摘要：Honey is the sweet viscous substance elaborated by the honey bee from the nectar of floral plants. It is produced in almost every country of the world and is a very important energy food, used as an ingredient in hundreds of manufactured foods, mainly in cereal based products, for sweetness, flavor, color, caramelization and viscosity. Sugars represent the largest portion of honey composition (95-99% of the honey solids). Fructose and glucose are the most abundant sugars in honey, but others are usually mentioned, namely, saccharose, maltose, melibiose and trealose. Its composition depends highly on the types of flowers used by the bees as well as regional and climatic conditions. Adulteration of honey is possible, so its quality must be controlled analytically with the aim of guaranteeing the genuinity and preserve consumer from commercial speculations. Detection of honey adulteration is difficult and depends on the composition of the honey or on the presence of a specific component in the adulterant, like HMF (5-hydroxymethylfurfuraldehyde). The presence of HMF in honey could be due to the partial decomposition of the endogenous or exogenous fructose or to the honey overheating. Therefore, the HMF content is essential to evaluate the quality of honey to the current legislation. Both the Codex Alimentarius Commission (Alinorm 01/25, 2000) and the European Union (Directive 110/2001) established that its concentration in honey usually should not exceed 80 or 40 mg/kg, respectively. The present paper focuses on the determination of sugars (fructose and glucose) and HMF from different types of honey from Transylvania using UV-VIS spectrophotometry. The experimental results showed that some of investigated samples have high soluble solids, reducing sugars, but low moisture content and HMF indicating a good quality of the honey. In other samples, the too high HMF indicates their adulteration with invert sugar
关键词：honey;HMF; natural invert sugar and sucrose; water activity; acidity; HACCP
