Well gee, I guess we could take that logic to prove that if you found a ton of silver in your backyard you should throw it away. After all, gold is much much more valuable than silver and platinum even more so. That makes silver bad news.
Come on, that doesn't fit at all. There's no active drawback to silver. If you find a bunch of silver, you've found a bunch of money.
The sugar content of dates, however, is an active drawback. Eating dates increases potential glycation in your system. It provides ready food for pathogens. It causes an insulin surge, which can lead to insulin resistance over time. Etc.
People like to have a little desert now and then. Not too many people consider an apple desert. It's much better to eat a natural fruit than to consume crap like most of the processed food is today. No msg, aspartame, hydrogenated oils or any of the other artificial garbage that you find in most processed foods. How much fiber do you get from a Sara Lee cake?
I'm not saying people don't want to eat some dessert or even that nobody should ever eat dates. And sure, in the overall ranking of foods, dates are most likely better than Sara Lee cakes, though
the PDF I'm looking at doesn't show any hydrogenated oil, and the carb total is actually appreciably less per 100g. Then again, a date is likely to contain all sorts of trace nutrients that a Sara Lee cake is bereft of, and it's not like the eggs in the cake are going to be anything but the worst quality... so, I'll give the dates a qualified win.
Not considering fruit a dessert, though, is a relatively modern problem. If we're trying to maintain optimum health for as long as possible, it seems to me that we ought to pay attention to all aspects of food quality. So yeah, I'm being pedantic in this thread, but I think I'm making valid and important points.
-Paul