Waffling on Syrup
I saw a phrase not long ago that said, and I paraphrase, “They have replaced the labels of Aunt Jamima syrup and Uncle Ben’s rice with generic names and I cannot believe we don’t yet have world peace”.
I could not find any sales statistics based on pre-name or post-name rebranding, but I suspect product unfamiliarity has forfeited its corporate owner the Quaker Oats Company some lost revenues. In many business strategies, profit is no longer king, being overshadowed or replaced by woke corporatism or the ESG (Environmental Social Governance) rating. Naturally, the consumer is paying the price, while investors, like 401K shareholders lose substantial earnings.
Speaking of syrup and now that it’s maple syrup season in New England and eastern Canada, the climate activists, as with every year for three decades, claim a decrease and possible devastation of syrup production. The Boston Globe and USA Today are prime press pushers of global warming having detrimental effects on maple trees and the syrup industry. As the Townhall press writes of these climate allies, “There are two points of misinformation peddled in the maple syrup scare stories. First is that warming winters are altering and shortening the late winter maple syrup production season, which is ravaging maple syrup production. Second is that hotter, dryer summers reduce the amount of photosynthesis in sugar maples. Reduced photosynthesis results in less sugar production, causing sugar maple sap to be less sweet.”
As the website, statista.com shows 2022 had the highest maple syrup production in American history, while the “top seven all-time sap production years have occurred during the past seven years.”
Canada has also had a dramatic increase in syrup production. According to canadiangrocer.com, “Canada Maple Syrup production was 13.5 million gallons this year, a 23% increase from the previous record set in 2013.”
Furthermore, the climate activist media asserts that Vermont, the leading state of sap production, is having increases in hot, dry summers adversely affecting syrup production, yet on inspection of statistics from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) datasets, “1954 was the year with the hottest summer days and 1975 to 1979 was the five-year period with the largest number of hot summer days” in Vermont.
As I have written about previously, food forgers, the world over, have blamed climate change for the poor harvest of items like coffee, wine, beer, champagne, and the cocoa bean, while leaving alone lesser-craved foods like kale, quinoa, lutefisk, and vegan specialties. And, as Louisiana Senator John Kennedy recently said, “Kale tastes like I’d rather be fat.”
As one can clearly see when it comes to the climate change lobby, statistics are thrown out the window in favor of fictional fanaticism, exaggeration, and unsubstantiated hyperbole. While the climate vegetarians and vegans claim a meatless life, one must wonder why then are they so full of baloney.