Are you Buying Real Honey?

Lynne Ingram, who's recently given a couple of excellent talks in our autumn/winter programme of speaker evenings, recently reported on widespread fraud in global honey production following her recent visit to the global beekeeping conference Apimondia.

This paper produced by the Honey Authenticity Project describes the result of thorough laboratory testing on 11 low cost jars of honey, labelled as a “blend of EU and non EU honey”, bought in UK supermarkets.

All samples showed evidence of unnatural components. All contained Psicose, a generic fraud marker, and all but one brand showed illegal diastase biological activity, indicating that the honey had been extensively heated during production.

There has also been a recent BBC News report about tests on "Tesco Set Honey 454g" showing that it contained syrups made from sugar. Tesco withdrew the product as a result.