False honey is sold in Swedish stores without being discovered. It warns the beekeeping companies who, through their own tests, mapped the problem – and found a clear pattern.
Honey that is sold should contain nothing but just honey. So no other ingredients, dyes or additives. But unfortunately, the gloomy reality is another – honey belongs to one of the foods that it is most cheated.
Something that became clear in 2022 when the EU implemented one study Where hundreds of imported honey varieties were tested. The result was striking: 46 percent of the goods had been mixed out in different ways. Often with different types of sugar solutions.
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36 out of 40 were mixed
Now the Swedish industry organization has The beekeeping companies Made your own test of the honey in the national market. It showed that as many as 36 out of 40 products were mixed with other than honey.
The cheat also followed one and the same pattern – all diluted honey samples were imported from other countries. So only four of them contained genuine honey – and they were all from Sweden. An important detail in this context is that the test was done with DNA technology-a method not approved by the EU.
– It is mainly China and Vietnam who have learned to make some kind of synthetic honey. They have learned to modify this sugar solution in a way so that the traditional method of analysis does not reveal it, says Yngve Kihlbergchairman of the beekeeping companies, as per DN.
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Is about money
For DN, Kihlberg explains that it is money that drives the cheat, because diluted honey is cheaper to produce which in turn pushes down prices in the grocery store. The losers become beekeepers who compete in the market, and the consumer who in turn is deceived.
The method used by the National Food Agency at present to detect bluff honey is to measure the substances the product contains. But the studies’ results indicate that it does not work. Work is now underway at EU level to develop new ways honey can be ensured-which can also mean that DNA tests are approved as a method. Which was crucial in the maenting companies’ survey.
– So soon that you have an approved analysis, then just remove the products. But so far we have no method of analysis that can actually detect the cheating, says Ellen EdgrenHead of Unit at the National Food Agency to DN.
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