Why We Use Dates As An Ingredient In Our Wholefood Bars
Why do we love those like brown, wrinkly fruit so much?
At first, we choose dates for our bars because they are a great ‘glue’ as well as adding natural sweetness. I won’t lie and say we were looking at the nutrient profile when we trialled them but when we were in the final stages of testing, and yes, there was A LOT of testing with lots of different ‘sticky’ glues, we were pretty happy with what we discovered about dates when we dug a little deeper.
The humble date is jam-packed full of nutrients.
Leading the way is potassium. Potassium helps regulate fluid, muscle contractions and nerve signals. It may also help support high blood pressure, protection against strokes and even kidney stones so it’s a pretty important one to have in your diet.
Manganese is in there too and although we only need it in small amounts in the body, it is still important for things like metabolising cholesterol and glucose and assisting with blood clotting or bone formation
Magnesium is a much more well-known nutrient and you’ll get 14% of your recommended daily intake by eating 100g of dates. If you want to keep those muscles healthy, magnesium is your guy. Not to mention how it helps the body maintain healthy heart rhythm.
Some people are afraid of dates because of their high sugar content but what they don’t see is the high fibre content that is also present. Fibre helps slow digestion and keep blood sugar levels stable so although a date tastes sweet it is not the same as eating a chocolate bar. Your blood sugar levels will rise gradually, and lower back down after your body has had time to use the energy therefore no sugar crash.
Dates have the highest antioxidant content when compared with other dried fruits like figs and plums. Antioxidants help protect your cells from free radicals which are unstable molecules which can cause harmful reactions in your body which can end up as disease.
For all my pregnant ladies out there, if you get to the end of your pregnancy and that baby is a no show, dates may help start natural labour. Eating dates during the last couple weeks of your pregnancy may help promote cervical dilation and lower the need for induced labour. They have also done studies which showed eating dates during the last 2 weeks of pregnancy reduced the length of labour by 4 hours! And anyone who has been in labour knows 4 hours can feel like 40!
So, there you have it. A few reasons why we use dates in our products. We love them. We eat them in our bars, snack on them by themselves, add them to smoothies and even bake with them. And they are beautifully shelf stable which allows us to avoid any kind of heat treating or preservatives to keep our products fresh, so you can enjoy them just as we intended.
Jen xx