Is Date Sugar Good for Diabetics?

Written by: Danielle Collins

If you’re here for a quick answer to this question, we’re afraid it’s not quite so straightforward. The answer is — it depends on your dietary needs! Date sugar has a lower glycemic index and glycemic load than white sugar, AND it even has nutrients like potassium, calcium and magnesium making it a more nutritious option than white sugar (which has 0 nutritional value.) Read on to learn more about date sugar and whether or not it’s right for your dietary needs!

What is diabetes anyway?

Check out this article for a full overview of diabetes.

Caring for yourself when you have diabetes is important. If you have constant high blood sugar for months to years, it will take a heavy toll on your body, but it may take a decade or more to see what kind of damage is being done to your body (2).

This important task of maintaining your blood sugar, or glucose, levels can also be a difficult one to manage. Of course, it is always recommended to consult with your doctor if you have concerns! Especially because your doctor may have you on a particular plan and making changes can upset the balance and progress you may have.

There are different ways of changing your blood sugar levels, but your body just uses one hormone to level those out: insulin (3). Even though it seems pretty simple, this process can go wrong if your body can’t produce the right amount of insulin to level things out. This leads to diabetes.

Types of Diabetes

There are different types of diabetes, so we’ll break it down before going into whether or not date sugar is good for diabetics.

Type 1 diabetes is caused when your pancreas isn’t producing any insulin at all and this type is actually considered an autoimmune disease (3,
7). Type 2 is the most common and is when your body either doesn’t produce enough insulin or isn’t able to use the insulin that is produced (8, 3). Next up is gestational diabetes, which only occurs during pregnancy, though it does increase the risk of developing it after term in both mother and child
(12). Prediabetes is when the blood sugar is higher than it should be but is not high enough to be considered diabetes (9,
13).

These are the most commonly known types, but there are some other types of diabetes that occur in more rare instances, such as MODY, neonatal, LADA, and type 3c (9, 10, 11).

Is Date Sugar Good for Diabetics?

When baking with our date sugar, substitute ratio is 1:1, while decreasing the dry ingredients by 25%. For example: if the recipe calls for 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of sugar, you’d use 1 cup of date sugar and reduce the flour to ¾ cup.

Perks of baking with date sugar over regular sugar: lower GI & GL, means less sugar in the baked good. Which also means less impact to glucose levels.

Due to the lower GI of dates, even though they do contain sugar, everything else that they have helps your body maintain a more stable sugar level when consumed!

This guy tested it for himself!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C9lZXuIuJfc/

What’s the Glucose Loadout (GL) of Date Sugar?

To find the GL of a food, the GI is multiplied by the grams of carbs eaten and then that number is divided by 100.

The formula looks like this:

GL = (GI x grams of carbs eaten) / 100

Dates have a low GI when tested and the study did not show any significant difference between participants with diabetes and those without. This means the date sugar did not significantly impact blood sugar levels regardless of the presence of diabetes (15).

Dates generally have a GI between 44-53 (14). If we take the higher end at 53 and do the math:
(53 x 5 (5 grams of carbs per 2 tsp)) = 265 / 100 = 2.65

We get a GL of 2.65 per 2 tsp of date sugar. The general recommendation is keeping your daily GL under 100. Of course, this does depend on what your individual health goals and needs are (15).

Let’s compare that to regular sugar. White sugar has a medium GI of 65 (16).

There are 5 grams of carbohydrates per 1 tsp of sugar.

(65 x 5) = 325 / 100 = 3.25

So as we see here, just 1 tsp of white sugar is already a higher GL than twice the amount of date sugar (17).

Stevia has GI of zero and does not contain any carbohydrates; however, check your packaging as many do contain additives that have a high GI
(18).

Something else to consider with our Date Lady date sugar is that you're getting 1 gram of fiber per serving, which can contribute to helping that glucose stay level, and 5.8mg of calcium to support those bones, 70.4 mg of potassium for rebuilding muscle, 15 mg of phosphorus, and 5 mg of magnesium. Both phosphorus and magnesium help make stronger bones, and aid in the processes of using carbohydrates, fats, and supporting blood glucose.

Getting these additional nutrients from a whole food source as a sugar substitute is great for those looking to add those whole food options in.

American Heart Association recommends keeping your calorie intake from sugar to 5% of your daily total.

Overall whether or not date sugar is good for diabetics depends on your diet and nutrition goals. Date sugar is a better alternative to regular sugar, but could still impact your sugar levels, depending on what else is in your diet and how your body processes it. It’s always a good idea to talk to your doctor if you have questions about your health and nutrition! Date sugar can easily be substituted for real sugar in recipes, as mentioned earlier, to make them more diabetic friendly with that lower GL.

Diabetes Friendly Recipes

If you’re interested in trying some recipes with date sugar, here are a few popular ones that’ll give you a protein-packed sweet treat with less sugar!

Peanut Butter Mousse	Granola	Chocolate Chip Chia Seed Muffins

References

1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1357303918302627
2. https://uihc.org/childrens/health-topics/high-blood-sugar-type-1-diabetes#:~:text=Kidney%20damage%20and%20kidney%20failure,and%20needles%20in%20the%20feet
3. https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/diabetes-and-insulin#:~:text=Insulin%20is%20a%20hormone%20our,body's%20cells%20to%20make%20energy
4. https://diabetes.org/blog/five-things-know-about-ketones
5. https://diabetes.org/about-diabetes/complications/ketoacidosis-dka/dka-ketoacidosis-ketones?_gl=1%2A1jqgikq%2A_gcl_au%2AMTIwOTYxMzU5OC4xNzMxMDE4Njg1%2A_ga%2ANjIyMTY3Mzc1LjE3MzEwMTg2ODc.%2A_ga_JQDP2V81FZ%2AMTczMTAxODY4Ni4xLjAuMTczMTAxODY5MS41NS4wLjA.
6. https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/about/about-type-1-diabetes.html#:~:text=If%20you%20have%20type%201,builds%20up%20in%20the%20bloodstream.
7. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/diabetes/type-1-diabetes
8. https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/diabetes/overview/what-is-diabetes/type-2-diabetes
9. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/7104-diabetes
10. https://www.healthline.com/health/diabetes/types-of-diabetes
11. https://idf.org/about-diabetes/rare-forms-of-diabetes/
12. https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/diabetes/overview/what-is-diabetes/gestational
13. https://www.healthline.com/health/diabetes/types-of-diabetes#incidence
14. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/dates-for-diabetes#:~:text=If%20you%20have%20diabetes%2C%20consider,choice%20for%20people%20with%20diabetes
15. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/dates-for-diabetes#effect-on-blood-sugar
16. https://www.sugarnutritionresource.org/sugar-health/glycemic-index-and-glycemic-load-2#:~:text=Sugar%20and%20the%20glycemic%20index&text=Sucrose%20or%20table%20sugar%20has%20a%20medium%20GI%20of%2065.
17. https://dtc.ucsf.edu/living-with-diabetes/diet-and-nutrition/understanding-carbohydrates/demystifying-sugar/#:~:text=One%20teaspoon%20of%20sugar%20has,of%20carbohydrate%2C%20and%2060%20calories.
18. https://www.goodrx.com/conditions/diabetes/does-stevia-raise-blood-sugar
19. https://www.piedmont.org/living-real-change/natural-ways-to-balance-your-blood-sugar