Date
Food · Fruit · Food, Typed Supps
Very sweet, and genuinely sweet on its own — nothing is added. The fibre and potassium are what separate it from a sweet.
Stage by stage
- Intake (Chewy, dense): Chewing breaks up dense fruit flesh; the fibre matrix stays largely intact.
- Digestion (Fibre slows release): Nearly 10g of fibre per 100g keeps sugar release slower than the sugar figure suggests.
- Bloodstream (Moderated glucose rise): Glucose rises over about an hour, flatter than an equivalent dose of confectionery sugar.
- Tissues (Potassium and minerals): 730mg potassium per 100g arrives with the sugar, alongside magnesium and non-heme iron.
Time to effect
- Under an hour: Glucose rises over roughly an hour, flatter than the sugar content alone would predict.
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, Gluten-free.
Satiety
140 on the satiety index, where white bread is 100 — moderate. Modelled from the Holt et al. (1995) measurements.
Environmental footprint
1.1 kg CO2e and 199 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Other fruit" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.
Cost band
Cheap — roughly £3 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.
Key nutrients
Nutrition per 100g
- Calories: 290
- Protein: 2g
- Carbohydrate: 67.2g
- of which sugars: 65.9g
- Fat: 0.2g
- of which saturated: 0g
- Fibre: 9.7g
- Sodium: 14mg
Food vs. supplement
Date syrup and date sugar keep some minerals but lose the fibre structure that made the whole fruit different. They are sugar, and are counted as free sugars accordingly.
Kitchen tip
Medjool for eating whole, Deglet Nour for baking. Blending into paste destroys the fibre structure that moderates the sugar release, so date paste behaves closer to syrup than to fruit.
Common myth
"Dates are fine to eat freely because the sugar is natural." In reality: They are two-thirds sugar by weight. The fibre matrix genuinely slows its release and the potassium is real, but the energy density is high and one Medjool carries around 15g of sugar.
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