Honey: composition and quality parameters

Honey is a very peculiar food that earn all is characteristic from the nature, from the bees and all the material that they use. Honey’s definition itself is of a product commercialize without adding o removing anything. Everything is done by the bees; they transform the nectar, a sugary solution with high water concentration, into a low humidity product: honey. To explain the technique, used by the bees to produce honey, we could compare it to jam’s production. The water is removed trough evaporation, and this way is obtained a concentrated sugary substance. Bees can use a very delicate technique to remove the water, whose only requirement is room temperature. This way, the product, maintains all the organoleptic properties, the flower’s perfumes and the nutritional values. This result in a product with an incredible nutritional value and which also is subject to low degradation, and it can be commercialize without any restoration process. 

If honey doesn’t undergo any type of process, how do we know is ok to be consume?

Of course, honey being a food product, like any other food product must respect some parameters, to guarantee food and customers safety. A natural honey produced in beehive located in a not contaminated area, extracted in the right hygiene conditions, without being overheated and without being conserved for more than a year doesn’t need an analytic analysis to be sure it’s within the legal limits. The only parameter is important to check every time is the product’s humidity, because even with a humidity level of 18% is easy to encounter preservation problems, like Fermentation.

 

 

If honey has been altered, due to production problems or possible fraud it can be analyzed trough physical-chemical analysis, to make sure of product’s quality. Some of the parameters that can be check are:

  • Humidity: a too high or too low humidity level can cause processing or preservation problems. 14-20% is the correct range of humidity. Honeys with 18% humidity are already subject to Fermentation ;
  • Sugar: 95% of the solids are sugars. The most are fructose and glucose, around 90%, but are also presents other various types of sugars that can varies according to the plants used by the bees ;
  • Organic acids: together with sugar, organic acids guarantee the high preservability of honey. By law the limit of organic acids is 50meq/kg ;
  • Electric conductibility: it shows the presence of elements that can conduct electric power, in honey’s case they are the mineral salts. The concentration varies depending to the botanical species used by the bees, in darker types of honey the concentration is higher, more than 0,8 mS/cm. In lither types of honeys, the concentration can be between 0,1 e 2 mS/cm.
  • Diastase activity: diastase is an enzyme that hydrolyzes starch and glucose, with time and with heat process enzymes are demolished, because of that, a high presence of diastase indicates a fresher honey or a better preserved one ;
  • HMF: is almost absent in fresh honey, the concentration gets higher with time. A low concentration can be also considered as an index of fresh or good preserved honey. The limit indicated by the law is 40 mg/kg ;
  • Presence of antibiotics, heavy metals, or pesticides: these types of material must not be presents in the product or if they are, only non-dangerous amounts are allowed ;
  • Color: this parameter also depends by the botanical species used by the bees. Is determined by vegetal pigments (carotene, xanthophylls, flavonoids, anthocyanins), mineral salts and amino acids.

 

 

Other types of analysis can be used to verify the quality of the honey, like the Sensorial analysis. Which is an analysis done by a group of experts through their senses. The only parameters of these type of analysis are color, odor, and taste. 

Another type of analysis used is the melissopalynological analysis, which consist of a microscope analysis of the pollens contained in the honey. From this type of analysis, we can find the botanical species used by the bees and recreate a pollen spectrum and use this information for a better marketing and labelling. 

In Italy exist multiple types of honey, that varies according to the types and quantity of botanical species used by the bees. A lot of these types of honeys are protected by consortiums, which creates production rules, to help unify and organize production, to guarantee customers safety, environment safety and maintain the product quality.

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