Zero calorie sweetner linked to heart disease, blood clotting and strokes new study finds.

[Iron Woode]

Your post doesn't make much sense. All maple syrup has antioxidants and minerals. I say highly processed because it's filtered for large impurities and then cooked over low indirect heat for days. Maple sap is like an off clear mildly sweet water. Nutritious if you're lost in the woods and come across someone's catch can for it. Takes something like 14 gallons of sap to make a little more than a gallon of maple syrup as you know it. Taste and grading comes down to when the sap was harvested.

When I was a child we had family friends at the time who would grow birch and make syrup from the sap. I've only had it about twice here in the US, but they'd give our family a decent container of it back when we lived in the uk. Birch syrup is still very rare because it requires way more sap to be cooked down than maple. I had to google the figure but it's 110 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. It's very expensive if you can find it in stores. A 16 oz bottle will run you about $90 for an early season and the price goes down later in the season as the quality goes down. The third syrup I've seen a few times in my life has been sweet sorghum syrup. I've seen sorghum a few times in pearled format in shops but I don't know how to cook it besides to a porridge state.

maple syrup is made using a 40:1 ratio of sap to syrup.

There are quite a few sugar shacks and sugar bushes around my area. Maple syrup here in 100% natural and organic. The only processing is boiling it down. Grading comes down to the syrup's chemical make up which varies by tree and time of collection. Birch syrup is not common here but you can find it if you look for it. It's more expensive than maple syrup.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

As a diabetic, I try to avoid artificial sweeteners. I drink mostly water and occasionally cranberry juice. I rarely have a diet drink. I am not surprised there are issues with some sweeteners.

Warms me heart to read you are taking good care of yourself.

And there may indeed be issues with some sweeteners. I am cynical about this particular study is all. Basing it on an already high risk group makes it tough for me to put any stock in. I'd also like funding fully disclosed so I know no one has a horse in the race.

After so many studies reaching opposite conclusions on eggs, caffeine, animal fat, on and on, I pay no attention until a consensus emerges over time. Even then I apply a modicum of cynicism before incorporating any of the information into my lifestyle. That is, if I do incorporate it.

 

[A///]

maple syrup is made using a 40:1 ratio of sap to syrup.

There are quite a few sugar shacks and sugar bushes around my area. Maple syrup here in 100% natural and organic. The only processing is boiling it down. Grading comes down to the syrup's chemical make up which varies by tree and time of collection. Birch syrup is not common here but you can find it if you look for it. It's more expensive than maple syrup.

Whoops. I wrote that and had to second guess it because it didn't sound right. The color taste I already went over later in the post. Also the cost of birch syrup.

I personally like the tail end of the maple sap harvest where the color and flavors are stronger. That maple syrup will put hair on your chest.

 

[Torn Mind]

Birches have the original patent on xylitol. Only problem...they seem rather...vegetative....