Hydroxymethylfurfural content of old honey samples – Does the sticky treat really last forever?

Abstract

Honey is thought to be a food source with indefinite shelf life - this statement is questioned in present work by analysing the 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) content of a unique series of old honeys from 1959 to 2020. Two special series are included where honey was produced and kept yearly by the same beekeeper for 30 years. Application development was carried out for White method by scaling down the volumes for the analysis. The HMF content of acacia honeys vary in a wide range (9–1320 mg/kg honey), but tendentially increase with age. However, rape and sunflower honeys show a remarkably high offset compared to the expected trendline and there is no observable pattern in their HMF level plotted against the year of collection. Even the youngest rape and sunflower honeys exceeded the threshold limit of 40 mg/kg and only acacia samples collected after 2015 remained below the accepted health value.