Are You Sure That's Honey? - Mara Grunbaum

BIOLOGY: HEALTH
ARE YOU
SURE
THAT’S
HONEY?
The foods you’re
eating may not
be what you
think they are
WATCH
A VIDEO
12 JANUARY 14, 2013

LEFT: ©D. HURST/ALAMY; RIGHT: ©JAY B. SAUCEDA (2); POLLEN: ©SCIENCE PICTURES/PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC.
From inside a little lab in
Texas, Vaughn Bryant
fights crime. He uses
forensic science to catch
impostors that secretly slip
past authorities. But these impostors
aren’t hardened criminals or
international terrorists—they’re jars
of sweet, sticky honey.
Bryant, who works at Texas A&M
University, is America’s only
melissopalynologist, a scientist who
studies the pollen in honey. He uses
pollen to identify honey that was
imported illegally, didn’t come from
where its label says it came from, or
isn’t the pure honey it claims to be.
Bryant is one of a handful of
scientists who are on the lookout
for counterfeit foods—foods that
aren’t what they say on the label.
Misrepresented honey is only one
type of this fraud. Counterfeiters
might add red dye to chili powder
to make it look fresher than it really
is, or dilute milk with water so they
can fill more cartons to sell. Olive oil
is often labeled as extra-pure when
it’s actually mixed with other oils
or contaminants. And sushi billed
as expensive tuna might be cheap
mackerel instead.
Some kinds of food fraud are
against the law. Others aren’t, but
they still cheat consumers out of
what they think they’re paying for.
That’s why people like Bryant are
trying to put a stop to the practice.
“We’re ‘fake food’ detectives,”
says John Spink, associate director
of the Anti-Counterfeiting and
Product Protection Program at
Michigan State University. Spink
says food fraud has been on the rise
in recent years. Many counterfeit
products are imported from other
countries, where regulations aren’t
as strict as they are in the U.S.
Sometimes food manufacturers
buy imported ingredients they don’t
know are fake and those ingredients
end up in the food they produce.
FINDING THE FAKE: HONEY
Bryant stores
2 pollen samples
from thousands of
different plants in
a file cabinet in his
laboratory.
HIDDEN THREATS
Fraudulent food can be
dangerous. The environmental group
Oceana recently tested fish from
sushi restaurants in Los Angeles
and found that most of it was not
Where did your
1 honey come
from? Vaughn
Bryant, shown
here visiting a bee
colony, investigates
honey’s origins
back in his lab.
Each type of pollen
3 looks different under
a microscope. Comparing
pollen in honey to those in
his file helps Bryant figure
out the honey’s origins.
what the menu claimed. Nearly all of
the “white tuna” sushi they bought,
for example, turned out not to be
tuna at all, but escolar, a species of
mackerel. The U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) recommends
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not eating escolar because the fish
contains an oil that can give people
stomach cramps and diarrhea.
Some mislabeled products
contain hidden contaminants. In
2010, the FDA confiscated more
than 13,248 liters (3,500 gallons) of
honey imported from China because
tests showed it contained an antibiotic
called chloramphenicol. This
antibiotic is banned in U.S. food
because it can cause life-threatening
allergic reactions in some people.
But not all counterfeit foods
are unsafe—some just rip off
consumers. Some people prefer
locally produced honey, for
example, or honey made from the
nectar of particular plants. These
are often pricier than regular honey.
If the product is mislabeled, then
buyers are wasting their money.
“You’re willing to pay an exorbitant
price for good honey,” says
Bryant, “and then you’re getting
cheap stuff because you can’t tell
the difference.”
FOOD SLEUTHS
To try to keep counterfeiters in
check, Spink helps food companies
devise ways to test the ingredients
they use and the products they sell.
Diluting a liquid such as milk, for
example, changes its boiling point,
the temperature at which it begins
to vaporize. Boiling a sample and
checking its temperature could
FINDING THE FAKE: SUSHI
14 JANUARY 14, 2013
You ordered tuna. But is
1 that really what you got?
It’s hard to tell by taste alone.
FINDING THE FAKE: MILK
How much
1 milk is in the
jugs you buy?
Some dairies add
water so they
can have more
cartons to sell.
2 Inspectors
can test
milk’s quality
by heating a
small sample
until it boils.
reveal if there’s a problem.
Labs can also conduct more
sophisticated tests. To identify the
fish in the sushi they tested, scientists
at Oceana used a technique
called DNA barcoding. They took
samples from the fish pieces and
sequenced some of the fish’s DNA,
2 Scientists
test sushi
by reading its
DNA. Unique
sequences of
this hereditary
information
identify the fish.
If the temperature
3 at which the milk
boils is different from
what it should be, the
milk may be diluted
with water.
a chemical that carries hereditary
information. The section of DNA
they examined is slightly different
in every species. By comparing the
DNA sequence they found with DNA
entries in a catalogue of more than
8,000 fish, they were able to identify
what species the fish was.
DNA tests reveal some
3 “tuna” to be escolar,
a species of mackerel that
can make people sick to
their stomachs.
TOP: ISTOCKPHOTO.COM; MIDDLE: ©CHARLES D. WINTERS/PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC.; ISTOCKPHOTO.COM; BOTTOM: ISTOCKPHOTO.COM (3)

