Is your honey actually honey? Here's an easy way to find out

Honey is one of the most popular all purpose foods on the market for many reasons. One being that it has a ton of health benefits. However, according to Decernis, a compliance management company, it's the third most faked food in the world behind milk and olive oil.

There is analysis suggesting that staggeringly, anywhere between 25% and 70% of the honey that consumers are buying is adulterated or fake.

For years regulators have been trying to clamp down on the manufacturers who have been replacing the real honey with substitutes such as beet syrup and high fructose corn syrup. This is an issue for multiple reasons. Besides the fact that the consumers are being lied to this undercuts the beekeepers and promotes apiary practices which can put the bees at risk. This includes focusing on pollination instead of honey production.

However, there are ways that you can test at home to see if the honey you've bought is legit. Honey producer Mercia Honey took to TikTok to share exactly how.

It's quite simple really, all you need is a flat bowl or plate and some water. Then you take a blob of honey, put it on the plate and put a few drops of water on top of that.

The beekeeper explained that if you shake the plate, you should see honeycomb like shapes forming on the surface of the honey. If it's not real honey it will either dissolve in the water or show no definite shape.

Mercia Honey explained that this happens because honey has a genetic memory of sorts it will keep the shape that it once had in the hive.

Photo from @merciahoney

Photo from @merciahoney

Not everyone believes that this is true though. Dr. Peter Brooks with the University of the Sunshine Coast who is a chemist with an expansive knowledge of the chemical composition of honey, says it really depends on the quality of the honey, or 'honey', you've purchased.

Speaking to ABC, he had this to say, "I imagine honeys we test in our labs, half of them would pass these tests and half would fail, almost randomly.

"Good fake honeys are made to mimic a real honey, and they're very hard to tell the difference between them sometimes. I don't think you can tell the difference on these simple tests."

It has been suggested that the cause of the hexagonal ripples is due to the viscosity and specific texture of thicker varieties of honey. And because of this Dr. Brooks has concluded that there is no way to definitively verify at home.

Though this might not be a conclusive test it has been demonstrated over and over again on #savethebees TikTok. If you are someone who has questions about where your honey is coming from, and we don't blame you for doing so, we suggest shopping from a small business and locally if that's possible for you. Then you can ask them any questions you have about the quality of their honey and their practices.