Low-fat raw veganism really is a diet inside a diet, and then inside another one. Veganism takes out food from animals. Eating raw takes out the cooker. The low-fat rule then takes out most of the dense plant foods that were left, which means nuts, seeds and avocado. Three filters, stacked. The honest way to judge the plan is to pick one nutrient and see what still gets through all of them.
Zinc is a good one to test, because the NHS list of where to find it reads like a list of things this plan has already removed.
What the NHS says about zinc
The NHS page on other vitamins and minerals gives five good sources of zinc: meat, shellfish, dairy foods such as cheese, bread, and cereal products such as wheatgerm. It puts the daily need at about 9.5mg for men aged 19 to 64 and 7mg for women. It also says you should be able to get all the zinc you need from your daily diet.
Now run those five through the stack. The vegan filter removes meat, shellfish and cheese. The raw filter removes bread. Wheatgerm is the last one standing, and USDA FoodData Central lists crude wheat germ at 9.72g of fat per 100g (FDC 168892). The NHS food-label guide calls a food low in fat at 3g or less per 100g and high at more than 17.5g. Used as a yardstick here, wheatgerm misses the low-fat line by a wide margin. None of the five NHS sources, taking wheatgerm as the cereal example, gets through all three filters.
How much food it takes to reach 7mg
So the zinc has to come from somewhere else. The table below uses USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy figures per 100g and works out how much of each food alone would supply 7mg, the NHS figure for women. Weights and energy are rounded.
| Food (FDC record) | Zinc per 100g | Fat per 100g | Weight for 7mg | Energy in that weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spinach, raw (168462) | 0.53mg | 0.39g | 1.32kg | 304 kcal |
| White mushrooms, raw (169251) | 0.52mg | 0.34g | 1.35kg | 296 kcal |
| Raspberries, raw (167755) | 0.42mg | 0.65g | 1.67kg | 867 kcal |
| Medjool dates (168191) | 0.44mg | 0.15g | 1.59kg | 4,407 kcal |
| Deglet Noor dates (171726) | 0.29mg | 0.39g | 2.41kg | 6,807 kcal |
| Bananas, raw (173944) | 0.15mg | 0.33g | 4.67kg | 4,153 kcal |
| Apples, raw, with skin (171688) | 0.04mg | 0.17g | 17.5kg | 9,100 kcal |
| Hemp seed, hulled (170148) | 9.9mg | 48.8g | 71g | 391 kcal |
| Pumpkin seed kernels, dried (170556) | 7.81mg | 49.0g | 90g | 501 kcal |
| Cashew nuts, raw (170162) | 5.78mg | 43.8g | 121g | 670 kcal |
On fat, the table falls into two groups with nothing in between. Every food in it under the 3g fat line needs more than a kilogram to reach 7mg on its own. Spinach and mushrooms get there for around 300 kcal, although 1.3kg of raw spinach is a great deal of chewing. Raspberries need 867 kcal. Dates, bananas and apples get there only by carrying thousands of kcal along with them. The seeds and cashews reach 7mg in 71g to 121g, but at 43.8g to 49.0g of fat per 100g each one sits far above the NHS high-fat line.
Where dates sit
On paper, dates suit a low-fat raw plan well. Medjool has 0.15g of fat per 100g and Deglet Noor 0.39g. They do carry some zinc. Per 100g, Medjool has slightly more than raspberries (0.44mg against 0.42mg) and eleven times as much as apple.
The catch is the sugar that comes with it: 66.5g of total sugars per 100g in Medjool and 63.4g in Deglet Noor. The NHS 5 A Day guide counts 30g of dried fruit as one portion and says it should be eaten at mealtimes, not as a snack between meals, to reduce the impact on teeth. A 30g portion of Medjool brings about 0.13mg of zinc, under 2% of the 7mg figure. Dates can fill the sweet part of a raw plate. They do not close the zinc gap.
Fresh-stage dates are their own category. The Kurma Rotab Green Diamond site describes rotab as a date picked at the soft, moist stage just before it ripens fully, sold fresh rather than dried.
Running a diet within a diet
For zinc, the stacked rules leave two routes. One is volume: large daily amounts of greens and mushrooms. The other is a measured portion of seeds, which breaks the strict low-fat rule but keeps the raw and vegan ones. Thirty grams of hulled hemp seed holds about 3.0mg of zinc and 14.6g of fat.
General vegan advice leans towards the second route. The NHS vegan diet page tells vegans to eat nuts and seeds rich in omega-3 fatty acids, such as walnuts, every day. It also says that with good planning a vegan diet can give you all the nutrients your body needs, and that without planning you could miss out on essential ones. It lists vitamin D, vitamin B12, iodine, selenium and calcium as nutrients that are harder to get on a vegan diet, where fortified foods or supplements come in. On zinc supplements, the NHS says not to take more than 25mg a day unless a doctor advises it.
A strict, long-term version of this plan deserves a conversation with a GP or dietitian before it starts, not after.
Buying dates for the plan
Pengedar Kurma Malaysia handles everything from retail purchases to wholesale supply, with delivery across the country, as our about us page explains. Questions, quotes and orders go through WhatsApp on the contact page.