**3. Conclusions**

The authenticity of food products is rarely defined in the literature. However, there is some agreement in terms of nomenclature and a set of features that make it possible to recognize that a food product is what it should be, as declared by the manufacturer. Food adulteration is a frequent phenomenon, which should be considered a significant threat to every consumer—it is a violation of consumer rights, but also often leads to an increase in risk associated with the consumption of food products. Therefore, it is necessary to develop tools that will protect the consumer against abuse from dishonest producers.

Honey is often mentioned as an example of a product that can be counterfeited in various ways—its composition is changed (e.g., by adding sweeteners), and in recent times, consumers are often misled by giving false information about the geographical or botanical origin of honey. There are many research methods that are used to assess the authenticity of honeys, but above all, they ensure the confirmation of their quality. Regardless of the method adopted, the goal is always to determine whether the tested product is manufactured fairly and meets all legal criteria, or whether there has been a violation of the law. In the field of food authentication, there are targeted and non-targeted analytic methods that are proven by many studies [160]. For each of the products, a number of research methods can be indicated, but as in the case of assessing the quality and authenticity of honey, there is no combination of methods that would be 100% effective [54,161,162]. Currently, honey authenticity tests are difficult because not only local honeys are sold on domestic markets, but also foreign honeys from other continents, which are characterized by a different chemical composition and properties. Therefore, researchers are still looking for an ideal method that will not leave even 1% uncertainty in confirming the quality and authenticity of honeys [16]. The above list shows how active various researchers are in the search for a universal and relatively simple method of confirming the authenticity of honeys.

The present work provides a review not only of research methods, but also of their practical use. The methodological limitations and strengths of each method have been indicated. The work can be used as a resource and a quick path to finding an appropriate research method to determine the quality and authenticity of honeys.

In the example of honey quality assessment, it can be seen that single-component or multi-component analyses of honey quality parameters do not lead to obtaining unambiguous information on the botanical origin of honeys. However, they are helpful in more accurately indicating the place of origin and quality of honey. However, there is still no interdisciplinary, fast, effective and cheap method that can confirm the authenticity of honey, taking into account its quality characteristics.

The above analysis of the literature illustrates the pace at which the research and the methods used in the assessment of the quality of honey have developed. It demonstrates their differentiation, taking into account the aspects of varietal authenticity and the composition of honeys.

According to Kowalski and Łukasiewicz, the introduction of new, hitherto unknown techniques and the improvement of many measurement techniques (increasing their sensitivity and precision) are creating more and more tools and opportunities to identify falsifications, even at a very low level. However, it still requires an appropriate approach and experience from the analytical side, because honey is a product with a complicated analytical matrix [54]. This paper presents a review of the possible applications of methods with a high level of efficiency. Methods such as fluorescence, NIR and Raman spectroscopy seem to be multifaceted. However, they have limitations because they require a complex mathematical apparatus to interpret the results [54].

Summarizing this review of research methods, it was not possible to identify a method that is unequivocally the most effective. However, the analysis of research methods allowed us to identify 16 methodological groups in the field of honey quality and authenticity. The review of methods also allowed for the extraction of parameters indicating changes not only in the quality, but also in the authenticity of the honeys, along with the interpretation of exceeding the limit values of the parameters. The intention of the authors was to create a tool to help in selecting the most effective research methods, but also to combine several methods in order to obtain a reliable result.

**Author Contributions:** A.W. developed the conception of this work and developed the final version of this article. N.Z. conducted the literature review and analyzed the results. All authors have read ˙ and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Data Availability Statement:** No new data were created.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors acknowledge the financial support of Gdynia Maritime University (project: WZNJ/2023/PZ/01, WZNJ/2023/PI/01).

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare that there are no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.
