Chapter eight - Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy in honey analysis

Abstract

Honey is an increasingly demanded healthy food owing to its nutrition and myriad health benefits. Honey varieties are diverse depending on the botanical and geographical origin and the beekeeping practices. These factors also contribute to the uniqueness of honey flavor, sensory, nutritional, and health properties as well as market value. However, honey has been a target of fraudulent practices, including mislabeling and direct and indirect substitution with low-quality products or cheaper sweeteners, undermining consumer trust in products’ authenticity and increasing health and safety concerns. Several analytical approaches were employed to tackle authenticity issues and to characterize honey according to its geographical and botanical origins. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has gained widespread acceptance as a promising analytical method for honey analysis owing to its simplicity and the capacity to classify honey based on botanical and geographical origins with the quantification of a set of quality parameters in a single experiment. Moreover, when combined with chemometrics, NMR has shown great potential as a technique for food authentication. Recent upgrades allow NMR to be fine-tuned with machine learning algorithms and well-established pretrained models to achieve greater efficiency and to serve as a more promising approach to ensuring the authenticity of honey.