## 1 Introduction
[10] acknowledged the interference of sugars and ascorbic acid in the measurement of TPC in strawberry, kiwifruit, and carrots. The methods tested included the use of solid phase extraction (SPE) to remove interfering substances, hydrogen peroxide (H\({}_{2}\)O\({}_{2}\)) treatments, and the quantification of ascorbic acid (AA) to obtain a corrected TPC. The authors also proposed a modification to the FC assay procedure that allows the simultaneous quantification of total AA content and TPC in plant food extracts. The findings demonstrated that SPE is only recommended for flavonoids, while H\({}_{2}\)O\({}_{2}\) treatments may result in an overestimation of TPC values if a proper standard is not selected. The proposed method of obtaining the total AA content to calculate the corrected TPC was, however, found to be a simple and efficient approach as it allows the simultaneous quantification of both TPC and total AA content without additional requirements of chemicals and equipment. In honey, its high sugar content can affect the accuracy of TPC measurements, particularly when using the traditional FC assay [9]. This sugar interference can make it difficult to compare TPC results in honey with those of food products and beverages with lower sugar contents. To address this issue, some researchers have attempted to reduce sugar interference in honey analysis. [PERSON] et al. [18] employed an acidic version of the FC assay, as suggested by [PERSON] [13; 14], whereas [PERSON] et al., utilized PVPP as a pre-assay clean-up step prior to TPC analysis [19]. Finally, [PERSON] et al. [20] utilized phenolic honey extracts in their TPC determination. A multitude of more advanced methods has also been published for the determination and often also quantification of phenolic constituents in honey. In a recent review, it was found that HPLC is the most popular method, followed by LC-MS [8]. More recently, a novel approach, using HPTLC derived data has also been published [21]. While an interference of honey's sugar matrix might be of no concern for these analyses, they nonetheless face their own set of challenges, such as higher costs and more complex instrumentation, and also a strong dependence on the availability of appropriate phenolic standards. Moreover, an identification/quantification approach is taking a very different angle to the total phenolics content assay reported here, which is meant to be a basic screening tool for the total activity of a given sample, rather than a focus on individual constituents that might contribute to this effect. Both approaches are useful and complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Based on the review of 217 papers that reported the antioxidant activity in honey's across the globe, 95% of the said papers correlated the observed antioxidant activity with the honey' TPC. It can also be concluded from this review that for expressing the TPC in honey, the FC assay remains an assay of choice [22; 23; 24; 25; 26; 27; 28; 29; 30; 31; 32; 33; 34; 35; 36; 37; 38; 39; 40; 41; 42; 43; 44; 45; 46], even though a more sophisticated HPLC-based total phenolic quantification is also available [47; 48]. Therefore, the aim of this study is to modify the traditional FC assay for determining the TPC in honey with an emphasis on minimising the sugar matrix effect.