The Toxic Impact of Honey Adulteration: A Review

Abstract

Honey is characterized as a natural and raw foodstuff that can be consumed not only as a sweetener but also as medicine due to its therapeutic impact on human health. It is prone to adulterants caused by humans that manipulate the quality of honey. Although honey consumption has remarkably increased in the last few years all around the world, the safety of honey is not assessed and monitored regularly. Since the number of consumers of honey adulteration have increased in recent years, their trust and interest in this valuable product has decreased. Honey adulterants are any substances that are added to the pure honey. In this regard, this paper provides a comprehensive and critical review of the different types of adulteration, common sugar adulterants and detection methods, and draws a clear perspective toward the impact of honey adulteration on human health. Adulteration increases the consumer’s blood sugar, which can cause diabetes, abdominal weight gain, and obesity, raise the level of blood lipids and can cause high blood pressure. The most common organ affected by honey adulterants is the liver followed by the kidney, heart, and brain, as shown in several in vivo research designs.

Analytical Rheology of Honey: A State-of-the-Art Review

“…Due to its high market value, honey is often adulterated with less expensive industrial sweeteners which mimic its sugar profile [3,49,51,56,60,[77][78][79]. Common adulterants in honey include starch syrups (high fructose corn, corn, rice), inverted syrups (for example, inverted syrup from sugar cane/sugar beet, and jaggery), starch or inverted syrups fed to bees (providing honey with a high level of indirect sugar), or even low quality honey added to high priced honey (for example, acacia honey adulterated with rape honey, or heather honey adulterated with common honeys) [45,49,51,56,66,77,79].…”

“…Detection of direct or indirect adulteration is thus mandatory for authentication purposes and encompasses several analytical approaches, such as thin-layer chromatography (TLC), stable carbon isotopic ratio analysis (SCIRA), gas chromatography (GC), highperformance liquid chromatography (HPLC), high-performance anion-exchange (HPAEC), infrared-based spectroscopy (IR), Raman spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), electronic tongue, the metabolomics-base detection approaches (such as ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry, UPLC-Q-ToF-MS) and DNA metabarcoding [49,51,56,60,66,[77][78][79].…”

Volatile Profile of Portuguese Monofloral Honeys: Significance in Botanical Origin Determination

“…Honey’s botanical source strongly affects its organoleptic properties [ 9 , 10 ], monofloral honey being more in demand compared to multifloral, due to its biological activities as well as the characteristic aroma and taste [ 11 ]. Honey is recognised as a high-quality food product, its falsification being a major problem around the world since it is one of the most adulterated products, after olive oil and milk [ 5 , 10 , 12 , 13 , 14 ]. The increase in the number of consumers concerned about honey’s authenticity and environmental sustainability [ 15 ] has increased the demand for reliable analytical methods to establish criteria to guarantee honey authenticity [ 10 ].…”

Voltammetric E-Tongue for Honey Adulteration Detection

“…Honey must be evaluated because the price is being established based on botanical origin and the presence of adulterants [ 2 ]. Among the negative effects of adulterated honey on consumer health are: high blood sugar, weight gain, high blood pressure due to high blood lipids [ 3 ]. The honey sector does not require data on the exact degree of adulteration, because the addition of any other substances is prohibited.…”