The Chinese date is a useful medicinal herb in Traditional Chinese Medicine. It’s called Da Zao in Chinese, which translates into big date. Chinese dates are also called red dates or jujubes. And most interestingly, they are not actually dates!
True dates are brown in color and grow on palm trees, called date palms. In contrast, Chinese dates are red and grown on large flowering trees or shrubs that are a part of the Ziziphus, or buckthorn family. Like palm dates, Chinese dates have pits, and they are both sweet tasting fruits.
As a Chinese medicinal herb, Da Zao has warming properties and is great for replenishing your energy. It’s incorporated into formulas for patients experiencing weakness, a lack of appetite, poor digestion and fatigue. Da Zao is also a blood tonic and has calming properties, so it is often used to treat irritability and insomnia caused by a lack of nourishing properties in the blood. This herb is used to balance the properties of other herbs in a formula, a term called harmonizing. This means that it can temper the effects of harsh herbs, improve the taste of a formula, and enhance the balance between the other herbs used.
In addition to its usefulness as a nourishing herb, Chinese dates are also a healthy food. They’re high in antioxidants, which counteract free radical damage from environmental toxins, damage from sunlight and wear and tear from your body’s normal metabolic processes. They are high in vitamin C, potassium and iron, and each date packs over a gram of protein. Due to its high fiber content, Chinese dates can help with digestive problems and constipation.
How to Eat Chinese Dates
Unlike palm dates, Chinese dates can be eaten when they’re green. The green dates are fresh and have a crunchy texture, somewhat like an apple. As they ripen, Chinese dates turn red and their skin shrivels—they essentially sun dry themselves on the tree. While palm dates are sugary sweet and dense, Chinese dates aren’t quite as sweet and are soft and fluffy; they’ve been described by some as nature’s natural marshmallows.
You can eat Chinese dates raw, either fresh or ripened, but either way leave the peel on. Dried Chinese dates are often added to soups, used to flavor tea and can be used in baked goods instead of raisins or palm dates. Like many other fruits, they can be roasted or smoked, candied, or made into jam or a fruit spread. Regardless of how you eat them, or what you call them—jujubes, Red Dates, Da Zao, or Chinese Dates—these fruits pack a nutritional punch and are an important player in Chinese herbal medicine.
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