What are the most common uses and top benefits of date powder?

Description

From simple to exotic, Z Natural Foods takes pride in offering our customers a wide range of the most nourishing foods on earth in the most versatile form, and our Organic Date Powder is a shining example of this. 

Our Organic Deglet Noor Date powder, created through a meticulous process of drying and grinding the dates, preserves the fruit's natural nutrients and flavors, resulting in a 

Deliciously balanced sweet taste and a beautiful amber-to-dark golden color 

This process ensures that the powder retains the nutritional benefits of the original fruit. 

With its simplicity of nutrients nourishing the body and high fiber content, date powder is a potent prebiotic and resistant starch food, presenting limitless potential for product development. 

It is a convenient way to boost nourishment levels, and its balanced sweetness opens the door to endless culinary applications, inspiring creativity in the kitchen. 

These attributes are crucial when considering the most appropriate ways to use date powder. 

So, today, we discuss the top benefits and most common uses of date powder, inspiring you to explore its versatility.

Organic Date Powder (Deglet Noor); benefits and common uses

1) Improves flavor and texture profile

One factor most people consider essential when consuming food is taste. Let's face it; no one wants to eat something that tastes terrible. 

When used correctly, changing the flavor of a recipe is where date powder has unlimited potential. 

Dates are energy-packed, calorically dense foods containing 70-100 calories per date with a carbohydrate content ranging from 65% to 83%. While all dates contain three forms of sugar (glucose, fructose, and sucrose), each variety has a different balance of these sugars based on the level of ripeness. 

In general, younger dates have more sucrose, and as they ripen, the sucrose turns into fructose and glucose. For example, the trendy and well-known Medjool dates are high in fructose and have almost no sucrose. 

However, the Deglet Noor Dates used in our date powder are touted as the best-known variety of dates and are prevalent in cooking, baking, and traditional cuisines. They are yellow to amber in color with a semi-dry texture. However, their firm flesh makes Deglet Noor Dates ideal for slow-cooking with lamb, creating delicious snacks by baking them stuffed with cheese and wrapped in bacon, or producing date sugars and syrups. 

Deglet Noor Dates have a balance of all three sugars, creating a perfect flavor and making them one of the most versatile dates in terms of flavor profile. Adding date powder to a seasoning blend as a sweetening agent for dips, stir-fries, and even rice dishes will for sure take the flavor profile up a notch. 

Date powder also offers a unique aspect of how it can help recreate and improve texture profiles. While apples are considered one of the top sources of pectin, averaging 1.5%, dates contain more than double that amount, with an average of 4% pectin. Pectin, a naturally occurring polysaccharide starch from plant cell walls, is an excellent alternative to gelatin and can be used in various recipes, from jams and jellies to sauces and soups.  

Another way to use date powder to support texture is as a flour replacement. A fairly common pie crust replacement combines dates, walnuts, and cacao. Remember, with both ideas, you get a two-for-one texture and a perfectly balanced flavor. 

2) Emergency Food Storage

In our current times, with more extreme weather events, the possibility of being trapped in the middle of nowhere, and being without modern conveniences, being prepared and more self-sufficient is a good idea. There is no denying that nothing beats fresh, wholesome foods, but unfortunately, they do have some pitfalls. 

The biggest pitfall is that fresh foods don’t have a long shelf life and can quickly lose nutritional value. Storing fresh food at the appropriate temperature is also an equally important issue. The shelf life of any food or product is directly linked to its moisture content. Therefore, it is vital to understand one of the most critical processes determining a powdered food's shelf life: The drying process. This is where date powder comes in, offering a convenient and reliable solution for emergency food storage, reassuring you that you always have a nutritious and versatile option on hand.

It is no secret that air and moisture are powdered food’s greatest enemies. Thanks to modern technology in food preservation, we can extend the shelf life of food without adding preservatives and chemicals and create a more versatile end product that is as highly nutrient-dense as the fresh version. While there are many natural ways to dry foods and preserve their nutritional qualities, including shade, low temperature, and sun drying, the three most predominant are air, spray, and freeze-drying. However, it is essential to note two critical points. 

• The quality of the raw materials at the beginning predominantly determines the final product. Our date powder is a testament to this, as it is created through a natural and careful process that preserves the fruit's natural nutrients and flavors, ensuring a high-quality end product. 
• Not every food responds the same to these different methods. Therefore, using the correct method for each food is vital to get the best result. For example, berries respond very well to freeze-drying. In contrast, carrots and apples do best when air-dried, and cheese and butter powders respond well to spray-drying. 

Unlike many other food preservation practices, where something unhealthy is added, freeze-drying, spray-drying, and air-drying are all about what is removed: the water, which is one of the main factors determining the shelf life of any food. A freeze-dried product has an average of only 3% or less moisture content, an air-dried product has an average of only 5% or less, and a spray-dried product averages up to 1% moisture content. 

Therefore, all of these drying processes allow for more accessible storage options and blending capability, as well as supporting the natural flavor profile of the fresh food version. Please remember that depending on the process, there may be a slight change of color and taste when the water is removed. A few final facts on this topic are that… 

• Dates have a naturally low water content. The average fruit ranges from 75-95%; however, dates are less than 30% water.
• Dates in their natural form can last up to six months at room temperature or in the refrigerator and up to one year in the freezer. 

