ABSTRACT
Honey is a complex food matrix mainly composed of sugar, water, and different nutritionally active components. Emanating from various origins, honey contains more than 20 different types of mono-, di-, and trisaccharides, and usually less than 20% water content. In addition to sugars, the main nutritive components in honey are vitamins, minerals, organic acids, phenolic compounds, proteins, and amino acids. Due to the wide variety of its bioactive compounds, honey has been used since ancient times as a medical product. The botanical source of honey has a high influence on its composition; however, the effect of geographical origin is also not negligible. Storage and processing (temperature, material of the container) conditions also have a role in the evolution of honey composition. The processing plays a decisive role in both the nutritive and medicinal properties of the product. Determination of honey composition often depends on the target compounds, and the applied techniques used can generally range from classical analytical methods to spectroscopy, chromatography, and nuclear magnetic resonancebased techniques. This chapter focuses on the overview of the composition of honey, with special emphasis on its sugar composition and nutritionally active components, and also provides information on the effect of botanical origin on the amount of these compounds.
