How to check honey for naturalness

Sweet, aromatic, with a beautiful amber hue - honey. This is one of the healthiest natural products that Mother Nature has given us. It is used in many fields, from cooking before cosmetology and is therefore greatly appreciated for its usefulness and versatility. However, today, in the pursuit of profit, many manufacturers act in bad faith by falsifying its quality. In this connection, many people have the question of how to understand that the purchased honey is natural? Our article will help you answer it.

Natural honey - how to understand

You can figure out whether the product in front of you is natural or a fake that will bring absolutely no benefit to the body by the following signs:

• Take advantage of your sense of smell - the smell of genuine honey is fragrant, but not harsh, you should feel the aroma of the plants from which it was collected.
• Real ripe honey winds up on a spoon like "folds" when you turn it, and flows from it in a continuous thread, and after a while completely merges with the general mass. The counterfeit will behave differently and will quickly drain from the spoon, as it is diluted with water.
• It is also heavy in weight: a liter jar of honey may well weigh one and a half kilograms.
• A quality product should not foam too much, otherwise it is not ripe or fermented honey.
• Very often, unscrupulous sellers add honeycomb pieces or pollen to bad honey to give it an authentic look, so you should not be guided by these facts.
• A good product never stratifies, therefore, when you see two layers in a jar (thick at the bottom and liquid at the top), this is a fake.
• With the onset of autumn, natural honey is candied, the only exception will be acacia and chestnut honey, they remain in their original form for a whole year.
• If in appearance it is too transparent and has a bright shine, then you should know that the honey has been boiled, and all the useful substances have evaporated from it.

How to check the naturalness of honey at home

There are several ways that you can easily check the quality of honey yourself:

• Taste it, natural should dissolve on the tongue completely, and it also "tingles" the throat a little.
• Stir a small amount in a glass of clean hot water, if a sediment is found at the bottom, then there are additional additives in it, which should not be.
• Sprinkle a drop of honey with a pinch of starch - on a genuine product, it will remain on the surface.
• Pour about 50 g of honey into a jar, close the lid and heat in a water bath for 10 minutes, while the water temperature should be 45 degrees. Open the lid - the absence of a natural honey smell indicates a fake;
• Heat it for 1 hour at 40 degrees - the natural product will begin to exfoliate.
• You can rub a little honey into the skin, if after that grains like sugar are felt on it, then this is a poor quality product. Good honey is completely absorbed.

How to check honey with iodine

One of the most famous and simplest ways to determine the naturalness of honey is the "test" with iodine. In practice, it is considered the most effective.

For this procedure you will need:

• iodine;
• distilled water;
• glass beaker;
• table vinegar.

So, let's begin. Fill a glass halfway with lukewarm water, dilute a spoonful of honey in it and stir very well. It is imperative to achieve complete homogeneity of the solution, no clots and lumps should remain. Add 3-4 drops of iodine there and watch the reaction in the container:

• if the color of the liquid has remained unchanged, then there is no doubt about the quality of the purchased product;
• the water in the glass has turned blue - this means that starch or flour has been added to the honey as a thickener.

Then you can drop a few drops of vinegar into this water. If you hear hiss or foam forms, then there is chalk chips in it. It is often added to increase the weight of the honey.

Candied honey

The crystallization process, or, as it is popularly called, "sugar" is absolutely natural for this product. And the more glucose it contains, the sooner it occurs. The average time frame for this phenomenon is 2 to 11 weeks. But it is worth remembering that a change in the physical state of honey does not in any way affect its usefulness and taste.

It can be easily returned to a liquid form only by heating it in a water bath, the main thing is to do this at a low temperature. So he will retain all the valuable substances in himself.

Candied honey can be made artificially - just add some candied honey to liquid honey and stir it every day for a week.

And remember, in order to get a natural and high-quality product that will be good for your health, buy it from trusted beekeepers. And if you buy it at a fair, ask the seller to show the quality certificate.