Is your Honey Pure?

Honey is the gift of nature with abundance of health benefits. However, the same is increasingly getting a scarce commodity due to decreasing bee population. With the hike in price, to maintain profitability there have been many sources that have stated sugar syrups are made artificially and are being added to honey.

With the growing concern around sugar syrup adulteration FSSAI [FOOD REGULATOR FOOD SAFETY AND STANDARDS AUTHORITY OF INDIA] decided to conduct a check on the top most honey brands. After few weeks of the test, FSSAI has proposed new norms for honey which clearly implies that the test conducted showed that a lot of honeys sold in the market were not 100% pure but adulterated with corn syrup or Rice syrup like different types of sugar syrup. Earlier, the FSSAI norms didn’t have testing methods and parameters to find out the authenticity of the Honey. However in the recent years the FSSAI department have upgraded themselves and have evolved with standards and high quality method of analysis. The FSSAI Norms have changed as in previous norms there were no criteria on added sugar syrups. The Myth regarding the Purity Test e.g. water test method, burn test method has been cleared; these tests can’t detect if Rice Syrup is added in honey.

Awareness on choosing pure healthy honey has been implemented.

Hence, to identify the pure honey in the market, the first criterion for screening is to find honey that is of good quality and sells in the Rs.500-600 range per kilo. Second screening criteria would be to do a background research of these brands on what they make available to public to justify authenticity of their purity claim. FSSAI certification now is not sufficient as FSSAI itself had to conduct a test to check purity and authenticity of brands.
If you avoid sugar, then it’s better to avoid honey added with sugar syrups as well. Health is the top priority.

Personally, I have done such screenings and found “No added Rice syrup” test report for one lesser known brand “Zandu honey” on their website. The test is being done from an independent laboratory. There are other expensive good quality honey brands too. Choose your honey wisely. As only Pure honey is healthy.