Nutritional Value of Date Fruits and Potential Use in Nutritional Bars for Athletes

The date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is one of the oldest primary staple crops in Southwest Asia and North Africa. Date palms are also grown in Australia, Mexico, South America, Southern Africa, and the United States, especially in Southern California, Arizona, and Texas. Date fruit is a high nutritional value food that is rich in carbohydrates, dietary fibers, proteins, minerals and vitamin B complex such as thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), pantothenic (B5), pyridoxine (B6), and folate (B9). Carbohydrates comprise 70% of date fruit mainly as fructose and glucose. Minerals in date fruits are calcium, iron, magnesium, selenium, copper, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, sulfur, cobalt, fluorine, and manganese. Date fruits are highly nourishing and may thus confer numerous potential health benefits. In recent years, a huge interest in the abundant health promoting properties of date fruits has led to the need to develop new food products using dates as a source of nutrients. Thus, the aim of this paper is to review the nutritional value of date fruits in the context of the potential use of dates in nutrition bars for athletes.

24-Hour movement behaviours and COVID-19 among children in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia:A repeat cross-sectional study

This study investigated how children's 24-hour(24-h)movement behaviours were affected by SARS-CoV-2(COVID-19)in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.Previous research examined 24-h movement behaviours in Saudi Arabia seven months after the World Health Organization(WHO)declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.This repeat cross-sectional study examined changes in 24-h movement behaviours 12 months after the WHO declaration.The Time 2 survey repeated five months(1 March–15 May 2021)after Time 1 survey(1 October–11 November 2020).The survey was distributed to parents of children aged 6–12 years across Saudi Arabia via an online survey.Children were classified as meeting 24-h movement guidelines if they reported uninterrupted sleep for 9–11 h per night,2 h of recreational sedentary screen time(RST)per day and-60 min of moderate-to vigorous-intensity physical activity(MVPA)per day.A total of 1045 parents from all regions of Saudi Arabia responded(42.4%).Only 1.8%of children met all components of the guidelines,compared to 3.4%in Time 1.In the present study,girls spent more days per week in MVPA-60 min duration than boys(3.0 vs 2.6;p=0.025),while boys had spent more days per week engaged in activities that strengthened muscle and bone than girls(3.0 vs 2.8;p=0.019).Healthy levels of physical activity(PA),sedentary behaviour(SB)and sleep further declined in Saudi children five months after the Time 1 survey.These challenges require urgent intervention to ensure children's movement behaviours improve as Saudi Arabia moves out of the COVID-19 pandemic.