You've seen the news about how some Australian honeys have been adulterated and it got you wondering — how pure is the "pure" honey already in the pantry?
Do a Google search for "how to test honey is pure or not" and you're hit with no shortage of suggestions.
There's the "water test" — where you fill a glass with water, and add in a tablespoon of honey.
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"Adulterated or artificial honey will dissolve in water and you will see it around the glass," one website wrote.
"Pure honey on the other hand will settle right at the bottom of your glass."
At the other end of the scale there is the "flame test" — where you take a dry matchstick, dip the tip in honey, and strike it on the matchbox as if to light it.
"If the honey is pure, the matchstick will light with ease," one website wrote.
"The flame will also keep burning off the honey. However, if it is with impurities, it will not light because fake honey contains moisture as one of the impurities."
So are these tests reliable? Scientists seriously doubt it.
University of the Sunshine Coast's Dr Peter Brooks, a chemist with extensive knowledge of the chemical composition of honey, said he would not trust results to come out of DIY tests found on the internet.
"We see a lot of honeys coming through our lab … they can be anything from thin, depending on the species of tree it comes from, or it can be very thick," Dr Brooks said.
"I imagine honeys we test in our labs, half of them would pass these tests and half would fail, almost randomly.
"And if you get a good fake honey, one that simulates honey fairly well, you can't tell the difference by the tests they're proposing between a good fake honey and a normal honey.
"Good fake honeys are made to mimic a real honey, and they're very hard to tell the difference between them sometimes. I don't think you can tell the difference on these simple tests."
Dr Brooks poked holes in another test — the "thumb test" — where a small drop of honey is dropped on your thumb.
"If it spills or spreads around, it is not pure. Pure honey will stay intact on your thumb," one website wrote.
Dr Brooks said the test was not reliable.
"I've seen honeys that are really thin, as in they're not very viscous, and others they are highly viscous or crystalline, and they're still honeys, they've just come from different trees. So some would pass this test, some would fail this thumb test, but they're still honey — they just have different honeys.
"I just can't see these tests realistically being able to discriminate between a fake and a real honey."
University of Technology Sydney's Dr Nural co*kcetin, who specialises in microbiology, said the commonly touted belief is that "natural" and "pure" honey crystallises and adulterated does not, but she said that's not a reliable indicator.
"The crystallisation is influenced by a range of factors, most importantly the proportion of the two main sugars in honey glucose and fructose," Dr co*kcetin said.
"For example, honeys with a higher glucose level crystallise faster or more readily.
"Of course the way and temperature honey is stored also has an influence on how quickly it crystallises.
"Unfortunately, I don't think there is a quick and easy way to check the purity of honey at home."
This week it was revealed almost one in five Australian honey samples, including some expensive boutique honey, are fake.
A study, conducted by a team of scientists at Macquarie University, used 100 samples of honey sourced globally, including 38 Australian-branded honey samples.
It found more than half the samples sourced from Asia, mainly China, were adulterated, meaning the honey had been mixed with other non-honey substances.
