America has an enormous food industry, from grocery stores, restaurants, and fast food franchises, food is everywhere. Along with the foods available there is a wide assortment of condiments that can be added to increase the flavor of a meal. Some common meal time additives are salt, pepper, ketchup, mustard, and maple syrup, especially with breakfast food. Many restaurants, such as IHOP and Denny’s, capitalize on America’s love of sweet breakfast foods like pancakes, waffles, and French toast, all of which are incomplete without a good coating of sweet golden ichor.
The truth is however, what’s being cascaded down that hotcake is definitely not maple syrup, but is instead cheap artificial imitation “pancake syrup”. Pancake syrup is a popular alternative to maple syrup that loosely replicates maple flavor. Additionally, pancake syrup is far cheaper than real maple syrup; Wegmans brand pancake syrup sells for $1.99 for a 24 oz. bottle (Wegmans) whereas their 12 oz. dark pure maple syrup coats $7.49 (Wegmans).
Now at first glance, why wouldn’t you want to buy the pancake syrup, sure it tastes a little different and isn’t “organic” but it can’t be that bad right? Wrong! The primary ingredient in pancake syrup is High Fructose Corn Syrup or HFCS (Wegmans). HFCS has been identified as a cause of obesity and diabetes. Corn syrup, or fructose, fails…show more content… The fake syrup is 8 cents per ounce and the pure maple syrup is 62 cents an ounce. The primary reasons for the price difference are availability and production. Pancake syrup is made of mass produced objects and requires little work to create. Conversely, maple syrup is made by boiling maple tree sap. The difficulty comes from the fact that it requires 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup (Tap My Trees). Moreover, the process has to be carefully watched and regulated so that the batch of sap isn’t ruined (Healthy
