what are your thoughts on this?

Its hard to find a really raw olive oil, as the presses create a lot of heat, many beyond that of being raw. Also, even if the oil is really raw, its not a great source of fat, as there is only fat in the olive oil, and its devoid of other nutrients found in real food, like vitamins, minerals, water, fiber, and phytonutrients.

A better source of fat would be avocados or raw nuts and seeds.

Olive oil is tasty and nutritious, which is one of the reasons cultures living where olives grow are blessed with longevity and traditionally good health. Unfortunately, so much of what we get here isn't fresh. If you can get cold stone pressed unfiltered olive oil, go ahead and use it. I find I cannot tolerate more than a small spoonful every few days on salad, but that's not gonna kill me.

It's a refined food, but I'm okay using some cold-pressed unfiltered organic extra-virgin olive oil here and there. I probably wouldn't add it to a dressing and make a fatty salad like that, but I use it (like 1 tsp.) to massage/soften kale.

Olive oil is good on a salad, away from carbs. Mix it with any sort of carb, and it becomes a BIG problem.

Best,
Mark

Olive oil is great if we need to increase our body fat. The fat we eat is the fat we wear and oil is 100% fat.

I only use it for massage and my bicycle chain. Oil would be one of the worst things we could put on our food based on the latest science. But hey, get rid of the animal products before we worry about olive oil.

i like raw olives
they are yummy

durian,

Hmmmm . . . if you're lubricating your bicycle chains with cold pressed olive oil, I'm beginning to understand your monthly food costs!

LV, what is the difference between normally processed olives and raw olives? other than canned olives, I thought the normal brining process with olives didnt involve any cooking? im not really sure though...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Its great for the bike chain,better than animal fat but seriously, long term consumption of oil equates to marked health decline. Use it a few times a year or not at all.

The long lived cultures just ate more plant fat than animal fat and thats why they lived longer. The longest lived cultures ate the least fat calories all up. Hunza, Terra humara, villicamba's etc..they ate around 10% of total calories from fat, longterm.

Watch Jeff Novick's DVD or youtube snippet on "oil to nuts".
[www.youtube.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2010 10:18AM by durianrider.

Part of the problem is that many of the "whole food" olives are salted which makes using the whole food less attractive.

Opponents of olive point out:

- olive oil is 100 percent fat including 14 percent saturated fat.
- one study showed that olive oil reduced "flow mediated vasodialation" FMD by 31% (in plain english, it increased the viscosity and inhibited the elastic expansion of the blood vessel) [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov] And reduced FMD is strongly associative and predictive of chronic heart failure. [content.onlinejacc.org]
- as Prana said above, unlike nuts and seeds, olive oil has virtually no vitamins and minerals apart from a little Vitamin E and Vitamin K. [www.nal.usda.gov]

On the other hand:

- olive oil contains high levels of polyphenols which produce favorable changes to LDL oxidation and blood plasma lipid biomarkers. [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]
- extra virgin olive oil contains squalene and other anti-carcinogenic compounds. [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]
- an inverse relationship between olive oil consumption and cancer exists. [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov][www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

I use a little myself. The dose is the poison. At a 120 calories a tablespoon including almost 2 grams of saturated fat, it's not something you can afford to take a lot of unless you are very physically active. However, in small amounts, it can be part of a healthy vegan diet.

Paul



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2010 10:33PM by pborst.

Pborst: So you don't see a difference between plant fat that happens to contain saturated fat and animal lard? Our bodies need saturated fat, by the way. I don't see why it would be bad at all (it's a monounsaturated fat, to be clear, but even coconut oil seems like it's a lot better than animal fat).

[www.youtube.com]

I just watched this video on YouTube and the guy says that the study that was the basis for the Mediteranian Diet was a study done on the island of Crete after WWII when no one had any money so everyone was gardening and they walked about 9 miles a day.

However, you have to consider that the olive tree is a hardy tree and the leaves have medicinal qualities so it's probably the best oil in the regular supermarket.

banana who Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Pborst: So you don't see a difference between
> plant fat that happens to contain saturated fat
> and animal lard? Our bodies need saturated fat, by
> the way. I don't see why it would be bad at all
> (it's a monounsaturated fat, to be clear, but even
> coconut oil seems like it's a lot better than
> animal fat).

Of course there is a difference. Lard is 100 percent saturated fat; Olive oil, 14 percent saturated fat. The point is olive oil has more saturated fat relative to many other plant oils. And the fact that it reduced flow mediated vasodilation by 31 percent in the Vogel study I site above where canola oil did not points to the power that added saturated fat can have. Olive oil has about 1.8 grams of saturated fat per table spoon whereas canola oil has about 1. That may not sound like a huge difference until you realize that the whole tablespoon is only 14 grams.

Anyway, I agree that olive oil should be used sparingly. But it does has some healthful properties.

