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Eating dates (the fruit)

N

nomorepies

Active Member
Messages
26
Location
NW UK
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
I idly googled the glycemic index of dates and their effect on diabetes, expecting to see 'duh...of course you shouldn't be eating those heavenly slugs of sweetness'. Instead I found a lot of clickbaity 'health' blogs calling them the next best thing, and a paper in Nutrition Journal that concluded:
Our results support the study hypothesis that the tested varieties of dates would have low GIs in healthy subjects and that their consumption by diabetic individuals does not result in significant postprandial glucose excursions.
(https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2891-10-59)
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I then read this thread on here that spoke about the fructose being particularly bad for the liver as it gets converted to fat that sits on it, regardless of the GI.

Just wondered if anyone here has done any testing of dates with their own BG, or has any other comments? My wife, who eats a whole-food plant based diet, snacks on medjool dates stuffed with peanut butter and says they're like mini-Snickers bars.
 
nomorepies said:
Just wondered if anyone here has done any testing of dates with their own BG, or has any other comments?
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Being a T1 on insulin I have used them to treat a hypo once. Worked very well, so for my my bg shoots right up with dates.
Sorry, probably not the answer you wanted to hear :(
 
Antje77 said:
Being a T1 on insulin I have used them to treat a hypo once. Worked very well, so for my my bg shoots right up with dates.
Sorry, probably not the answer you wanted to hear :(
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No, it certainly wasn't! Can you delete your reply please? ;)
 
nomorepies said:
I idly googled the glycemic index of dates and their effect on diabetes, expecting to see 'duh...of course you shouldn't be eating those heavenly slugs of sweetness'. Instead I found a lot of clickbaity 'health' blogs calling them the next best thing, and a paper in Nutrition Journal that concluded:


I then read this thread on here that spoke about the fructose being particularly bad for the liver as it gets converted to fat that sits on it, regardless of the GI.

Just wondered if anyone here has done any testing of dates with their own BG, or has any other comments? My wife, who eats a whole-food plant based diet, snacks on medjool dates stuffed with peanut butter and says they're like mini-Snickers bars.
Click to expand...
Sorry... Was given something "sugar free" once. They meant "free of refined sugars", as it was basically mashed together dates.

...It did not go well. Let's leave it at that.
 
Dates are extremely popular in the raw food and plant based worlds, because they are very sweet, a fruit (and therefore thought to be automatically very 'healthy') and can be used to replace sugar in a lot of recipes.

- all of which kind of tells you that they are stuffed with sugars (however natural).
Seems bizarre to me that people struggle to accept that carbs (sugars) are carbs (sugars) no matter what the source. After all, table sugar started out as the sap of a sugar cane plant, didn't it? All that has been done to it is that it has been pressed out of the cane, boiled and reduced to crystals, and 'cleaned' to remove the colour and any residual nutrients.

Years ago, I was treated to a 'raw food vegan hot chocolate' made of warmed up coconut cream, pureed dates, raw cacao and vanilla seeds.
It was, indeed, delicious, but it was not, by any stretch of the imagination good for my blood glucose, or 'healthy'.
 
Even if the glucose didn’t raise blood glucose, which it will, the fructose will promote further insulin resistance in the liver. Glucose and fructose are a wise choice if you’re trying to get type 2 :shifty:
 
Brunneria said:
Dates are extremely popular in the raw food and plant based worlds, because they are very sweet, a fruit (and therefore thought to be automatically very 'healthy') and can be used to replace sugar in a lot of recipes.

- all of which kind of tells you that they are stuffed with sugars (however natural).
Seems bizarre to me that people struggle to accept that carbs (sugars) are carbs (sugars) no matter what the source. After all, table sugar started out as the sap of a sugar cane plant, didn't it? All that has been done to it is that it has been pressed out of the cane, boiled and reduced to crystals, and 'cleaned' to remove the colour and any residual nutrients.

Years ago, I was treated to a 'raw food vegan hot chocolate' made of warmed up coconut cream, pureed dates, raw cacao and vanilla seeds.
It was, indeed, delicious, but it was not, by any stretch of the imagination good for my blood glucose, or 'healthy'.
Click to expand...
It's not that I struggle to accept it, I was intrigued by the seemingly contradictory conclusion from that paper - that was why I asked the question here.

I wonder if the fact that the study discloses an affiliation to the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority is significant, given the UAE's position as a leading exporter of dates...if not, it's certainly allowed me to coin the phrase 'selling dates to diabetics' :)
 
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