John Myers
Maple syrup is the thickened sap of Canadian maple trees. It is sweet as sugar and not exactly a pleasure for the teeth. But studies show again and again that maple syrup should also contain many healthy substances. But are these also contained in relevant quantities? And what about the medicinal properties of maple syrup? Researchers recently discovered that maple syrup can increase the effects of antibiotics. Should you really prefer maple syrup to any other sweetener for sweet enjoyment?
Maple Syrup – 100 percent pure and natural
Maple syrup is made by tapping a sugar maple tree, mostly native to Canada, boiling down the sap, and bottling it. For one liter of syrup, you need about 40 liters of tree sap. It is therefore a relatively natural product to which nothing else is added.
However, maple sap can also be adulterated in Europe, e.g. B. with sugar syrup, since the term is not protected. When buying, you should therefore use high-quality organic brands that actually guarantee 100 percent pure maple syrup.
Maple Syrup – Over 50 healing substances
Compared to many other sweeteners, maple syrup has interesting advantages.
Navindra Seeram – Professor of Pharmacy – has been researching the ingredients of maple syrup at the University of Rhode Island for years. In addition to the 20 substances already known, he discovered another 34 that are said to have extremely beneficial effects on human health.
As is so often the case with herbal products, most of the substances found in maple syrup have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that have already proven to be helpful in bacterial infections, diabetes, and cancer.
However, the corresponding laboratory tests are not carried out with maple syrup as we eat it, but with a maple syrup extract that contains the active ingredients of maple syrup (especially the polyphenols) in much higher concentrations.
“Normal” maple syrup, on the other hand, only provides helpful substances in small quantities and is packed with a good portion of sugar.
Nevertheless, Professor Seeram firmly believes that a number of substances from maple syrup could at least be used as a “template” for the production of synthetic active ingredients and medicines to treat serious diseases.
After all, we know that most chronic diseases are associated with latent inflammatory processes, e.g. B. heart disease, diabetes, various types of cancer, and even neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
As a result, any substance that fights inflammation can be helpful — and maple syrup’s polyphenols seem to be one of them, according to Professor Seeram.
Maple Syrup – The darker, the more antioxidants
Interestingly, maple syrup is officially considered to be of higher quality the lighter the color of the syrup. The darker the syrup is, the later it was harvested and the higher the content of undesirable substances that form during maturation.
However, Professor Seeram stated that the darker the maple syrup, the higher the polyphenol content in maple syrup.
Seeram is also convinced that there are only a few sweeteners (if any) that contain such a colorful mix of beneficial substances as maple syrup.
There are some great substances in berries, others in green tea, and others in linseed. But hardly any other food contains as many substances at once as maple syrup.
However, it is important to note that Professor Seeram’s studies were supported by the Quebec Council for Agricultural Development (CDAQ) and carried out on behalf of the Canadian maple syrup industry.
Maple syrup – sweetener in diabetes?
In particular, Professor Seeram is researching the links between diabetes and the possible beneficial effects of maple syrup on blood sugar levels.
Together with Dr. Chong Lee, professor of nutrition and food science, Seeram found that the antioxidant components in maple syrup – the polyphenols – inhibit two enzymes involved in the development of diabetes.
Professor Seeram is not particularly worried that it is a sweetener that could emerge as the carrier of a potential anti-diabetes drug. He says: “Not all sweeteners are created equal.”
Indeed, just looking at the glycemic load (GL) of different sweeteners reveals that each seems to have a different GL, even though all sweeteners taste equally sweet.
Maple syrup with a low glycemic load
For example, maple syrup has a glycemic load (GL) of only about 43, while regular table sugar (sucrose) has a GL of 70. Corn syrup is 80 and glucose is 100. Even honey has a GL of 49 above maple syrup.
The glycemic load tells you how quickly a food causes blood sugar levels to rise. The higher the GL, the faster and higher the blood sugar level rises after eating the respective food.
However, since the type of sugar in maple syrup is also sucrose (like in table sugar), one may wonder how the very different GL values in maple syrup and table sugar can come about.
The explanation is simple: while table sugar consists of 100 percent sucrose, the sucrose content in maple syrup is “only” about 60 percent. The rest is water.
Despite the apparently antidiabetic effect, diabetics should not consume indiscriminate amounts of maple syrup either.
Of course, there are also sweeteners that have much lower GL values than maple syrup. For example, agave nectar has a GL of just 11.
This is due to the fact that agave syrup – in contrast to maple syrup – is largely made up of free fruit sugar (fructose), and fructose hardly raises the blood sugar level.
So even a low GL should by no means be taken as proof of healthy food.
Minerals in Maple Syrup
Maple syrup – as it is often advertised – provides many minerals.
What he delivers may be a lot for a sweetener. But when you look at the mineral content of table sugar (nearly 0.0), it’s not difficult to top it.
And so the mineral content in maple syrup is also limited. It provides 185 mg of potassium, 90 mg of calcium, 25 mg of magnesium, and 2 mg of iron per 100 grams.
That doesn’t sound bad, but you (hopefully) don’t eat maple syrup by the hundred grams. And here and there a spoonful of maple syrup is hardly worth mentioning in terms of minerals.
However, it could possibly be helpful to make maple syrup in parallel with antibiotic therapy if it cannot be avoided.
This is said to be able to increase the antibiotic effect, which of course could then lead to a reduction in the required drug dose, and this in turn to a reduced risk of the emergence of super pathogens (resistance formation in bacteria) that is threatening today.
