Excerpt:
A stable carbon isotope ratio procedure was developed, validated, and adopted in 1977 (1) as an AOAC official method for detecting corn or cane sugar adulteration of honey. The wide range of values found for pure honey (mean -25.4 0/00 range -22.5 to -27.4 0/00), produces a considerable area of uncertainty within which no positive judgment can be made about purity without other testing. For regulatory purposes, the d13C limit for unequivocal adulteration was set at 4s beyond the mean, or -21.5 0/00. A TLC test (2-4) was developed for this “gray area,” the range between 2s and 4s. It has been useful even though it does not respond to cane sugars and has other shortcomings: it requires subjective judgment of frequently faint traces on the TLC plate and may be vulnerable to the more highly purified high-fructose corn syrups (HFCS) with much reduced oligosaccharide content.
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