Honey is produced by honeybees and is used as a food and medical product. Adulteration of honey has been a problem for several years now because of the relatively high price of honey on the market according to its valuable composition. The aim of our study is to determine the physicochemical properties of authentic Hungarian linden and acacia honeys (pure samples or manipulated ones blended with sugar syrup) as well as commercially available blends of European Union (EU) non-European Union (non-EU) honeys. Authentic linden and acacia were blended with sugar syrup at 10%, 20% and 50% concentration levels, and physicochemical properties were determined according to the methods of the International Honey Commission. Our objectives also included testing of the performance of electronic sensory techniques (electronic tongue (ET) and electronic nose (EN)) in the detection of adulteration, and the results are compared to the sensory profile analysis. The results provide good average recognition and prediction abilities for the classification of adulterated and authentic honeys (>90% for ET and higher than >80 for EN). Misclassifications were found only in the case of honey with 10% added sugar syrup. The methods were also able to reveal adulteration of independently predicted samples.

People have recently started to pay more attention to the healthier lifestyle, which also includes the consumption of more natural and less processed food products. Honey as one of the most often used natural sweeteners has also been reconsidered and more commonly used. However, honey has also been the target of food adulteration due to its emerging use and relatively high price. Therefore, there is an increasing need to develop rapid evaluation methods for the identification of honey from different sources. Experiments have been performed with 79 authentic honey samples of different floral and geographical origins, mainly from Hungary. The standard analytical parameters used to characterize the nutritional values of honey such as antioxidant capacity, polyphenol content, ash content, pH, conductivity have been determined. The samples were also analyzed with a benchtop near infrared (NIR) spectrometer to record their NIR spectra. The data acquired with NIR spectroscopy measurements were evaluated with various univariate and multivariate statistical methods. Results gained with a limited sample set show that NIR spectroscopy might be useful for the identification of floral and geographical origin of honey samples. Further experiments are proposed to build a robust database, which could support the use of NIR spectroscopy as a quick alternative for honey authentication.

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The study focused on the efficacy of ultrasonic method for identifying vegetable oils and their mixtures in the formulation of frying oil and its ability in authentication of virgin olive oil. The ultrasonic propagation properties (velocity and Time of Flight (TOF)) were used to classify oil samples and their mixtures at 1 MHz. The results revealed the ability to classify oil types in terms of their level of un-saturation, besides it is to identify oil mixtures. Each oil sample could be grouped into different clusters using ultrasonic parameters. Hence, ultrasonic could be used to discriminate the vegetable oil types and their mixtures effectively as a rapid and continuous method in the industrial in-line quality control system of vegetable oils and their mixtures.