This post looks at the fat lines on a nutrition label: what the numbers mean, which cut-offs the NHS uses, and how they tie into its advice on foods that help lower cholesterol. Dates come in at the end, with the studies that tested them.
Why the fat lines matter for cholesterol
The NHS says you can lower your cholesterol by eating healthily and getting more exercise, and that some people also need to take medicine. Eating fatty food is one of the causes it lists. High cholesterol does not usually cause symptoms, and the only way to find out if you have it is a blood test.
Its page on fat says eating too much saturated fat can raise "bad" LDL cholesterol in your blood, and that trans fats, like saturated fats, can raise cholesterol levels in the blood. It also says there is good evidence that replacing saturated fats with some unsaturated fats can help to lower your cholesterol level. Most fats and oils contain both saturated and unsaturated fats in different proportions, and on UK labels, the NHS says, fat and saturates (saturated fat) must both be listed.
Reading the numbers per 100 g
On UK packs, the NHS says, nutrition information is given per 100 g or per 100 ml, and sometimes per portion. Its food labels page gives these cut-offs:
- total fat: high is more than 17.5 g per 100 g, low is 3 g or less per 100 g
- saturated fat: high is more than 5 g per 100 g, low is 1.5 g or less per 100 g
Saturated fat may be listed as "saturates" or "sat fat". The NHS gives a plain example of using the line: if you're trying to cut down on saturated fat, eat fewer foods that have more than 5 g of saturated fat per 100 g. On front-of-pack labels with colour coding, red means high, amber means medium and green means low, and any red means you should limit how much of that food you have.
The per 100 g figure lets you compare two packets of different sizes. To see what you actually eat, use the per portion figure, or work it out from the weight you eat, and set it against the NHS daily limits: men should not eat more than 30 g of saturated fat a day and women no more than 20 g, with less for children.
Trans fat and the ingredients list
The NHS says trans fats are found naturally at low levels in some foods, such as meat and dairy products, and can also be found in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. In the UK, hydrogenated vegetable oil must be declared on a food's ingredients list if it has been included. Adults should not have more than about 5 g of trans fats a day. The NHS adds that people in the UK eat a lot more saturated fat than trans fat, so the saturated fat line is the more important one to focus on.
The ingredients list helps in another way. In the UK, the NHS says, ingredients must be listed in descending order of weight, so if the first few are high-fat ingredients such as cream, butter or oil, the food is likely to be high in fat.
One more trap: the NHS says foods that are lower in fat are not necessarily lower in calories, because the fat is sometimes replaced with sugar. Check the energy line as well.
Swaps in the kitchen
The NHS page on how to lower your cholesterol lists what to eat more of: 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. Its eat-less list is meat pies, sausages and fatty meat; butter, lard and ghee; cream and cheese; cakes and biscuits; and food that contains coconut oil or palm oil.
So when you cook, the swap the NHS points to is from butter, ghee, lard, coconut oil or palm oil towards olive oil or rapeseed oil. For a ready-made product, the ingredients list shows which of these fats went into it.
What a date label shows
Plain Deglet Noor and Medjool dates have very little fat. USDA FoodData Central lists Deglet Noor dates at 0.39 g of fat, 0.032 g of saturated fat and 0 mg of cholesterol per 100 g, and Medjool dates at 0.15 g of fat per 100 g. By the NHS cut-offs that is low in fat and low in saturated fat.
The sugar line tells a different story. Medjool dates have 66.5 g of sugars per 100 g and Deglet Noor dates 63.4 g, against the NHS "high" cut-off of more than 22.5 g of total sugars per 100 g. The NHS counts a 30 g portion of dried fruit, such as dates, as one of your 5 A Day, to be eaten at mealtimes, not as a snack between meals, to reduce the impact on teeth.
If you blend Medjool or Deglet Noor dates into a paste to use in place of some butter in a recipe, the fat you take out is the butter, since by the FDC figures the paste adds almost none. The sugar stays, and the NHS counts sugar in fruit as free sugar once the fruit is juiced or puréed. Check the label on stuffed or coated dates too, because the figures above are for plain fruit.
What the date studies found
Low fat on a label is not the same as lowering 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. Their total cholesterol and the cholesterol in the VLDL, LDL and HDL fractions did not change significantly. Triglycerides fell by 8% after Medjool and 15% after Hallawi.
A randomised trial (Butler et al., 2022) gave 79 adults with type 2 diabetes either 60 g of dates or 60 g of raisins daily for 12 weeks. Sixty-one completed the study, and lipids showed no difference between or within the groups.
A meta-analysis limited to people with type 2 diabetes (Mirghani and Alhowiti, 2025) pooled fourteen cohorts from four studies, 298 participants in all. Dates reduced total cholesterol in the pooled result, with heterogeneity of 90%. LDL, triglycerides and HDL showed no significant change, and the authors call for larger studies.
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.
Beyond the label
The NHS also 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. Whether you also need medicine is a question for your doctor.
Next time you compare two packets, read the fat and saturated fat lines per 100 g as well as the calorie count. For dates, see our dates fruit range and kurma prices.
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; Fat: the facts; How to read food labels; Sugar: the facts; 5 A Day: what counts?
- USDA FoodData Central, SR Legacy (2019): Dates, deglet noor, FDC ID 171726; Dates, medjool, FDC ID 168191.