Honey & Honey Adulteration Detection: A Review

Honey is an ancient valuable food and in most cases has enchanted its consumers by its medic characteristics. It consists mainly of sugars but also contains some amounts of acids, nitrogenous compounds, phenolic contents, HMF, minerals and water. Honey composition according to the studied literature is mainly dependant on its floral source and differs in various honeys. Honey adulteration is a complex problem which currently has a significant economic impact and undeniable nutritional and organoleptic consequences. There are many methods utilized for honey adulteration detection by most researchers, for instance Gas Chromatography (GC) and Liquid Chromatography (LC) analysis, Near Infrared Transflectance (NIR) spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy with Attenuated Total Reflectance (ATR), Protein characterization, High-Performance Anion-Exchange Chromatography with Pulsed Amperometric Detection (HPAEC-PAD), Liquid Chromatography Coupled to Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (HPLCIRMS), Calorimetric methods (Application of DSC), Stable Carbon Isotope Ratio Analysis (SCIRA), Fourier Transform (FT) Raman spectroscopy and Microscopic detection. These methods are all applicable and provide useful information about each aspect of honey authenticity but in order to have an overall and accurate result we should not rely on each technique solely but also do some of them concomitantly. These mentioned methods are described briefly in this review.