Fake honey is everywhere. Adulterers mix real honey with cheap syrups that are hard to detect. These syrups come from rice, corn, and refined sugars. They're designed to pass standard tests while costing a fraction of real honey.
That’s why, at HealthyFly, we thought of creating this guide explaining how honey gets adulterated and how you can avoid them.
The Main Culprits: Rice and Corn Syrups
Rice syrup is the biggest problem. It contains oligosaccharides—complex sugar chains that don't exist in real honey. Yet rice syrup is nearly impossible to catch with normal tests.
Why? Rice plants use what's called a C3 photosynthetic pathway. This produces the same carbon signature as real honey. So when labs test for fake ingredients, rice syrup looks identical to the real thing.
Corn syrup is easier to detect. Corn uses a different pathway (C4) that creates different carbon ratios. Labs can spot this with isotope testing. But many facilities don't run these tests regularly.
Read: Is Your Honey Natural? How to Identify Contamination and Mislabeling
https://medium.com/@healthyfly55/is-your-honey-natural-how-to-identify-contamination-and-mislabeling-b5dfa148a015
The Chinese Connection
An investigation by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) found Chinese manufacturers openly selling fake honey syrups on Alibaba. These products were marketed specifically to beat Indian food safety tests.
CSE researchers bought one of these syrups. It was shipped labeled as "paint pigment" to avoid customs checks. They mixed it into real honey at 25% and 50% concentrations. Both samples passed every test required by India's Food Safety and Standards Authority (FSSAI).
The tests were done at the National Dairy Development Board's official laboratory.
CSE also found an Indian factory in Jaspur, Uttarakhand making similar products. The industry calls these "all-pass syrups."
Other Common Adulterants
Inverted Sugar Syrups
These are made to copy honey's natural sugar balance. But they reduce proline, an amino acid found in real bee honey. They also add moisture, which makes the honey crystallize faster and taste flat.
Ultra-Filtered Honey
Industrial filtering removes all pollen. This makes it impossible to verify where the honey came from or what flowers the bees visited. International standards say honey must have pollen. Ultra-filtered products shouldn't be sold as natural honey.
Diluted Honey
Water dilution makes honey thin and prone to fermentation. Moisture content goes above 20%, which exceeds normal limits.
What You Can Check at Home
Lab testing isn't available to most people. But you can do basic checks before buying.
Look at Clarity
Real raw honey is slightly cloudy. You should see tiny particles—pollen grains, propolis bits, and wax fragments. These add nutritional value.
If honey is crystal clear with no particles at all, it's probably been ultra-filtered. That's a red flag.
Smell the Aroma
Real honey has distinct floral notes. Each type smells different based on the flowers bees visited.
No smell suggests heavy dilution or syrup contamination. Premium varieties like multiflora honey (from many flowers) or single-source honey should have strong, recognizable scents.
Special Indian Varieties
Khalisha honey from the Sunderbans appears whitish with low thickness and woody notes. It's harvested between March and May by traditional gatherers called Moulis. These collectors face real danger from Royal Bengal tigers and aggressive Apis dorsata bees—some of the world's most defensive honeybees.
Karanja honey from the Jharkhand-Chhattisgarh border is medium-dark amber. It tastes moderately sweet with warm, tangy notes. It crystallizes quickly, which proves minimal processing. Ayurvedic medicine uses Karanja honey for arthritis, wound healing, immune support, and digestion.
Test the Texture
Real honey dissolves slowly in water. Fake honey often dissolves immediately (if diluted) or feels overly sticky (if it's syrup).
Watch How It Crystallizes
Natural honey crystallizes over time. This is normal. But the pattern matters.
Real honey forms fine, smooth crystals gradually. Fake honey often crystallizes fast with coarse, grainy texture. This happens because added sugars have different compositions.
Lab Tests That Actually Work
For large purchases or when you have doubts, get lab certification. Several tests can expose fakes.
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)
NMR is the gold standard. It creates a molecular fingerprint by analyzing atoms in a magnetic field. Each type of honey produces unique patterns.
The test checks 60 different molecular markers at once. It catches corn syrup, rice syrup, modified starches, and synthetic sugars. It also verifies which flowers the honey came from and where it was produced.
Testing takes 15 minutes per sample. The method doesn't destroy the honey. It catches sophisticated fakes that other tests miss.
