"date":"2020-12-16T20:02:29","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T20:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/?p=15843"},"modified":"2020-12-17T21:24:40","modified_gmt":"2020-12-17T21:24:40","slug":"is-your-honey-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/is-your-honey-real\/","title":{"rendered":"Is your honey real?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"By Nailah John, Linda Golodner Food Safety and Nutrition Fellow<\/strong><\/p>\n

Honey is one of my favorite sweeteners. And I\u2019m not alone. The global demand for honey is extremely high with the market size value in 2020 at 9.79 billion<\/a>. But are we buying the authentic thing?<\/p>\n

This high demand has resulted in market fraud and adulteration. Insider<\/a><\/em> has stated that honey is the third-most-faked food in the world behind milk and olive oil. Assessing the quality of honey can be difficult because of the production process or adulteration with cane sugar or other ingredients.<\/p>\n

In the United States, 400 million pounds<\/a> of honey ends up in our food every year. Most of it is adulterated<\/a> product from China<\/a>. Manufacturers either dilute real honey by adding syrups derived from plants or they chemically modify the sugars in those syrups so they look like real honey. Honey consumers in the U.S., and across the globe, are being duped and need to be made more aware of how to tell if the honey they purchased is real or fake.<\/p>\n

Here are several ways to spot fakes:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Crystallization \u2013 real honey crystallizes over a period of time once kept in a cool dark place. Adulterated honey will always retain the same consistency.<\/li>\n
  2. Water test \u2013 drop a teaspoon of honey in water. If the honey is pure, it will not easily mix with water but will become slightly thicker in texture.<\/li>\n
  3. Microwave test\/heat test \u2013 place a bowl of honey in the microwave and heat it for a minute. If it caramelizes, then it is real honey. If it bubbles, it is not.<\/li>\n
  4. Paper test \u2013 put 2 teaspoons of honey on a plate and put paper on it. If the paper soaks the honey, then it is adulterated.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    As the demand for honey increases<\/a>, one would expect that the price of honey would increase. However, the opposite has occurred since the supply of adulterated honey<\/a> has increased and driven global honey prices down. This has resulted in beekeepers barely being able to sell their honey for a profit.<\/p>\n

    Another major issue that adulterated honey causes is the threat to pollination and our food systems. Vice<\/em><\/a> highlights that bees help produce 90 commercially-grown crops in the U.S. and have brought in over $24 billion to the economy. Without beekeepers, we would have a failed food system.<\/p>\n

    Consumers should seek out raw, organic, unadulterated honey that will not have negative impacts on our beekeepers, our crop, and our economy. If you buy a plant-based burger, you would like to know the nutritional value and ingredients of the product and it should be the same for honey or any product that we consume.<\/p>\n

    I would recommend that each consumer watch the Netflix documentary Rotten<\/em>. The episode called \u201cLawyers, Guns and Honey\u201d shows the reasons behind low production of authentic honey and the impact of the dwindling bee population on our environment.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13533,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false},"categories":[285,14,417,295,300,299],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15843"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15843"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15845,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15843\/revisions\/15845"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}