Maple Syrup

Food · Pantry & Condiment · Food, Typed Supps

Sixty grams of sugar per hundred. The tree does not change that.

Stage by stage

Sweetness (Taste): Perceived as more intensely sweet than golden syrup, which permits smaller amounts.
Nothing to slow it (Stomach): No fibre, no protein — 60.4 g of free sugar per 100 g with nothing holding it back.
Free sugar (Circulation): WHO counts syrups as free sugar by name, regardless of how little was done to them.
Sucrose (Liver): Predominantly sucrose, so half arrives as fructose and is handled hepatically.

Timing

Nothing meaningful to time. With a meal the glycaemic rise is blunted, as with any free sugar.

Time to effect

15–30 min: Glycaemic peak.
Per 20 g: Around 12 g of free sugar, and under a tenth of a day’s zinc.

Allergens

None of the fourteen major allergens. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.

Eating patterns

Fits: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher, Low-FODMAP, Gluten-free.

Environmental footprint

3.2 kg CO2e and 202 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Cane sugar" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.

Cost band

Mid — roughly £9 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.

Key nutrients

Sugar
Riboflavin
Calcium

Nutrition per 100g

Calories: 259
Carbohydrate: 67g
of which sugars: 60.4g
Fat: 0.1g
of which saturated: 0g
Sodium: 12mg

Food vs. supplement

Maple syrup is where the "natural sugar" argument is usually made and where it is easiest to test. The sap really is boiled and nothing is added — and the result is still 60 g of free sugar per 100 g, because free sugar is defined by the form it is in.

Kitchen tip

If you are swapping golden syrup for maple, use less than the recipe says — it reads as sweeter, and it is a quarter more water.

Common myth

“Maple syrup is a natural sugar, so it’s better than the white stuff.” In reality: It contains minerals white sugar does not — zinc and riboflavin, genuinely. But WHO names syrups as free sugars specifically, because the classification depends on the sugar’s form and not its origin, and at 60.4 g per 100 g the arithmetic is not close. The honest advantage is smaller: it is a quarter more water than golden syrup and tastes sweeter, so less does the job.