Maple syrup against super pathogens?
It has long been known that the excessive use of antibiotics – even for small things or possibly as a preventive measure – has led to the emergence of dangerous bacteria, namely those that are resistant to antibiotics. They are called super pathogens.
Anyone who has a weakened immune system as a result of an operation or an illness and is now infected with such super pathogens is in great danger of death.
Your own immune system is too weak to fight the bacteria and antibiotics are no longer effective. Researchers are therefore feverishly looking for ways and means to get the super pathogens under control.
A team of scientists from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, has now announced that rescue may be near – in the form of maple syrup. According to the researchers, maple syrup can make bacteria much more susceptible to antibiotics, so the use of antibiotics could be reduced in the future and the risk of resistance developing would be reduced.
In the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, the author of the study, Professor Nathalie Tufenkji, reports on her new findings: As is well known, maple syrup contains certain polyphenols, which Professor Seeram has already examined in detail and found their antiseptic and antioxidant properties.
In the plant, these phytochemicals act as part of the plant’s immune system. They protect the plant from pathogens and pests.
Some so-called nutrition experts are now of the opinion that polyphenols probably also regard humans as pests and therefore try to fight them – for example, an aphid – i.e. harm them if they eat the corresponding polyphenol-containing food.
The researchers led by Professor Tufenkji, however, assumed that the polyphenols would benefit humans and – just like the plant before them – protect them from pathogens, with which they were ultimately right.
They carried out various tests by first producing an extract particularly rich in polyphenols from the maple syrup in order to increase the concentration of the polyphenols even further.
Then they gave the extract to various pathogens, such as. B. Escherichia coli and Proteus mirabilis – which are common causes of urinary tract infections, for example. It turned out that the maple syrup only had a weak antibiotic effect.
Maple syrup and antibiotics – an interesting combination!
But then you mixed the maple syrup extract with an antibiotic, added the mixture back to the bacteria, and watched what happened. It turned out that the maple syrup, which itself only had a weak antibiotic effect, now significantly increased the antibiotic effect of the antibiotic.
It was discovered that the mixture worked particularly well against so-called biofilm. One speaks of biofilm when resistant pathogen colonies colonize surfaces with a stubborn film that is difficult to remove.
Dental plaque is one such biofilm, for example. But biofilm deposits also often develop in urinary catheters, which can then quickly lead to difficult-to-treat urinary tract infections in the patient.
So maple syrup seems to make the bacteria more susceptible to antibiotics so that the latter can work better. Maple syrup appears to do this in three different ways:
Maple syrup increases the antibiotic effect threefold:
- Maple syrup makes bacterial cell membranes more porous, allowing antibiotics to attack pathogens more effectively.
- Maple syrup closes certain bacterial membrane transporters. Membrane transporters are transporter proteins in the envelope (membrane) of bacteria. Through these transporters, antibiotic-resistant bacteria can immediately transport the antibiotic flowing into their interior back out again. If a bacterium has this mechanism, it naturally feels very well – even if the affected person takes antibiotics by the kilo. However, if the transporters are inactivated by the maple syrup, the bacterium can no longer remove the antibiotic from its interior and dies from antibiotic poisoning.
- Maple syrup is also said to weaken certain bacterial genes – those that give the bacteria the ability to develop antibiotic resistance in the first place.
Of course, clinical studies on humans are still required first – according to Prof. Tufenkji – but maple syrup seems to offer a simple and at the same time effective way of reducing the antibiotic dose used.
In the future, for example, maple syrup extract could be filled with antibiotics in one and the same capsule. This would increase the antibiotic effect, but at the same time allow the antibiotic dose to be reduced.
This in turn reduces the negative side effects typical of antibiotics in the patient and the risk of resistance developing in the bacteria.
It is interesting in this context that maple syrup is also part of the controversial intake of baking soda for cancer. Here it should help to transport the baking soda more easily into the cancer cells. However, don’t be surprised if the link above doesn’t mention maple syrup anywhere. The linked text is new and refers to previous studies on the subject of “sodium bicarbonate for cancer”.
We originally published another article on this topic (which was once linked here). It was about the experience of Vernon Johnston, who is said to have defeated his prostate cancer with natural measures (including a mixture of maple syrup and baking soda). However, since the consumer protection associations and various media have massively criticized and attacked us because of this article, we have decided to take it offline. But back to the maple syrup:
Maple Syrup – A Healthy Sweetener?
Maple syrup is therefore a sweetener with a rather low glycemic load. It also contains highly interesting ingredients, the type, and the quality of which one looks for in vain in household sugar.
However, maple syrup is 60 percent sucrose.
Also, one serving of maple syrup (e.g. 1 to 2 tablespoons) cannot stock up on relevant amounts of minerals or polyphenols.
And would you eat enough maple syrup to z? For example, to cover at least half of the iron daily requirement (approx. 7 mg), you would have to devour a good 350 grams of maple syrup every day – a completely unrealistic amount, which would also bring your dentist nice income sooner or later.
So while maple syrup is significantly less unhealthy than table sugar, we wouldn’t call it a really healthy sweetener.
Yacon syrup instead of maple syrup?
Another syrup that comes into question as a sweetener – from a health point of view perhaps more than maple syrup – is yacon syrup. This also has a low glycemic load and also has a beneficial effect on the intestinal flora. Because it contains certain dietary fibers (fructooligosaccharides FOS), which the beneficial intestinal bacteria like to use as food.
