OFFICIAL vs. ADVANCED PHYSICO-CHEMICAL ANALYTICAL METHODS IN FOOD SCIENCE: CASE STUDY ON WATER CONTENT vs. WATER ACTIVITY IN HONEY.

On the case study of Slovenian honey the classical refractometric method for water content determination (the official method) is compared to the method of determination of water activity (a practical but not official method). Special attention is given to calculation of one parameter to the other, to the uncertainties about using various models (calibration curves), to the demands about choosing representative samples and to the importance of dealing with a large enough and transparent data base. It gives the reasons for using water activity instead of water content as a quality parameter of honey. It also represents a rather summarized report on treatment of a large and well documented data base on Slovenian honeys, which gives a good quantitative argumentation for the use of the general model as well as (botanically) specific models in finding correlations between water content and water activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]