To date or not to date?

Many raw dessert recipes are now using dried fruits for sweetness instead of white or brown sugar. But are they any better for us? We can look at this by comparing two brownie recipes:

Raw Date Brownies, one batch makes 12

My Mum’s famous chocolate brownies, one batch makes 12

Before we get to the recipes we should first look at the nutrition of dates vs nutrition of sugar gram for gram. As you can see below the dates are pretty high in sugar (around two thirds) so are recommended in small quantities. But compared with the same amount of sugar they have less energy (kilojoules) and are high in fibre. So gram for gram they are a better option (if you enjoy eating dates, remember they are high in sugar and stick to your teeth, so drink some water afterwards to help protect your teeth).

	White sugar (100g)	Dates (100g)
Energy (kJ)	1,674	1,234
Sugar (g)	100	68
Fat (g)	0	0
Fibre (g)	0	8

If we were going to make a date brownie, would we add dates gram for gram instead of white sugar or would we use more? I had a look online and found most date brownie recipes use about 2-2.5 cups of dates while regular brownies contain about a cup of sugar. So that alone would mean that slice for slice we would eat more sugar from a square of date brownie compared to regular brownie.

But, what about the other ingredients in the recipe? Do they affect the nutrition as well? Comparing my Mum’s brownies with a date brownie I found the following (square for square)

	Date Brownie (1 square, makes 12)	Regular Brownie (1 square, makes 12)
Energy (kJ)	1757	1287
Sugar (g)	33	34
Total Fat (g)	25	15
Saturated Fat (g)	8	6
Fibre (g)	7.6	2.1

Over all the Date brownie has more energy and fat than the regular brownie. Sugar is about the same. The date brownie has more fibre.

What does this mean?

Just because a dessert food has in place of the sugar some dried fruit, it doesn’t mean it becomes an everyday food. It may contain more fibre (which is a positive), but overall is still an occasional treat food. Many of these raw recipes I saw also contained a lot more nuts (they contain healthy fats but are high in energy), alternatives to butter which are still high in fat and some had icing (which many original recipes don’t have).

I recommend choosing whichever one brownie prefer the taste of as a treat. Have a small square (try cutting into 16-20 squares instead of recommended 12) or better yet share a piece with someone. And remember brownies, raw, date, or otherwise are a ‘treat food’ and should be limited to occasional treats.