During National Honey Month, celebrated in September, Penn State researchers Joseph Irudayaraj and Sivakesava Sakhamuri are working hard to ensure consumers receive the sweet product in its purest form.
"People perceive that honey is in as natural a state as possible," said Irudayaraj, associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering.
Honey contains a combination of sugars including fructose, sucrose, and glucose and other trace elements. Other sugars, however, like beet sugar and cane sugar, all of which contain similar properties found in honey, are also used. These sugars are known as adulterants in the honey industry.
The adulterants are less expensive to produce, thereby increasing the volume of honey available.
"It saves money, cuts cost and contaminates honey with cheaper sugars," Irudayaraj said, referring to the current process used in honey production.
Other sugars have similar properties that exist in honey, so consumers are unaware they are getting adulterated honey.
"You and I can't tell the difference. Sugar is sweet. Honey is sweet," Irudayaraj said.
Irudayaraj and Sakhamuri, a postdoctoral associate in agricultural and biological engineering, hope to change the composition of honey so consumers get untainted honey.
"Some of the initial results were promising and we were able to successfully detect the presence of these adulterants in some honey samples," Irudayaraj said.
Sakhamuri echoes Irudayaraj's enthusiasm.
"It was unbelievable. But now we have a lot of pressure from the industry and the National Honey Board."
Honey is considered adulterated if there are foreign sugars that compose above 7 percent of honey's contents in the United States. The percentages differ in other countries.
"We have stricter standards in terms of food quality," Irudayaraj said.
The No. 1 problem in the honey industry is the adulteration of honey with cheaper sugars, and the National Honey Board perceives the contamination of honey as a quality problem.
"Work has been going on to detect adulteration for over 30 years," Irudayaraj said.
Those in the honey industry currently determine the various sugar concentration of honey by varying chemical techniques.
"Most are elaborate, complex and time consuming. They require a trained technician," Irudayaraj said.
Irudayaraj and Sakhamuri have developed a new technique using the spectroscopy method.
"We wanted to do something important and different from previous research," Sakhamuri said.
Spectroscopy is an optical technique that deals with the interaction of light and matter. The technique would be used in commercial production settings. "This (method) will make sure what they get is real," Sakhamuri said.
It's a simple process that would take five to 10 minutes. The current practice takes two days. In terms of cost, the object is to bring the price tag down from $100 a sample to $2, Sakhamuri said.
It involves first placing honey in a sample holder, and then placing the hold in the spectrometer.
"After a few clicks, you get results whether it is adulterated or not and to what extent adulterants are present," Irudayaraj said.
When Irudayaraj and Sakhamuri started the project in November, they weren't receiving monies from anywhere.
"It started out as our own initiative out of curiosity," Irudayaraj said. "Now after recognizing the potential of the technology the National Honey Board is giving us partial funds."
The researchers are also working with Jack White, a well-known honey expert to test the spectroscopy process on honey from diverse regions. They are also in the midst of constructing a set of standards for the test method.
Honey has vital importance in people's lives.
"Honey is an important commodity which has nutraceudical properties," Irudayaraj said.
The term nutraceudial is used when a particular substance has medical benefits. In this case, honey contains anti-bacterial properties that can act as healing agents, Sakhamuri said. Applying honey to a cut or infection can alleviate the associated pain and help the healing process.
