Dates for a Sweeter Life: Living Without Processed Sugar
My Dates with Dates: An Overview
Dates are one of the ways I live a sweeter life without processed sugar.
These are medjool dates, and they are my favorite. I have dates almost every day. Dates are calorie dense, so I have to be careful how many I have in a day.
I often add dates to my smoothies and blended salads. Dates add a delicious sweetness, enough so I can get more vegetables into my mix, especially leafy greens.
I have also discovered that I love dates as part of my soups. I often blend a few dates with a few nuts to add as a paste into my tomato-based soups to help add flavor.
Every so often, I just want a nice sweet bowl of oatmeal, and dates are my go-to for this as well. Sometimes, I cut the dates up and add them to the oatmeal when it’s cooking. Other times, I stir date powder or date sugar into my oatmeal after it’s cooked.
And, one of my favorite treats is whole dates. One way I enjoy these is by cutting the dates vertically, take the pits out, and add nut butter. I like almond butter, but cashew butter, peanut butter, or any other kind of nut butter is good.
Dates make living without processed sugar much easier, and they help me succeed, to transform shadows.
Dates in the Plant-Based World
Dates can be a controversial food in the plant-based world. In so many ways, these bitter divides trouble me — largely because in the scope of human experience, there are many pathways and many answers.
Personally, dates help me avoid foods that are far worse for me. That is no small thing for a person who had to lose more than half her body weight to get healthy. And, that is no small thing for someone who shares a home with sugary, fatty, and salty foods.
So, yes, there are times that I eat too many dates, and I would prefer not to fail in this way. But, I have had to find my pathway to succeed and fail around myself, around what I know of my own hunger drive, and to consider foods, including dates, in the wider context of my life.
The fact is that I have not deliberately eaten processed sugar in more than 4 years, and that is a big deal. And, it is also a big deal that on most days, dates serve more as a conduit for me to eat more vegetables than as a sweet treat on their own.
Dates are part of my success plan, and dates are part of my failure plan. They work both ways for me, and I choose to eat them. If they were a trigger food, that would change the way I eat them.
If I ever decide to eliminate dates from my eating, I know how to do that. Removing potato chips, removing pizza, removing cookies, removing dates … it’s all the same process.
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