— Rosie AIELLO

So we're gonna talk about two things. One is, um, maple syrup, and the other one are dates. And, uh, in the United States, the Coachella Valley is the number one date, produ date producing part of the United States. And 60 years ago, all along the highway in Coachella, there were date farms where people would sell date shakes and date ice cream. Pardon that noise. So here's why I suggest, uh, to recommend either maple syrup or making a date paste, or you can even get date sugar. Um, they, they have it at Trader Joe's. They have it at most, uh, uh, specialty stores. Um, you can find it online made by the date lady. Another company is D apostrophe VASH, DAV. So here's the thing, if you look on a sugar label and you look down the nutrition side, it says 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 0. It goes on. If you look at this bottle of, um, maple syrup, it has zero fat, zero sodium, which is a plus, but it also has 30 milligrams of calcium, 2% of the daily, uh, allotment. You need to have 1200 milligrams of calcium a day. So do the math. And it's also a good source of potassium. However, I actually do prefer dates for a couple of reasons. I think that you can control the sweetness a little bit more. And the other part about it is that it contains the same calcium, it contains more potassium, but it also has three grams of fiber if you eat two of these dates. So if you are, uh, hoping to up your fiber game for the day, making a date puree, uh, or a date paste might be the best thing for your recipe, in my opinion. Because remember that we're supposed to be eating about 30 milligrams of fiber a day. So, um, this is a good way to, you know, add three milligrams to your daily allotment of sugar. And as for the xylitol, uh, question, I'm going to say a big fat zero. Uh, it's a sugar alcohol, it causes, uh, digestive problems. It's heavily processed, so stick with maple syrup, date syrup, fresh dates, date, sugar, et cetera, et cetera.