Identifying fake honey

UPWr PhD student Jordan Sycz wants to take a closer look at ways of faking natural honeys in order to develop simple methods of verifying their chemical composition and geographical origin. This is all within the project “Analysing the falsification of the chemical composition and geographical origin of natural honeys from Poland and Europe in relation to enriched honeys and herbal honeys using chromatographic techniques coupled with mass detection”, for which he has received nearly PLN 210 000.  – By definition, honey is a natural product produced by bees from melliferous plants, exhibiting a number of proven health-promoting properties and possessing high nutritional value. The chemical composition of natural honey can vary depending on the climate and environmental conditions, the production method or the type of raw material from which it is derived. Unfortunately, more and more often we are faced with unfair market practices consisting mainly of enriching natural honey with other ingredients, often of synthetic origin, or deliberate concealment of their botanical origin in order to increase the unit price of the finished product – says Jordan Sycz adding that these are fake honeys, the market for which is becoming increasingly difficult to control. Why? In the case of commercial honey analysis, only basic physico-chemical tests are routinely performed using a general approach, whereas in the modern world, methods of falsifying food products are increasingly complex and sophisticated. An additional aspect is that the chemical complexity of honey matrices makes it difficult to detect subtle changes in honey composition.

– Recently, fake, so-called enriched honeys, have been in the spotlight. These include herbal honeys, where instead of naturally harvested bee forage, the bees are fed sugar syrup, added herbal hydrolysates or essential oils isolated from oil-bearing plants. What’s more, it sometimes happens that pollen from another plant is deliberately added to such honeys to make correct identification difficult – says the UPWr scientist.

Jordan Sycz will investigate, among other things, changes in the chemical composition of honey at each of the different stages of its production and processing by bees, as well as differences in the volatile profiles of honey and the detection of falsifying in complex matrices of enriched honeys and herbal honeys. The project is also intended to provide comprehensive knowledge of the so-called marker compounds and specific chemical profiles ('fingerprinting' method) allowing accurate analysis of adulteration not only in the final product, but also at the production stage, i.e. bee forage (pollen, nectar and honeydew). The honeys most frequently affected by fraudulent practices, such as rapeseed, heather, buckwheat, honeydew and lime honey, will be analysed.