A low-body-fat raw vegan plan really is a diet plan within a diet. Veganism removes animal foods, eating raw removes anything cooked or baked, and the low-fat rule then cuts back high-fat plant foods such as nuts, seeds and avocado. Each filter is easy to follow alone. Stacked together, they decide which foods can still carry particular nutrients. This article follows two minerals, potassium and magnesium, through all three filters, using NHS intake figures and USDA FoodData Central (SR Legacy) values per 100g. Dates come up because, per 100g, Medjool dates hold about twice as much of both minerals as raw banana.
What the NHS says you need
The NHS describes potassium as a mineral that helps control the balance of fluids in the body. Adults aged 19 to 64 need 3,500mg a day. Magnesium helps turn the food we eat into energy. Men aged 19 to 64 need 300mg a day and women 270mg.
Neither mineral is on the NHS list of nutrients a badly planned vegan diet could miss. That list names calcium, iron, vitamin B12, iodine and selenium. For both potassium and magnesium, the NHS says you should be able to get all you need from a varied and balanced diet. On a diet with three filters, "varied" is the hard part, so it helps to see where the minerals sit.
Running the NHS food lists through the filters
The NHS names bananas, some vegetables (broccoli, parsnips and brussels sprouts), beans and pulses, nuts and seeds, fish, beef, chicken and turkey as good sources of potassium. The vegan filter removes the last four. For magnesium the NHS names spinach, nuts and wholemeal bread. Bread is baked, so the raw filter removes it.
The low-fat filter is the one that bites hardest on magnesium. Nuts and seeds are rich in it, but they are mostly fat:
- Pumpkin seed kernels (dried): 592mg magnesium and 49.0g fat per 100g
- Almonds: 270mg magnesium and 49.9g fat per 100g
- Raw spinach: 79mg magnesium and 0.39g fat per 100g
- Medjool dates: 54mg magnesium and 0.15g fat per 100g
- Deglet Noor dates: 43mg magnesium and 0.39g fat per 100g
- Raw banana: 27mg magnesium and 0.33g fat per 100g
Covering a man's 300mg from pumpkin seeds alone takes about 51g of them, which brings about 25g of fat. Almonds would take about 111g and about 55g of fat. Raw spinach gets there in about 380g with well under 2g of fat, and Medjool dates in about 556g with under 1g.
Potassium: dates against the fresh foods
Gram for gram, dates hold a lot of potassium for a fruit. Medjool has 696mg per 100g and Deglet Noor 656mg, against 358mg in raw banana. Among the NHS-named vegetables, raw brussels sprouts have 389mg and raw broccoli 316mg. Raw spinach, which the NHS lists for magnesium, has 558mg.
Calories change the picture. To reach 3,500mg from one food alone:
- Raw spinach: about 627g, for about 144 kcal
- Raw brussels sprouts: about 900g, for about 387 kcal
- Raw banana: about 978g, for about 870 kcal
- Medjool dates: about 503g, for about 1,393 kcal
- Avocado: about 722g, for about 1,155 kcal and about 106g of fat
Among these five, dates carry the most potassium per gram and raw spinach the most per calorie. The list shows a trade-off, not a menu. Avocado shows why the low-fat filter matters: per 100g it has 485mg of potassium, less than either date, with 14.7g of fat.
Where a date portion fits
The NHS counts 30g of dried fruit, about the same as 80g of fresh fruit, as one of your 5 A Day, and asks that dried fruit be eaten at mealtimes, not as a between-meal snack. On the FDC figures, 30g of Medjool gives about 209mg of potassium and 16mg of magnesium for about 83 kcal and less than 0.1g of fat. The same weight of Deglet Noor gives about 197mg of potassium and 13mg of magnesium for about 85 kcal.
That is a small share of the daily figures: roughly 6% of the potassium and about 5% of a man's magnesium from Medjool. A meal pairing a 30g portion of dates with 200g of raw spinach comes to about 1,325mg of potassium and 174mg of magnesium for about 129 kcal on the same FDC values, and the spinach supplies most of both.
Dried dates are not the only form. Kurma Rotab Green Diamond covers rotab, which that site describes as a date picked at the soft, moist stage just before it ripens fully and sold fresh rather than dried. The FDC records used here are for dried Medjool and Deglet Noor, so the figures above should not be read across to rotab.
Planning the plan
The NHS advice on vegan eating is that good planning lets you get all the nutrients your body needs. For a low-fat raw plan, the numbers above suggest a working rule. Let leafy greens such as spinach carry most of the magnesium and much of the potassium. Use dates and bananas for potassium alongside energy. Treat nuts and seeds as small, measured additions, because a magnesium-sized serving of them is also a large serving of fat.
The NHS also points out that if you take potassium or magnesium supplements, taking too much could be harmful. This article is general nutrition information, not medical advice, and anyone changing their diet with a health condition should check with a doctor first.
More date articles are on the Kurma Online blog. You can read about Kurma Online or ask a question through the contact page.