You can tell that it’s sugaring off time because sappy articles about the health benefits of maple syrup start flowing from media outlets. “Maple Syrup Contains a Number of Health Benefits,” “Maple Syrup: Boon for Patients of Type 2 Diabetes,” “Maple Syrup May be Antioxidant-filled Liquid Gold,” “Scientist Reveals Health Benefits of Pure Maple Syrup,” “Is Maple Syrup a Super Food?” Well, that last question is easy to answer. No, it isn’t. And neither is anything else. There are healthy diets and unhealthy diets, but to ascribe “super” qualities to any single food is totally unrealistic. So what are the headlines referring to? Who is the scientist who has revealed the health benefits of pure maple syrup? That would be Dr. Navindra Seeram of the University of Rhode Island. But actually Seeram hasn’t revealed any health benefits at all. He has isolated some compounds from maple syrup that in laboratory studies have shown some antioxidant or anti-inflammatory activity. There is nothing earth-shaking about this. Hundreds and hundreds of compounds isolated from fruits, vegetables or whole grains show such activity. That is a long, long way from demonstrating any clinical benefit. You don’t know if these compounds are absorbed into the bloodstream, you don’t know what happens to them once they are absorbed, and you don’t know if they exhibit any activity once they are absorbed. And you certainly don’t know whether they produce any benefit. And then there is the question of amounts. Demonstration of biological activity in the lab doesn’t mean very much if the actual amounts ingested are not taken into consideration. Maple syrup contains roughly 2 mg of polyphenols per mL, so one might ingest about 60 mg in the 30 mL or so poured on a pancake. A half a cup of blueberries contains four times a much polyphenols without the added load of sugar! There is another issue. While there’s no doubt that diets featuring lots of fruits and vegetables are healthy, there is considerable doubt about attributing this effect to antioxidants. Clinical trials using antioxidant supplements have proven to be disappointing.
What about the diabetes connection? Seeram refers to finding that certain polyphenols in maple syrup inhibit enzymes that are involved in the conversion of carbohydrate to sugar. He goes on to say that “by 2050 one in three people will be afflicted with Type 2 diabetes and more and more people are looking for healthier diets, so finding a potential anti-diabetic compound in maple syrup is interesting for the scientific community and the consumer.” Is there any evidence that this compound does anything when ingested by a person? Nope. Is there evidence that sugar intake, and remember that about 60% of maple syrup is sugar, is unhealthy in terms of diabetes? Plenty! Although Seeran chooses his words carefully, he does insinuate that maple syrup is healthy. He describes his research as being the tip of the iceberg in helping science understand the disease fighting properties of maple syrup. The question is, what disease fighting properties? Where is there any evidence that maple syrup fights disease? You can take this to the bank. There isn’t any.