The Database Problem
NMR needs reference data for comparison. Unfortunately, India lacks complete databases for wild Apis dorsata honey from the Sunderbans or tribal forest honey from Jharkhand-Chhattisgarh. This means authentic regional varieties might get flagged as suspicious simply because there's no reference data. The problem isn't adulteration—it's missing information.
Who Does NMR Testing
Bruker BioSpin in Germany makes the equipment. Testing happens at facilities like Intertek's Hamburg lab and Quality Services International (QSI) in Bremen.
From August 2020, FSSAI requires NMR testing for exported honey. Domestic honey sold in India doesn't need this test. This raises a serious question—should we Indians settle for lower quality honeys?
Estonia became the first country to make NMR mandatory for all honey in 2019. The goal was protecting local beekeepers from cheap, fake imports. Several European countries have followed or are considering the same approach.
Stable Carbon Isotope Ratio Analysis (SCIRA)
This test measures carbon isotopes to separate C4 plant sugars (corn, sugarcane) from C3 sugars (rice, wheat) and real honey.
The method works great for corn syrup. But it can't detect rice syrup since rice matches honey's carbon signature.
There's another issue. Some regions produce sorghum honeydew honey, mainly in Argentina and Mexico. Sorghum uses C4 photosynthesis. This triggers false positives—real honey gets flagged as fake.
FSSAI started expanded testing for sorghum honey from Central and South America in December 2024. Additional tests (NMR or LC-HRMS) now separate real sorghum honey from corn syrup fraud.
Specific Marker for Rice Syrup (SMR)
SMR testing uses liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry to find rice syrup markers. These include maltotriose, maltotetraose, and other oligosaccharides created when manufacturers break down starch. Real honey doesn't have these.
FSSAI introduced SMR testing in July 2018 along with another test called TMR. Then in October 2019, both were dropped. The timing matched heavy industry lobbying.
After CSE exposed widespread adulteration in December 2020, FSSAI brought back SMR in June 2020. But TMR remains excluded, even though scientists agree both tests together work better. No one has properly explained why TMR was dropped.
Pollen Analysis (Melissopalynology)
Microscope pollen examination proves what flowers bees visited and where the honey came from. No pollen means ultra-filtration, which violates international standards for natural honey.
FSSAI first proposed requiring 50,000 pollen grains per gram in 2017 draft rules. This dropped to 25,000 in 2018, then plummeted to 5,000 in 2020.
The current standard is 90% lower than the original. This allows extensive filtering that hides fraud and makes authentication harder. The changes came after major honey processors lobbied for weaker pollen requirements.
Liquid Chromatography-High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (LC-HRMS)
LC-HRMS finds specific markers that show industrial syrup production. This includes sulfonic acid breakdown products, synthetic dyes, and processing residues that prove non-natural origins.
Intertek's 2024-2025 report found problems in 6.2% of 9,250 samples. Adulteration rates were especially high for honey from India (31% of samples), China, and Bulgaria.
The limitation? LC-HRMS only finds syrups with known markers in databases. New fake ingredients without established profiles slip through. Still, combined with NMR and isotope testing, it significantly reduces missed fakes.
How to Buy Real Honey
When authenticity matters, lab verification is essential. Here's a practical three-step approach.
Step 1: Primary Screening
Check labels, pricing, and basic qualities. Verify the FSSAI license through the authority's online portal. Look at ingredient lists for terms suggesting blended products.
Check certification claims through the organizations that issued them. Products labeled simply "honey" without qualifiers should contain nothing else. International standards prohibit any additives.
Step 2: Sensory Assessment
Examine visual clarity, smell, crystallization, and how it dissolves in water. If two or more things seem off, don't buy it pending further investigation.
Simple home tests aren't definitive but provide clues. Natural honey dissolves slower in water than syrup-adulterated products.
Step 3: Lab Verification
For bulk or institutional purchases, demand recent lab certificates using validated methods. NMR or SCIRA documentation should be dated within six months.
Batch numbers on certificates must match product container markings exactly. Request Certificates of Analysis directly from accredited labs, not just supplier documents.
In Conclusion
Try authentic brands such as HealthyFly while buying honey. It costs more than the mass-produced varieties. But real, natural honey costs higher because real beekeeping has real costs.
If the price seems too good, it probably is. Authentic varieties like Khalisha and Karanja represent traditional beekeeping and regional biodiversity. Supporting these products means supporting ecosystems and communities, not just buying food.
