Daily Lifestyle : Honey: best honey brands in Indian market

Image Source - Google | Image by - mishry

Which Honey do you use? Dabur Honey, patanjali honey, 24 mantra or some raw honey. For this blog I have got the most popular Honey brands lab tested in an NABL accredited lab in Germany to get a clear picture, if they are really pure or adult rated. Honey is a tricky product as almost every brand mentions just one ingredient which is honey and to find out if the honey is really pure, there are many tests that people recommend.

Putting a spoonful honey in plain water or checking the speed at which Honey falls from the spoon or lighting a matchstick in front of a honey. Literally there are numerous but all these tests are nothing as compared to the nuclear magnetic resonance test, commonly called the NMR test which is recognised as the gold standard test for checking the purity of honey not only in India but across the globe. It is also the most expensive lab test with FSSAI aguidelines, not being very strict and honey being easy to adult rate brands take undue advantage of it.

This happened in the October of 2018 when a volunteer action group tested 10 most popular brands of honey then and almost every brand had failed the C4 sugar test. Basically, C4 sugar test is a preliminary test to detect foreign adult rated sugars in honey. Unfortunately the brands easily got away by blaming the test itself without any serious repercussion. So to put out a clear picture in the present scenario, I thought it would be best to get the honeys retested not just for C4 sugars but also the gold standard NMR test.

Category 1-

This category includes the two most popular brands, dabur Honey and patanjali honey, majority population in India consumes one of these two honeys. To check if the purity is really guaranteed, first I got lab tested them for C3/C4 sugars which both the brands had failed in 2018 but this time around both the brands passed with the flying colours. So, according to this test it seems that both these brands have not adult rated there honey with other foreign sugar syrups but since it is an entry level test and also as it comes under the guidelines of FSSAI, it was not surprising that they had passed it. Now to be 100% sure, I decided to get them lab tested for the ultimate test which is the NMR test. So, this time the samples were send to Germany because as of now, In India there is not any lab that does this test.

The reports came in after 15 days and guess what, both dabur Honey and patanjali Honey failed the NMR test, As you can see it clearly shows that both dabur Honey and patanjali Honey are adult rated. Now even though NMR is one of the most advanced test, I did not want to rush to conclusions and also I wanted to know that what exactly are they adulterated with. So to dive deeper into this, I consulted multiple experts as per what can be the next step to find out the root cause. Finally I got them lab tested for TMR test, expanded as trace Marker for rice syrup test as adding rice syrup is one of the most sophisticated form of adulteration done in honeys. The reports came in after about a week and both dabur Honey and patanjali honey were found to be adult rated with rice syrups. yes the report clearly mentioned that an unauthorised addition of rice syrup was detected in them.

Then, I also got them tested for another important test that even FSSAI misses out of; the pollen analysis test, this test shows where exactly the honey is sourced from. The result says that the patanjali Honey is a blossom honey extracted from multiple flowers of Indian origin. However, no conclusive result could be drawn for dabur Honey as it does not have enough Pollen to meet the criteria. Low Pollen count indicates that dabur might have done ultrafiltration of honey, filtering out the pollens. This reduces the nutritional value of the honey and does not let the honey get crystallized. So all these test proved without an iota of doubt that both these honeys are not pure as they market and claim.

Category 2-

This category includes 24 mantra organic wild honey and farm natural jungle Honey. They both were Amazon best sellers but priced high, look promising and make tall claims of pure, raw and wild honey. I got both of them lab tested for the NMR test and I was truly shocked to find that even they two are adult rated. The reports clearly state that these Honey indicates the addition of sugar syrup, this is very disappointing. Tall statements like no antibiotics used, certified organic, wildflower honey from Jim Corbett jungles of uttarakhand; stand meaningless if they end up adding sugar syrup in their honey. On top of it they charge a fortune, so don't waste your money on them.

Category 3-

This category includes zandu honey which is truly pure and unadulterated. Zandu Honey is the only product which when I got lab tested, it successfully passed the ultimate NMR test, It clearly shows that zandu honey is unadultrated. 1 kg of zandu honey will cost you ₹540 which is almost double the price of dabur and patanjali honey but considering the pure honey in such a messed up market, it's totally worth it. I even scroll down to the review section on Amazon of this honey and found many people claiming it's crystallizing nature. This is one point I wish to address is, most people consider that if a honey is getting crystallized that means it has added sugar in it.

Actually it's quite the opposite; pure, unadulterated honey will always gets crystallized when kept for a long time due to presence of Pollens in it. Then, during the research of this topic I contacted many brands who make honey and asked them if they could produce the NMR test for their honey, most brands could not get back to me. Although one brand, Dadev honey was able to produce their NMR report which shows that it is unadultrated.

1 kg of Dadev forest honey will cost you ₹630, although it comes in a plastic container but still it is much better choice then that so called pure commercial honeys in the Indian market. Well, you can always transfer it to an air tight glass bottle; So both Zandu and Dadev honey are unadulterated and are the best in Indian market. However, this does not mean that all other honeys in the Indian market are adult rated or sub standard. Obviously, due to budget constraints I could not get all the honeys lab tested, I tried to pick up the most relevant ones for the audience.