3) Glycogen replenishment

Whether you are an athlete or live in a place with unforgiving weather, it is not uncommon for you to work harder and deplete your glycogen storage. Glycogen is a polysaccharide that forms glucose and is deposited into the body as a stored form of carbohydrates. 

It is primarily used to help your liver regulate blood sugar. It also helps with muscle activity because your liver breaks down glycogen to maintain blood glucose as your working muscles use it for energy. Stored glycogen is the excess glucose not needed immediately and is stored in the liver and muscle cells for later use. However, after 12-24 hours of fasting, liver glycogen storage is almost entirely depleted. 

The amount of glycogen stored in your liver varies depending on certain factors. 

• How many carbohydrates do you consume
• The length of time between your meals
• The intensity and duration of physical activity

As stated earlier, dates are energy-packed, calorically dense foods containing 70-100 calories per date with a carbohydrate content ranging from 65% to 83%, and contain all three sugars. Therefore, dates are an easy solution to help restore depleted glycogen levels as they provide a quick and easily digestible source of carbohydrates.  

4) A Delicious Fiber Substitute

Dates represent a high-quality source of fiber ranging from 7%-12% total fiber content. Dates are primarily a source of insoluble fiber, with (depending on the variety)their total fiber content breakdown being 85-95% insoluble and 5-15% soluble. 

Cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin make up the insoluble dietary fiber fractions in dates, whereas pectin, fructooligosaccharides, inulin, galactomannan, and β-glucan (among others) contribute to the soluble nutritional fiber fractions. Therefore, combining them with other fiber-rich foods like blueberries, flax seeds, chia seeds, turkey tail mushrooms, and baobab fruit to create a well-balanced blend is a great and delicious way to bring a wide range of fiber and other nourishing compounds to your daily consumption. 

Nourishing benefits of Date Powder

Date fruits are less well-known but still a quality source of polyphenolic compounds.

The following was stated in a comparative study on the Phenolic composition and antioxidant capacities of ten Algerian date (Phoenix dactylifera L.) cultivars. 

• Ten date cultivars were rich in phenolics, flavonoids, flavonols, and condensed tannins capable of blocking the action of reactive oxygen species involved in human diseases. 
• The data of this study also indicated that the cultivars had a diverse range of bioactive constituents and thus may provide significant protection against the oxidation of essential biological macromolecules. 
• As indicated by HPLC/DAD, the phenolic profile revealed nine constituents that were tentatively identified and quantified. Gallic acid was the predominant phenolic acid identified in all date cultivars.

However, dates also have two specific benefits that stand out. 

1) Resistant Starch

Date fruit, along with green bananas and unripe papayas, belongs to a unique group of foods known as resistant starches. These dietary starches do not break down into sugar and resist digestion in the small intestines. Instead, they pass through most of the digestive system unchanged, ending up in the colon, where they ferment and feed the microbiota. This unique property of resistant starches specifically benefits gut health, creating a cascade of incredible effects on overall well-being. 

2) Prebiotics

We can’t speak about resistant starches and gut health without delving into prebiotics and the potential that dates have shown in preliminary studies. This area of study is consistently evolving as the list of foods containing these various fibers grows. Furthermore, what was once believed to be a component of insoluble fiber is now also seen in soluble fibers. To be considered prebiotic, dietary carbohydrates must 

• Resist gastric acidity, gastrointestinal enzymes, and absorption 
• Get fermented by intestinal probiotic microflora 
• Selectively stimulate the growth and activity of probiotics.  

Dates are a nourishing source of oligosaccharides. In simple terms, oligosaccharides are a carbohydrate chain comprising 3-10 simple sugar molecules. For example, sucrose comprises the two simple sugars fructose and glucose. However, there are many types of oligosaccharides, and some of them include the following. 

• Fructooligosaccharides (FOS)
• Galactooligosaccharides (GOS)
• Gluco-oligosaccharides
• Arabinooligosaccharides (AOS)

The following was stated in a preliminary study discussing the impact of date palm fruits and their component polyphenols on gut microbial ecology, bacterial metabolites, and colon cancer cell proliferation.

• The bacterial metabolism of whole date fruit led to the production of SCFA 
• the production of flavonoid aglycones (myricetin, luteolin, quercetin, and apigenin) and anthocyanidin petunidin in less than one hour was also observed. 
• The potential of Date Digested Extract, Date Polyphenol Extract, and metabolites to inhibit Caco-2 cell growth was investigated, indicating that both could potentially act as antiproliferative agents in vitro following a 48-hour exposure. 

Therefore, it was concluded that together, these data suggest that consumption of date fruits may enhance colon health by increasing beneficial bacterial growth and inhibiting the proliferation of colon cancer cells. However, this is an early suggestion that date intake by humans may aid in maintaining bowel health and even reducing colorectal cancer development. 

In conclusion, date powder is an outstanding essential functional food that provides tremendous versatility and has a limitless number of important uses. So, whether you are looking for a clean and natural flavor and texture enhancer, an addition to your emergency food storage supply, or a quick way to replenish glycogen storage, date powder may be your all-in-one solution. 

For more information about our Organic Date Powder, go here:

Organic Date Powder