Work The Many Health Benefits of Dates Into Your Diet: 5 Reasons Why Dates Are A Superfood

Dates may be a popular fruit of choice during Ramadan, but not so much for the rest of the year – and it’s a crying shame. Dates make delicious smoothies, chocolatey treats, and tons of other vegan goodies. Heck, they’re even tasty by themselves – especially juicy medjool dates. As well as being tasty, there are also many health benefits of dates – a surprising amount.

Dates aren’t just an under-rated member of the dried fruit family; they’re also considered a superfood. ‘Superfood’ is a term lots of health magazines and journals use to describe kinds of foods that are – well – super! Dates are jam-packed with positive vitamins, antioxidants and so many health benefits that other fruits should be ashamed of themselves.

Dates are bursting with vitamins and minerals

One of the great health benefits of dates is that you shouldn’t need to take vitamin supplements. A diet with dates in it can give you a surplus quantity of some highly beneficial vitamins. Dates contain many different vitamins, such as B1, B2, B3, B5, A1 and C – just to name a few. Try a few dates a day!

Dates bring plenty of minerals to the body too, which keeps your bones strong. Dates have been shown to help strengthen bones which help you avoid the risks of osteoporosis.

They help treat all sorts of ailments!

We’ve already mentioned osteoporosis, but with the sheer volume of health benefits of dates, you can safeguard yourself against so much more. The nutrients in dates can help you treat intestinal disorder, maintain a healthy nervous system, keep your heart rate at a steady pace, and lower the risk of abdominal cancer.

There are less drastic ailments you can help too. Dates work wonders if you’re trying to sober up and they’ve even been known to work well as aphrodisiacs. In other parts of the world dates are commonly used as alternative medicine – it would be common practice to turn date leaves into a paste and apply it to the face to treat ear, nose and mouth ailments.

Dates are a natural laxative that helps relieve constipation

This is one of the less-popular health benefits of dates. Whether you see this as a good or bad thing, dates work great as a laxative and help digestion. This makes dates a handy snack if you need to make a bowel movement.

Dates are helpful in this regard because of their fibre content. Dates are a brilliant source of soluble fibre, which helps food to comfortably flow through your intestines and make your toilet trip as comfortable as possible.

You can treat diarrhoea with dates too, as they have lots of potassium in them. This helps to control how loose your bowels are to alleviate discomfort. This, combined with the soluble fibre, helps get your bowels functioning comfortably.

Keeps your cells and body fighting fit

Dates can not only make you fighting fit in the here and now, but also helps you avoid later health issues. The iron content of dates makes sure you avoid anaemia and is even used to cure anaemia in those who already suffer from it.

As mentioned earlier, dates are high in potassium content which is essential for your body’s cells and fluids. Without potassium in the cells your brain, body and pretty much everything else about you will cease to function. Regular doses of potassium in your diet are great for maintaining a healthy blood flow and a manageable heart rate.

To top it all off, potassium also helps prevent kidney stones too. Kidney stones are rarely ever lethal, but we definitely wouldn’t recommend them to anyone either.

They’re a brilliant source of energy – just don’t overdo it

Some studies have shown that you can experience a massive boost in energy in as little as 30 minutes from first consumption. Dates contain lots of natural sugars that give you a quick kick of energy to keep you going through the day.

This makes dates a much better pick-me-up than addictive caffeine drinks that’ll leave you sluggish. Health benefits from dates can work in tandem with other healthy lifestyle choices such as exercising at the gym or going for a run.

Of course, with any natural sugars come added calories, but burning these off shouldn’t be a problem. You can either burn off the calories with basic exercise throughout the day or use dates as a healthy way to gain weight. This is ideal for anyone who has suffered from a suppressed appetite from illness.

This doesn’t even scratch the surface…

There are too many positives to fit into one blog. To think all of this can come from one humble fruit is fascinating in of itself. Why not try working our range of delicious dates into the next recipe you try? There’s countless desserts that use medjool dates as the main ingredients. Make something that’s both tasty and has the health benefits of dates conveniently worked in.

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