Dates are one of the healthiest sweeteners. That’s what we use in The How Not to Die Cookbook. You can blend them with water to make date syrup or use date sugar, which is a whole food—just dried dates ground into powder—and as such is packed with nutrition, ending up with as much antioxidant power as blackstrap molasses, but without the strong taste, though not all brands are the same. For example, Bob’s Red Mill may have twice the antioxidants compared to NOW Foods, though they only tested one package each. Okay, so dates are healthy compared to other sweeteners, but that’s not saying much. Do dates have any special medicinal properties? You’ll see papers like this in the medical literature, touting the “Therapeutic effects of date fruits in the prevention of diseases… anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant and anti-tumour activity,” complete with figures like this of the purported “pharmacological activities of dates fruits …