Authenticity Testing for Maple Syrup

“Pure Maple Syrup” should be the sole ingredient on bottles on supermarket shelves. No other sugars, corn syrup, or artificial flavours are permitted. Genuine maple syrup also tends to be more expensive.

And there’s the rub. Where something has exceptional value, there will always be imitations.

Economic incentives exist for adulteration of maple syrup by adding cane sugar to the boiling sap or by blending the syrup with corn syrup. As the taste of a little cane sugar or corn syrup added to maple syrup is virtually undetectable the temptation to increase yields by fraudulent means can be strong. However, the carbon-13 signature of corn syrup (mean = -11.29 ‰) and cane sugar (mean = -11.85 ‰) are significantly less negative than that of maple syrup (mean = -24.27 ‰), allowing economic adulteration of maple syrup to be detected by carbon-13 analysis.

Fortunately, where a market sector is prone to fake product, regulations and testing regimes are usually commensurately strong, and Isolab Scientific are pleased to support these as well as private companies with isotope analysis for detection of the economic adulteration of maple syrup.

Maple Syrup Carbon-13 Analysis

Our Maple Syrup Carbon-13 Analysis allows detection of adulteration of pure maple syrup with cane sugar or corn syrup. It is conducted to the standard required by the Association of Official Analytical Chemists (AOAC) Method of Analysis 984.23 – Carbon ratio mass spectrometric method for detection of corn syrup and cane sugar in maple syrup.

We require a minimum of 1 gram of maple syrup to be supplied for analysis. Our laboratory reports include carbon-13 content of the maple syrup, as determined by duplicate analysis, and an interpretation of the outcome of the analysis.

For further information on our isotope analyses for Maple Syrup please email us.