FSSAI sampling studies have repeatedly found sugar syrup in honey sold as pure, which is why almost every brand now prints the word somewhere on the label. That is the problem. Pure is not a testable statement. It costs nothing to write and it commits the seller to nothing.
There is only one question worth asking, and it has a yes or no answer. Can I open the report?
What counts as publishing a report
A published report is a document you can open without asking anyone, showing the laboratory and its accreditation, the date, an identifiable sample, the parameters tested, and the result against each one.
These are not reports, although all three are commonly presented as if they were:
An FSSAI licence number
A licence is permission to sell food. It is not a purity result for the honey in your jar, and it says nothing about whether anything was screened for syrup.
A certification badge
Organic, NPOP, FSSC and BRC certify the process, the farm or the facility. None of them is a test of the honey in front of you.
The words "lab tested" on a product page
This is the most common one, and it is the same category of claim as pure. If the test happened, the document exists. Publishing it costs nothing.
What we found
We checked the public pages of brands selling Kashmiri or premium honey online in August 2026, looking only for a report a buyer could open unprompted.
| Brand | What the site claims | What you can open |
|---|---|---|
| Bharat Honey | NMR tested, stated on the product name itself | Yes. A Laboratory Reports page linked from the main navigation, with more than fifty report PDFs dating from 2019 onward, listed by date and variety, NMR reports among them. |
| Nature's Nectar | NMR tested, 12+ lab tests passed, clear on C3 and C4 sugars, NPOP and FSSC certified | Claims, no document. Specific and technical language, but we could not find a report on the site to open. |
| Zaytoon Kashmir | Lab tested, FSSAI number shown | None found. |
| Hamiast | Raw and unfiltered. No testing claim found on the product page | None found. |
| Niyamaya | Pure and raw. No testing claim found on the product page | None found. |
| Kashmir Reserve | Tested each harvest at a NABL accredited laboratory, C4 by SCIRA and pollen analysis, report available on request | Nothing published yet. We send the report to anyone who asks. That is worse than publishing it, and we are fixing it with our 2026 harvest report. |
The honest verdict: Bharat Honey is ahead of everyone in this table, including us. Reports going back seven years, openly linked, NMR among them. If published evidence is what you care about most, that is the benchmark, and we would rather tell you that than pretend otherwise.
A note on the ones marked none found. We searched the public product and information pages. Absence of a report there is not proof that testing did not happen, only that a buyer cannot check. That distinction is the entire point of this page.
NMR, C4 and SCIRA, and why the difference matters
Not all testing claims are equal, and the words are used loosely enough that most buyers cannot tell them apart.
| Test | What it proves |
|---|---|
| NMR profiling (nuclear magnetic resonance) |
Reads the whole sample as one fingerprint and compares it against a reference database. Flags several kinds of syrup at once, and gives an indication of floral and geographic origin. The broadest single test available, and the most expensive, which is why fewer brands run it. |
| C4 sugar by SCIRA (carbon isotope, AOAC 998.12) |
Catches cane sugar and corn syrup reliably. It is the standard screen and the one most Indian labs run. It does not catch C3 syrups. |
| C3 sugar detection (LC-IRMS) |
Catches rice syrup and beet sugar, which are the adulterants specifically used to pass a C4 test. A brand testing only C4 has a real gap here. |
| Pollen analysis (melissopalynology) |
Identifies the flowers the bees actually worked. This is what supports a single origin or acacia claim. It says nothing about syrup. |
So NMR tested is a stronger claim than lab tested, and lab tested on its own tells you almost nothing, because it does not say which test.
What to ask any honey brand
Or run the jar you already own through our ten question check.
Testing is one of eight things worth checking. The rest of the buyer's guide.
Send this to any seller, including us. The reply tells you what you need to know.
- Which laboratory tested it, and is that laboratory NABL accredited?
- What was the date of the test, and which harvest or batch does it cover?
- Was C3 tested, or only C4?
- Can you send the report itself rather than a summary of it?
A brand that tests will answer in minutes. A brand that does not will answer with adjectives.
Where we stand
We test each harvest rather than each batch, because acacia comes off in a single short bloom and the batches within one harvest are the same honey. The screen is C4 by SCIRA plus pollen analysis at a NABL accredited laboratory.
Until now we have sent that report to anyone who asked for it. Having written this page, we do not think that is good enough, so the full report for the 2026 harvest is going up here, in the same form we are asking other brands for.
If it says something we would rather it did not, we will publish that too.
Kashmir Reserve is single origin acacia honey from Jammu and Kashmir, tested each harvest.
See the honey →