Affiliations 

  • 1 Food Safety and Control Laboratory Joint FAO/IAEA Centre of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, Department of Nuclear Sciences and Applications, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna International Centre, Wagramer Strasse 5, PO Box 100, 1400 Vienna, Austria; Institute of Quality Standards and Testing Technology, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, 100097 Beijing, China
  • 2 Food Safety and Control Laboratory Joint FAO/IAEA Centre of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, Department of Nuclear Sciences and Applications, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna International Centre, Wagramer Strasse 5, PO Box 100, 1400 Vienna, Austria
  • 3 Nuclear Technologies Center in Vulnerable Ecosystems, Nuclear Research and Applications Division, Chilean Nuclear Energy Commission, Santiago, Chile
  • 4 Malaysian Nuclear Agency, 43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 5 Oritain Global Limited, Dunedin, Otago 9016, New Zealand
  • 6 Food Safety and Control Laboratory Joint FAO/IAEA Centre of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, Department of Nuclear Sciences and Applications, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna International Centre, Wagramer Strasse 5, PO Box 100, 1400 Vienna, Austria. Electronic address: s.kelly@iaea.org
Food Chem, 2024 Feb 15;434:137451.
PMID: 37748289 DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2023.137451

Abstract

One of the most common types of adulteration of honey involves the addition of invert sugar syrups. A new method was developed to measure the stable isotope ratios of carbon and carbon-bound non-exchangeable (CBNE) hydrogen from specific molecular positions in fructose and glucose in honey. This was achieved through periodate oxidation of the sugars to produce formaldehyde, followed by reaction with ammonia to form hexamethylenetetramine (HMT). The preparation was simplified, optimized, and validated by isotopic analysis of replicate syntheses of HMT from fructose, glucose, sugar syrup and a representative authentic honey sample. The optimized method had a repeatability standard deviation from 1.5‰ to 3.0‰ and from 0.1‰ to 0.4‰ for δ2H and δ13C, respectively. This methodology has advantages over alternative isotopic methods, for measuring CBNE hydrogen isotope ratios in sugars, in terms of time, sensitivity and operability and offers a complementary method to differentiate authentic honey from invert sugar syrups.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.