Contents:
- Medical Video: 3 Tests to Check if Your Honey is Pure or Fake
- Can honey be stale, right or not?
- However, the quality of honey can decrease
- The wrong way to store honey can make it stale
Medical Video: 3 Tests to Check if Your Honey is Pure or Fake
Honey is made by bees by processing nectar from flowering plants using enzymes found in their saliva. Because of its sweet nature, honey is often used as a healthier sugar substitute. The healthful benefits of honey also often make this thick yellow liquid a cure for various health problems and beauty treatments. Then, can honey be spoiled?
Can honey be stale, right or not?
When shopping for honey in the nearest supermarket or shop, you might notice the honey packaging has an expiration date. This then makes many people think honey can be stale. In fact, honey is in its purest and natural form - without added sugar or other ingredients - can't be stale.
Pure honey is very high in sugar. In fact, 80% of the content of honey consists of natural sugar. This high sugar inhibits the growth of various types of microbes, such as bacteria and fungi. In addition, the water content in honey is very little which makes the texture very thick. This thickness makes sugar unable to ferment and oxygen does not dissolve easily into it. That way, microbes that cause rotten food cannot grow or even multiply.
Honey also has an average pH level of 3.9 which indicates that this sweet liquid is acidic. Bacteria which cause contamination of certain foods such as C. diphtheriae, E. coli, Streptococcus, and Salmonella, cannot grow in acidic environments. It is this acidic nature that makes honey last a very long time.
Then, pure honey has a special enzyme called glucose oxidase which works to suppress bacterial growth. The enzyme is naturally contained in bee saliva which is then dissolved in nectar (plant extract) during the production of honey.
When honey is cooked, the chemical process that converts sugar to gluconic acid will produce a compound called hydrogen peroxide. This compound provides honey with other antibacterial and antimicrobial properties such as polyphenols and flavonoids that help prevent the growth of microorganisms that cause rotten food.
However, the quality of honey can decrease
Honey can be stale is the wrong assumption. Pure honey has no expiration date. Even so, the quality of honey can decrease and therefore can no longer be healthy, even at the risk of causing disease, if contaminated by foreign microbes during the unhygienic production process.
Quoted from Healthline, spores from C. botulinum neurotoxin are even found in some honey samples. These spores are not dangerous for adults, but can increase the risk of infant botulism. That is why babies who are still very small should not be fed honey.
In addition, some types of plant poisons can be carried in the bee water while collecting nectar. The most common are grayanotoxins from Rhododendron ponticum and Azalea pontica. Honey produced from this plant can cause dizziness, nausea and problems with heart rate and blood pressure if the production process is not tightly guarded. Substances known as hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) can appear as long as honey is produced. Some studies have found evidence that HMF has negative effects on health, such as cell damage and DNA. For this reason, honey should not contain more than 40 mg of HMF per kilogram.
Moreover, honey produced in mass in factories can be deliberately polluted in various ways to reduce production costs. For example, bees are deliberately fed sugar syrup from corn (fructose). In addition, producers can also contaminate it by adding cheap sweeteners to honey. This artificial sugar can make stale honey packaging.
Not only that. To speed up the production process, honey is often harvested before being cooked. As a result, honey has a higher water content than usual so the risk of experiencing fermentation and changes in taste. This causes honey to be stale.
The wrong way to store honey can make it stale
If your pure honey is of very good quality but the storage method is wrong, the honey can lose its antimicrobial properties and then stale. If honey looks foaming or runny, it's better to throw it away. This indicates that honey has been contaminated and is no longer suitable for consumption.
For honey to be durable, store it in a tightly sealed airtight container. Store in a cool, dry place, at room temperature around -10 to around 20º Celsius. Do not allow honey to be exposed so that it is exposed to the outside environment and increases the risk of bacterial contamination from surrounding air. Letting the old open honey pack can also increase the water content, so that the honey is fermented and quickly stale.
You may keep honey in the refrigerator. Honey will compact a little after being stored in the refrigerator for a long time, but you can heat it briefly over low heat and mix well until it returns to its original texture. Do not heat it with high temperature or boil it with water because it will reduce its quality.
When going to take honey from its container to be processed or consumed, make sure you use clean and sterile equipment to spoon it. Do not use the same tool to take honey a second time. Remember to close the honey container tightly every time you use it.
For more details, see the storage instructions on the packaging because the composition of each honey is different.