ISTOCKPHOTO.COM; ©BON APPETIT/ALAMY; ISTOCKPHOTO.COM (4); D. HURST/ALAMY
Bryant uses a similar strategy
with honey, but instead of comparing
DNA, he compares pollen. Pollen
sticks to bees as they collect nectar,
and some of it winds up in the honey
they make. Under a microscope,
pollen grains from different plants
look very different from one another.
To examine a honey sample,
Bryant mixes it with water and
alcohol and puts it in a centrifuge,
which spins it around at high speed
until the heavy pollen separates
from the lighter components. Then
he extracts the pollen, mounts it on
a glass slide, and peers at it under a
microscope.
Sometimes Bryant knows what
plant the pollen came from right
away. Other times he compares
it with pollen samples in a giant
reference file he keeps in drawers in
his lab. Since certain types of plants
grow only in particular regions, identifying
the pollen tells him where in
the world the honey came from. And
if there’s not enough pollen in the
sample, it’s a sign that the honey may
have been diluted with something
like high-fructose corn syrup.
FIGHTING FRAUD
To Bryant’s dismay, some sly
honey producers have started
straining the pollen grains out of
their products. That makes their
origins impossible to trace. “We
suspect that a large percentage of
the honey that is coming into the
U.S. is coming in with no pollen,”
says Bryant. That means you can’t
tell if it’s good honey or not, or
where it came from.
Bryant and groups like the
American Beekeeping Federation
are advocating for new laws that
would outlaw this so-called “honey
laundering.” Meanwhile, Spink works
with agencies like the FDA to make
rules against food fraud and improve
inspections to catch it. He also helps
food suppliers choose ingredients
that are less likely to be counterfeit.
But scientists like Spink and
Bryant need help. Reports from
regular people are how the authorities
know there’s a problem they
need to investigate in the first place.
“If you think something doesn’t
taste right or something makes
you sick, you need to call the local
board of health and let them know,”
says Spink. “Your tips are their early
warning system.” 9
—Mara Grunbaum
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Cite three examples of counterfeit
foods mentioned in the
text. How do scientists work to
identify these fakes?
OTHER FOOD FAKES
Some food manufacturers sneak cheaper ingredients into their
products as a way to boost their profits. In addition to honey and
milk, these are some of the most frequently counterfeit products that
testing has caught:
FOOD
OLIVE
OIL
COCOA POWDER
ORANGE
JUICE
CHEESE
COFFEE
SAFFRON
MAPLE
SYRUP
REPLACEMENT
INGREDIENTS
hazelnut, soybean, or
other lower-quality oils
soybean flour, sesame
meal, peanut shells
grapefruit juice, highfructose
corn syrup,
or sugar water
soy protein, or cow’s
milk instead of goat’s
milk or sheep’s milk
ground and roasted
corn, barley or other
plants
onion roots, other
plant parts, red and
yellow dye
corn syrup, beet sugar
or other sweeteners
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