Recently, the Shenzhen Municipal Consumer Commission released the "2021 Honey Comparison Test Report", and the safety indicators, sugar doping indicators and quality indicators of 16 honey samples performed well, of which 9 honeys were rated five-star.
The samples of this comparative test selected 16 kinds of honey, which were purchased through online e-commerce platforms (JD.com, Taobao, Pinduoduo, NetEase Yanxuan, etc.) and large-scale offline supermarkets (Tianhong, CR Vanguard, Sam) in the form of simulating the actual consumption of ordinary consumers by staff. A total of 12 detection indicators were set up in 3 categories, including sugar-doped indicators (sucrose, carbon-4 vegetable sugars), safety indicators (chloramphenicol, norfloxacin, zinc, total number of colonies, coliforms, osmophilus yeast count), and quality indicators (water, fructose and glucose, hydroxymethyl furfural, amylase activity).
The results of this comparative test show that in terms of safety indicators, the microbial indicators (total number of colonies, coliform flora, and exophilic yeast count), antibiotics (chloramphenicol), and heavy metals (zinc) of 16 honey samples met the requirements of national standards, and veterinary drug residues (norfloxacin) were not detected; 16 honey samples did not have adulteration of sucrose, carbon-4 vegetable sugar (corn or sugarcane); hydroxymethyl furfural reflected the freshness of honey to a certain extent, and whether the processing and storage process of honey was reasonable. Still lime tree white honey, alcohol plus futu honey, mountain acacia mature honey 3 honey hydroxymethyl furfural performance in this indicator is the best performance; 13 honey amylase activity is higher than the industry standard GH/T 18796-2012 "honey" requirements, of which sweet honey from Kang County, Gansu Province, the best performance, amylase activity as high as 19.3mL/ (g·h).
2021 Honey Comparison Test Results Image source: Shenzhen Municipal Consumer Commission
In addition, this comparative test will rate 16 honeys according to the following weights, safety indicators account for 20%, quality indicators account for 80% (carbon-4 vegetable sugars account for 10%, moisture accounts for 10%, fructose and glucose account for 10%, hydroxymethyl furfural accounts for 20%, amylase activity accounts for 20%, sucrose accounts for 10%). In the end, 9 honeys were rated five stars, leading in quality, namely sweet honey deep mountain original honey, Tibetan honey plateau hundred flowers nectar, chuzu farming soil honey, sweet net matter acacia honey, NetEase strict selection of purple linden snow honey private package, alcohol Jiafu soil honey, Yelang bee industry hundred flowers honey, mountain acacia mature honey, hundred flowers acacia honey.
The Shenzhen Municipal Consumer Commission reminds consumers to pay attention to the following points when purchasing and eating honey products:
Honey is high in sugar, pay attention to control the intake, especially for diabetics. The most important components of honey are sugar and water, the glucose and fructose content in the honey detected this time is between 70.1% and 79.9%, and a large amount of honey will cause excessive sugar intake, so it is necessary to control the amount of consumption, especially diabetics should be cautious about eating honey.
Honey should be stored under sealed conditions at room temperature. During storage, too high a temperature will accelerate the destruction of honey nutrients. In addition, the container for storing honey should be tightly covered, and contact with the air will make the honey absorb the moisture in the air, accelerate the fermentation of microorganisms in the honey, and make the quality deteriorate.
Honey crystallization is normal. Honey crystallization is mainly related to the glucose content, the higher the glucose content, the easier it is to crystallize. Some honey with a high glucose content is easy to crystallize when stored, which is a normal natural phenomenon.