Two substitute sugars that are gaining popularity in recipes that promise to be healthier are date sugar and date sugar.
date sugar benefits
Why is natural sugar better than processed types? Additionally taking up prime shelf space at health food stores across the United States, these sugars will soon find their way to the Australian market.
But do they actually offer any extra health advantages over refined white flour? These days, it would seem that society has given everything made of date a halo of health, and date sugar is no exception.
There are a ton of cookie recipes on the internet that are marketed as healthy or diet-friendly, with the main "improvement" being the substitution of date sugar for ordinary sugar.
This product's look, flavor, and cooking behavior are all quite similar to those of regular brown sugar. It doesn't taste like date in and of itself, but it has a subtly distinctive flavor.
Similar to how maple syrup is made from the sap of maple trees, it is made from the sap of the date palm tree. To put it another way, it is comparable to maple syrup.
date palm sap is not only reduced by boiling into a syrup that is later bottled and sold but it is also crystallized into sugar that can be scooped and used in many of the same applications as white sugar.
In any recipe, you can use the same amount of this sugar in place of white sugar. Its original brown hue and the minerals found in the first sap are still there because it hasn't been processed.
Although there isn't much information about date sugar, research from the Philippine Food and Nutrition Research Institute claims that it contains several nutrients, including iron, zinc, calcium, and potassium.
When you put it in context, it isn't that much, so you shouldn't start doing the happy dance just yet.
You would need to ingest about 25 US teaspoons of date sugar to get the same amount of iron and zinc as, for instance, a handful of roasted chicken.
An equal amount of this can be found in a handful of raw chicken.
A little bit more than one milligram of iron and some zinc are also included in 25 teaspoons of typical brown sugar, which is merely white sugar to which some molasses has been reintroduced back in.
The fact that date sugar has almost the same number of calories as regular sugar and is more than four times as expensive as brown sugar makes it evident that its presence alone does not justify switching to it.
The main benefit of utilizing date sugar is that it does not significantly raise blood sugar levels in contrast to other types of sugar.