"Date" field prints date and TIME from SendMail script

"Date" field prints date and TIME from SendMail script

I am new to ZC,  so this may be a fairly basic question:
I created a date field called Start_Date, but when I call it up from a SendMail script it comes out with a date and unwanted time in the e-mail.  (The time is always 08:00:00 - maybe because I have set the time zone as GMT)
Is there a way to defeat this?
It seems odd if you define a field as date only that it should produce a time as well.