Olive oil the elixir of anti-aging?
By Liz Campbell & Sue Wakefield,
Jeanne Calment, a French woman, holds the record for the longest confirmed lifespan. She reportedly attributed her over 122 years and remarkably youthful appearance to olive oil, which she poured on her food and rubbed into her skin.
This could turn the anti-aging cosmetic industry upside down.
In fact, it turns out Mme. Calment was right. Olive oil is actually good for you. A high intake of oleic acid, the monounsaturated fat that is found in the purest olive oil, has been shown to be so good that the World Health Organization recommends the Mediterranean diet as the world’s healthiest and suggests olive oil as the best source of fat.
It gets better.
The Spanish have an old saying: “Olive oil will take the pain away.” And apparently, it does.
In an article in science journal Nature, researchers reported a previously unknown compound – oleocanthal – in extra-virgin olive oil, acts in a manner similar to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin and ibuprofen.
Small wonder that Homer referred to olive oil as “liquid gold”.
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Olive pest in Southern California
By Dan Bryant,
Olive psyllid, a serious pest of olives in Mediterranean locales, has been identified on landscape olive trees in Southern California and may pose a threat to the state’s olive industry, according to a University of California, Riverside research entomologist.
“Psyllids are some of the most fecund insects I have worked with,” he said. “Females can each lay more than 1,000 eggs and become a pest in the spring when olive shoots start to appear.”
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Posted in California, Ecology | Environment, Olive Tree by: Olives101
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Olive Oil: A Weight-Loss Blessing
By Dr. Connie Peraglie Guttersen, R.D., Ph.D.
In Sonoma County each year, there’s a special festival called the Blessing of the Olives. That’s how central olive trees and the foods they yield are to the economy and the eating habits of the region. And olive oil is the most treasured gift of these blessed trees. In fact, there’s probably no food choice you’ll make that does more for your health and weight loss efforts than olive oil.
Which is good news for your taste buds, because no other vegetable oil comes close to olive oil’s rich and pleasing flavor. It’s at the heart of Mediterranean cuisine’s appeal. A dish prepared with olive oil almost seems to announce to anyone who smells or tastes it, “I’m special.”
Healthy Fat
The research is clear as can be that a major reason for southern Europeans’ low rate of heart disease is their liberal use of olive oil as their main source of dietary fat. By adopting olive oil in the same way, you’ll get the same benefits. And because you’ll learn to enjoy olive oil in healthy amounts in place of the harmful fats you may be used to, you will lose weight.
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An olive primer
All olives are not created equal when it comes to martinis. A few guidelines:
The olive doesn’t flavor the liquor so much as the liquor flavors the olive. If you want olive flavor in the drink, make it dirty by adding olive brine or use cracked olives.- Use milder olives in gin martinis so they don’t clash with gin’s herbal edge; use spicier olives in vodka martinis. The most compatible flavored vodkas for good olives are pepper and lemon vodkas.
- Stuff your own olives with goat cheese or capers.
- You can mix and match olives in a single drink, what some call a gin salad. But remember that cocktails, especially classic martinis, are works of classic eye appeal, not an everything-on-it pizza.
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Choosing the healthiest, tastiest Olive Oil
There are lots of good reasons to stock your pantry with olive oil. Long the most commonly used oil in the Mediterranean (as much as 25 to 40 percent of calories consumed in this region come from olive oil), extra-virgin olive oil’s healthful properties come from rich levels of monounsaturated fat, which promote “good” cholesterol, as well as abundant polyphenols, powerful antioxidants that may help prevent cardiovascular disease and lower blood pressure.
But when confronted with dozens of olive oils at the grocery store, labelled with terms like “cold-pressed” and “unfiltered” on their labels, what’s a quality-minded, health-conscious grocery shopper to do?
Extra-virgin and virgin olive oils are processed by crushing olives into a mash, which is pressed to extract the oil (this is called the first press) without the use of heat (called cold pressing). Extra-virgin oils are of higher quality, as the olives used to make them are processed within 24 hours of picking — the longer olives go between picking and processing, the higher their free fatty acid content (extra-virgin olive oil can have up to 0.8 percent, virgin oils two percent). Extra-virgin oils also have more polyphenols than virgin oils.
Posted in Health, Olive Oil, Olive Tree by: Olives101
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