Dating Dates: A 4,000-Year-Old Fruit, with Biblical Roots

It has humble roots, but a grand name: “the tree of life,” and its history stretches back thousands of years.

The date may be a small and wrinkled fruit, but it definitely merits your respect. For starters, the date palm, Phoenix dactylifera, has been part of the food supply in the Middle East and North Africa for more than 4,000 years, one of mankind’s first cultivated crops, whose resilience in harsh climates and desert regions has earned it that nickname, “the tree of life,” as its cultivation moved East, West, North, and South.

Today, it is a cash crop with both cultural and religious significance, a traditional fast breaker for the Islamic first day of Ramadan. In Exodus and Leviticus, there is a reference to the “land of milk and honey,” and biblical scholars say the “honey” reference is to the honey from dates, not bee honey.

For the record, the fruit is not the date tree’s only useful crop. Date seeds may be roasted and ground as a caffeine-free coffee substitute or ground and mixed with flour for baking; young date leaves can be cooked and served as a vegetable; tough older ones are used for woven products such as baskets, hats, fans, and even roofing

The food itself is a bundle of pure energy. More than 79 percent of the date’s weight is sugars. Dates also provide iron, but (ironically) the mineral is hard to get at because dates, unlike most fruits and veggies, have no vitamin C, a nutrient once commonly employed to convert the inorganic iron in plant food to a form your body more easily absorbs.

No surprise that it’s also a valued folk medicine. Like tea, dates contain astringent tannins. Teas made from high-tannin foods have been used to soothe an upset stomach or relieve a sore throat, while the food itself may be applied directly to skin to ease a joint or muscle ache.

In one small French study at the Vincience Research Center researchers made a skin cream with 5 percent date palm kernel extract rich in plant hormones. Ten middle-aged women used the cream around their eyes twice daily for five weeks. The result? While the study was much too small to be conclusive, the results, said the researchers, “showed a lot of promise.”

Today, America still imports plenty of dates, but seedlings planted in California’s Coachella Valley in the mid-18th century by Spanish missionaries are thriving. According to the website See California, plantings cover over 6,500 acres where they produce a yearly crop of more than 40 million pounds of the four primary types of the fruit (Medjool, Deglet-Noor, Barhi, Zahidi).

So, are dates good for you? Indeed they are. According to the US Department of Agriculture, one 100 gram/3.5 ounce serving of four dates delivers respectable percentages of the Recommended Dietary Allowance for the minerals copper (40 percent), potassium: (23 percent), magnesium (15 percent), and manganese (14 percent), plus brain-boosting Vitamin B6 ( 17 percent). And, as Cleveland Clinic dietitian Gilliam Culbertson notes, “Dates are also high in fiber with about seven grams per serving. That’s the same amount of fiber as a cup of cooked whole-wheat pasta or just under a half-cup of lentils.”

One cautionary note: Fresh or dried, all dates are low-moisture, sticky, and so sweet that missionaries called them “candy from a tree.” The important difference is that dried dates may contain sulfur compounds such as sulfur dioxide, sodium bisulfite, and sodium sulfite to prevent natural alcohols in the fruit from darkening the flesh as it dries. Because these may trigger serious allergic reactions, all sulfured dates must carry a warning label.