I previously wrote about how my daughter, who loves honey and eats a lot of it here in Australia, complained that all the honey she tasted while travelling in Europe had no flavour, telling me it tasted like sugar water.
A German news outlet has published a documentary about their investigations into honey fraud in Europe and it certainly aligns with my daughter’s “sugar water” opinion.
While the video begins with all the information we have come to expect from honey fraud stories, such as the differences between various test methods and regulatory standards, things soon get more interesting.
Journalists set up their own fake honey business, visit honey traders and processors with hidden cameras, and even send people to China to collect evidence of fraudulent practices.
“The syrup really passes the NMR test?” asks an undercover investigator of a Chinese syrup supplier. The answer is simple: “Yes”.
The journalists even make their own fake honey using special syrups designed to trick the nuclear magnetic resonance test (NMR) widely used in Europe for honey authentication. And they succeed: a blend of authentic honey and 20% special syrup was identified in the NMR test as authentic. Blends made with ordinary syrups were flagged as inauthentic.
“The math is simple”, an anonymous German honey trader tells them, “If I add 20% syrup to my honey, my margin would almost double. You have no chance against such competitors.”
For English subtitles, click CC on the YouTube display to activate captions, then in Settings choose ‘Subtitles’, then ‘Auto-translate’, then ‘English.
This article was originally published at The Rotten Apple – a weekly newsletter for food professionals