5 ways to test if the honey you're buying is pure or fake

Joan Kibugi

January 20, 2022 7:35 AM

You might be buying fake honey

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For the majority of people, honey is a must-have product at home.

Not only does it have loads of health benefits, but you can also use it to treat some ailments as well as make face masks for a smooth blemish free skin and even exfoliate your lips. However, unbeknownst to many people, there’s fake honey being sold in the supermarkets.

Some vendors are mixing honey with water and other things such as glucose so that they can have more honey in their batch. To be quite honest, pure honey does not come cheap and it’s a shame that you might be spending a lot of money on what you think is pure honey but is not. If you buy honey from out of town, in areas popular with bee keeping and bee farming, it’s likely that you will get pure honey.

However, honey bought from the streets or from hawkers and the likes, is likely adulterated honey, which will not give you any of the benefits that you were hoping to get in the first place. That said, we have compiled a few easy tests that you can use to find out if the honey is pure of artificial.

But before we get to the tests, the first step is to check the label and how the honey looks like in the bottle or jar:

Pure honey solidifies with time. What this means is that it looks like granulated sugar and not watery. Sure, it could be fresh honey and you could buy it, but to see if it solidifies, put it in the fridge overnight. If it has no small crystals and is still watery, then you do not have pure honey. When it comes to the label, check to see if it has things like high fructose corn syrup and glucose written on it. These products keep the honey from solidifying and vendors add them to the honey so that they can have a little more honey to sell to unsuspecting buyers.

On to the tests:

1. Using a matchstick

Dip a matchbox in the honey then light it up. If it lights up, the honey is pure. If it doesn’t light up, that means it has additives like water which prevents the matchstick from lighting up. Instead of a matchstick, you can also fold a small piece of tissue, dip it in some honey (pour a little bit first into a small bowl) then light it using a lighter. If your honey is pure, then the piece of tissue will catch fire.

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2. Using a glass of water

Pour some water into a glass, then, pour a teaspoonful of honey into the water. Pure honey will settle at the bottom of the glass and fake honey will start to mix with the water.

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ALSO READ: 7 creative ways to use honey at home besides eating it

3. The swirl test

In a small bowl, preferably a white bowl, put a tablespoonful of honey, then pour about quarter a cup of water into the bowl and swirl. Keep swirling till the honey starts to form a honeycomb shape. If you do not see the comb shape, then your honey is not pure.

4. Using vinegar

Mix a bit of honey and water then add four or five drops of vinegar. If it turns foamy, then the honey is not pure.

5. Put a little amount of honey on your thumb

Pure honey will stay put or very slowly start to drip to the sides. Honey that’s not pure will easily spill away from the thumb. You can also use a spoon instead. Dip a spoon in your honey then hold it up. Pure honey will trickle down very slowly while fake honey will spill or trickle down very fast.

Joan Kibugi