BDN quotes Hopkins in article on increasing popularity of maple sap water
Kathy Hopkins, a maple syrup expert with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, spoke with the Bangor Daily News about the growing popularity of drinking pure maple sap water. “It has a lot of the components that are so good for you,” said Hopkins, who also is a member of the Maine Maple Syrup Association. “It’s kind of following the coconut water craze.” According to DrinkMaple, a Vermont-based company bottling sap for commercial sales, maple sap contains 46 nutrients including calcium, iron, manganese and potassium along with electrolytes and antioxidants all in amounts beneficial to the human body, the BDN reported. “There are plenty of maple trees in Maine,” Hopkins said. “So we could definitely have a sap beverage industry as well as a syrup industry so long as someone had the entrepreneurship and investments to get into it.”