If you are trying to bring your cholesterol down, the ingredients list on a packet is where to look for the fats the NHS asks you to eat less of.
Some context first. The NHS says you can lower your cholesterol by eating healthily and getting more exercise, and that some people also need medicine. Eating fatty food and being overweight are among the causes it lists. High cholesterol does not usually cause symptoms, so the NHS says a blood test is the only way to find out if you have it.
The foods the NHS points to
The NHS page on how to lower your cholesterol says to cut down on fatty food, especially food containing saturated fat, and that you can still have foods with unsaturated fat. It also says to check labels on food to see what type of fat it has in it. Its "try to eat more" list is oily fish like mackerel and salmon; olive oil, rapeseed oil and spreads made from these oils; brown rice, wholegrain bread and wholewheat pasta; nuts and seeds; and fruits and vegetables.
The "try to eat less" list is the one to keep in mind with a packet in your hand:
- meat pies, sausages and fatty meat
- butter, lard and ghee
- cream and cheese
- cakes and biscuits
- food that contains coconut oil or palm oil
That last line is the one you check on the ingredients list.
Reading the ingredients list
Turn the packet over. The NHS guide to food labels says ingredients must be listed in descending order of weight, so the main ingredients always come first. It adds that if the first few ingredients are high-fat ones, such as cream, butter or oil, the food is likely to be high in fat.
Two things are worth looking for. The first is where any oil or fat sits in the list, and whether it is named as palm oil, coconut oil, butter or ghee. The second is hydrogenated vegetable oil: the NHS page on fat says that, like saturated fats, trans fats can raise cholesterol levels in the blood, that they can be found in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, and that adults should not have more than about 5 g of trans fats a day.
The same fat page gives the saturated fat cut-offs for the nutrition panel. More than 5 g of saturates per 100 g counts as high, and 1.5 g or less per 100 g counts as low. It says too much saturated fat can raise "bad" LDL cholesterol, and that there is good evidence that replacing saturated fats with some unsaturated fats can help to lower your cholesterol level.
Low fat is not the whole story
The NHS adds a warning about "lower fat" labels. Foods that are lower in fat are not necessarily lower in calories, it says, because the fat is sometimes replaced with sugar. So check the energy figure as well as the fat.
Plain dates show why. USDA FoodData Central lists Deglet Noor dates at 0 mg of cholesterol, 0.39 g of fat and 0.032 g of saturated fat per 100 g, well under the NHS low-fat cut-off of 3 g and the low saturated fat cut-off of 1.5 g. Medjool dates have 0.15 g of fat per 100 g. Both bring fibre too: 8.0 g per 100 g for Deglet Noor and 6.7 g for Medjool.
The energy and sugar are another matter: 277 kcal and 66.5 g of sugars per 100 g for Medjool, 282 kcal and 63.4 g for Deglet Noor. Being overweight is on the NHS list of causes, so the portion counts. The NHS says a 30 g portion of dried fruit, such as dates, counts as one of your 5 A Day, and should be eaten at mealtimes, not as a snack between meals, to reduce the impact on teeth.
These figures are for plain dates. If the ingredients list on a date pack names anything else, such as a filling, a coating or a syrup, they no longer describe what is in the pack.
What the date studies found
A food with no cholesterol is different from a food that lowers the cholesterol in your blood. Here is what three studies on that second question found.
In a pilot study (Rock et al., 2009), ten healthy people ate 100 g a day of Medjool or Hallawi dates for four weeks. Total cholesterol and the cholesterol in the VLDL, LDL and HDL fractions did not change significantly. Triglycerides went down by 8% with Medjool and 15% with Hallawi.
In a randomised trial (Butler et al., 2022), 79 adults with type 2 diabetes had either 60 g of dates or 60 g of raisins a day for 12 weeks. Of the 79, 61 completed the study. Lipids showed no difference between or within the groups.
A meta-analysis that included only people with type 2 diabetes (Mirghani and Alhowiti, 2025) combined fourteen cohorts from four studies, with 298 participants. Dates reduced total cholesterol in the pooled analysis, although heterogeneity was 90%. There were no significant changes in LDL, triglycerides or HDL, and the authors say larger studies are needed.
So the evidence is thin: the study in healthy people found no change in cholesterol, the diabetes trial found no change in lipids, and the meta-analysis, in type 2 diabetes only, found lower total cholesterol but no significant change in LDL. None of the three found that dates made lipids worse. They are a fruit with almost no fat, eaten in portions.
Past the label
The NHS advice goes beyond food. It says to aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity activity a week, to stop smoking, and to avoid drinking more than 14 units of alcohol a week on a regular basis.
None of this means every packaged food is a bad choice. It means reading past the front of the packet is how you find out what you are buying. See our dates fruit range and kurma prices pages.
This article is general information, not medical advice. If you have high cholesterol or take medicine for it, talk to your doctor before changing your diet.
References
- Rock W, et al. Effects of date (Phoenix dactylifera L., Medjool or Hallawi variety) consumption by healthy subjects on serum glucose and lipid levels and on serum oxidative status: a pilot study. J Agric Food Chem. 2009;57(17):8010-7. PMID 19681613
- Butler AE, et al. Effect of Date Fruit Consumption on the Glycemic Control of Patients with Type 2 Diabetes: A Randomized Clinical Trial. Nutrients. 2022;14(17):3491. PMID 36079749
- Mirghani HO, Alhowiti A. Dates fruit effects on dyslipidemia among patients with Type-2 diabetes mellitus: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials. Pak J Med Sci. 2025;41(1):331-337. PMID 39867809
- NHS. High cholesterol; How to lower your cholesterol; How to read food labels; Fat: the facts; 5 A Day: what counts?
- USDA FoodData Central, SR Legacy (2019): Dates, deglet noor, FDC ID 171726; Dates, medjool, FDC ID 168191.