What comes to your mind when someone talks about pastes and spread? We reckon it would surely be chocolate spread or peanut butter. Why is there less emphasis given to healthy and nutritious selections, such as date paste or fig paste?
The commercialization of products has made it so challenging for us to go for healthy dietary choices. Various chocolate spreads have become the world’s favorite breakfast choices courtesy of the modern world’s marketing tactics.
The article sheds light on better plant-based pastes intending to educate the readers about the nutritional values and health benefits.
Date Paste
The paste is the purest form of all commercially available spreads in the market with no additives and is made with a single ingredient. Commercially available date paste’s single-serving gives about 190 calories with no fat or cholesterol. Moreover, the paste boasts a plentiful amount of magnesium, potassium, and fiber.
Benefits of Date Paste
As a natural sweetener, date spread provides texture to the food as well as improves its taste. Having a low Glycemic Index (GI), the paste is equally beneficial for both healthy and diabetic individuals. Let’s review its benefits one by one.
- Low Glycemic Index
It is hard to resist temptations for desserts, and our body is flooded with glucose once we consume something sweet. How quickly the food spikes the blood sugar levels is referred to as Glycemic Index or GI.
Ever wondered why we feel an instant hit of energy after devouring something sugary? It is because the foods with higher GI transmits the glucose into the blood very quickly.
Dates have a low glycemic index than regular sugar, and similarly, date paste possesses a low GI value as compared to other commercially available pastes or spreads. The raw dates have a GI of 42 ± 4. This quality of date paste keeps your blood sugar levels regulated, making it an excellent choice for prediabetics and diabetic people.
- Goodness of Whole Fruit
Unlike other spreads, date paste is an exotic outcome of macerated grinded dates and does not require additives. Due to the minimal processing, the final product imparts the same health benefits as whole dates.
- Date Paste – A Nutritional Haven
Dates offer numerous health benefits, from weight loss to anti-inflammatory properties to boosting brain health to brain health to bowel regularity, and this list goes on.
By replacing your favorite breakfast spread with date paste, you may include a high nutrient source of minerals, such as calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium in your diet. Date paste also contains an abundance of vitamins, fatty acids, dietary fiber, and antioxidants.
- Health Benefits Like No Other
Date paste has multiple health benefits, such as;
- Strengthens the immune system and supports the formation of new cells.
- Maintains healthy hemoglobin levels to eradicate iron deficiency.
- Protects from neuro diseases due to high potassium saturation.
- Improves bowel movement to prevent abdominal disorders.
- Gives strength to bones and avert the risk of osteoporosis.
Fig Paste
Similar to date paste, fig paste is another natural, plant-based sweetener, but regular sugar becomes part of the paste in the production process. A 100-gram serving of fig paste provides 318 calories, 0.5g fat, and 14.6mg sodium.
Fig also falls in the low glycemic index category, but its GI value is higher than date paste (42 for dates vs. 51 for figs). Similarly, the glycemic index of fig paste is higher than date paste due to the addition of regular sugar in the production phase. The addition of sugar in the production phase further increases the GI value of fig paste, making it comparatively less healthy choice.
Figs are considered natural laxatives and are used extensively as a home remedy to treat constipation. However, figs paste, when used regularly, may cause diarrhea and other digestive problems. Further, figs cause allergy to people who are sensitive to birch pollen.
The Conclusion
To sum up, if you are planning to switch your regular breakfast spread with a miracle product with unlimited benefits and no side effects, then you should be opting for date paste, hands down. It will add sweetness to your life with no added sugar, contains vitamins and minerals in abundance, and will keep your heart healthy.
Date paste has a low glycemic index as compared to fig paste as well as it offers the goodness of whole fruit with no additives, and offers multiple health benefits.