Emily Chan
So you’re enjoying a heaping pile of pancakes one bright Saturday morning. And what better way to accompany them than with a generous drizzle of maple syrup?
But did you know the maple syrup you’re pouring over your breakfast may not be the real thing? Maple syrup is one of the top ten most adulterated foods in the world.
This means that fraudsters try to pass off fake maple syrup as real and pure. The inauthentic syrup is filled with a bunch of additives and cheaper sugars, creating a lower-quality product that scammers can sell for the same price as true maple syrup.
And innocent consumers would be none the wiser. In addition, the amount of adulterated maple syrup being introduced into the market messes with the supply chain and exposes consumers to food safety risks.
However, recent developments in the detection of fake maple syrup have been announced. Researchers at the University of Guelph have come up with a fluorescent fingerprinting method to identify maple syrup fraud.
It involves putting maple syrup under ultraviolet light and analyzing its “glow.” Pure maple syrup emits a different glow than its phony counterparts. The new technique also examines the safety and quality of syrup.
Fluorescent fingerprinting can determine maple syrup adulteration even when the levels are as low as one percent.
A study that was conducted by the Guelph research team included the examination of dark and amber-colored maple syrups filled with common second-rate ingredients that ranged from percentages of one to fifty.
The tests are quick and affordable since they only require the use of light. And they produce pretty accurate results, too. Researchers reported a seventy to one hundred percent success rate in recognizing adulterated samples of maple syrup.
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