The " Phoney Honey " Business !

You carefully read the label on the jar and are assured that it contains unadulterated pure Australian honey.  You spread some on your toast - and take a bite.   It certainly tastes like honey, but then your taste buds would not detect the difference if that honey had been mixed with a proportion of sugar syrup to make the mix more profitable for the honey producer.

New testing has disclosed that much of the honey sold in Australian supermarkets is adulterated with " extenders " to either give the product a competitive price edge or to cover for product shortages when drought prevents the bees from their normal rate of honey production.

The apiary industry in Australia is constantly moving hives for two reasons.  Crop pollination by bees is essential to Australian agriculture and the taste of the honey produced is reliant on the type of flowers that the bees visit.  This is what gives the honey the " taste "that matches the crop description that appears on the label.

All foreign honey imported into Australia is tested by the Australian government using what is known as the " C4 Test " to determine if sugars derived from plants such as sugarcane or corn are present.   As we know from the testing of drugs used in sport, a huge industry is engaged in looking for ways to beat the methods used for drug testing and it is suspected that this test is now failing the reliability option.

This alarm on adulterated honey came from laboratories in Germany which use a test known as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance ( NMR ) test and Australian honey producers are urging the government to adopt this test in Australia.   It is more complex and requires specific laboratory capability and expertise in the interpretation of results.  It is ahead of the curve when it comes to test reliability.

This honey scandal is just the tip of the iceberg.  During the years of the second world war there were genuine product shortages and industry had to be imaginative in reformulating food products with whatever was available.  We noticed that biscuits were not as " sweet " as in the pre war era and " taste " became a victim of the war effort.

In todays competitive world, taste is now enhanced with products that are not good for our health but which add to product appeal.   Both salt and sugar are additives that enhance that taste that has us adding the product to our shopping list and consequently we require the content list to be clearly identified on the food label.

It is highly likely that many foods have " extenders " added to reduce the amount of an expensive product that is present and replace that volume with something of a much cheaper nature.  Not only is this hard to detect but it could go unrecorded on the listing of ingredients.

All food products on offer in Australia need to be subjected to high quality testing and this information clearly identified.   From both a health and a cost point of view, we have a right to know precisely what constitutes the food that goes into our grocery orders.