The Vogel study concludes olive oil with antioxident rich meals (i.e. salad) did not affect endothelial function; "Two olive oil meals also contained antioxidant vitamins (C and E) or foods (balsamic vinegar and salad)". Only the 3rd olive oil meal manipulated by using only "components" of the Mediterranean diet affected FMD. The 3rd olive oil meal could have been simply olive oil over pasta --

"Vogel RA, Corretti MC, Plotnick GD.

"Department of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA. rvogel@heart.umaryland.edu

"Abstract
OBJECTIVES: This study investigated the postprandial effect of components of the Mediterranean diet on endothelial function, which may be an atherogenic factor.

"BACKGROUND: The Mediterranean diet, containing olive oil, pasta, fruits, vegetables, fish, and wine, is associated with an unexpectedly low rate of cardiovascular events. The Lyon Diet Heart Study found that a Mediterranean diet, which substituted omega-3-fatty-acid-enriched canola oil for the traditionally consumed omega-9 fatty-acid-rich olive oil, reduced cardiovascular events.

"METHODS: We fed 10 healthy, normolipidemic subjects five meals containing 900 kcal and 50 g fat. Three meals contained different fat sources: olive oil, canola oil, and salmon. Two olive oil meals also contained antioxidant vitamins (C and E) or foods (balsamic vinegar and salad). We measured serum lipoproteins and glucose and brachial artery flow-mediated vasodilation (FMD), an index of endothelial function, before and 3 h after each meal.

"RESULTS: All five meals significantly raised serum triglycerides, but did not change other lipoproteins or glucose 3 h postprandially. The olive oil meal reduced FMD 31% (14.3 +/- 4.2% to 9.9 +/- 4.5%, p = 0.008). An inverse correlation was observed between postprandial changes in serum triglycerides and FMD (r = -0.47, p < 0.05). The remaining four meals did not significantly reduce FMD.

"CONCLUSIONS: In terms of their postprandial effect on endothelial function, the beneficial components of the Mediterranean and Lyon Diet Heart Study diets appear to be antioxidant-rich foods, including vegetables, fruits, and their derivatives such as vinegar, and omega-3-rich fish and canola oils."



By the way, the salmon in the study would have had saturated fat.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/10/2010 10:56AM by loeve.

Vogel speaks further of "individual components" versus their inclusion in a varied diet --

"Foods given together may have different vascular effects
than the sum of the individual components. Antioxidantrich
foods, such as fruits, vegetables, red wine, and red
wine-based ingredients (e.g. balsamic vinegar), ingested
with high-fat foods reduce subsequent vascular impairment.6
Given chronically, Mediterranean style diets following several
of these principles have been shown to improve endotheliummediated
vasodilation and reduce inflammatory markers.
These vascular findings may explain the dramatic results of
the Lyon Diet Heart and Indo-Mediterranean Diet Heart
studies, in which Mediterranean style diets reduced allcause
and coronary heart disease mortality to half.7,8..."

[eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org]

loeve Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The 3rd olive oil meal could have been simply olive oil
> over pasta --
>
>

..Ah, it was olive oil over bread. By the way "extra-virgin" is not well regulated in the US like it is in the EU --

"Intervention. All subjects ate five meals in varied order, starting at 8:00 to 10:00 AM, separated by at least a one-week interval. The meals contained 50 g fat and 900 kcal. Three meals contained different sources of fat:

(1) extra-virgin olive oil (50 g) and nonpreservative whole-grain bread (120 g),

(2) canola oil (50 g) and nonpreservative whole-grain bread (120 g), and

(3) canned red salmon (420 g) and crackers (30 g).

"The canola oil and salmon meals contained approximately 5 g and 6 g of omega-3 fatty acid, respectively. The other two meals evaluated the addition of antioxidant vitamins and foods to olive oil:

(4) extra-virgin olive oil (50 g), nonpreservative whole-grain bread (120 g), and vitamins C (1 g) and E (d,1 -tocopherol, 800 IU), and

(5) extra-virgin olive oil (50 g), nonpreservative whole-grain bread (120 g), balsamic vinegar (100 ml), and salad [romaine lettuce (1.5 cup), carrot (1 medium-sized), tomato (1 medium-sized)]."

[content.onlinejacc.org]

Loeve,

Thanks for pointing out that the negative effects of olive oil on FMD are mediated by eating fresh fruits and vegetables and that the overall effect on health shouldn't be viewed with a single food in mind, but the combination. And I like olive oil for the flavor it imparts. That said, I still have agree with Prana's observation on the second post.

"A better source of fat would be avocados or raw nuts and seeds"

I think I am beginning to understand why people like John McDougall, Joel Fuhrman, and Jeff Novick are so anti-olive oil. Maybe not because they believe it is an unhealthy food so much as that there are better whole food alternatives. Here are the results of one small study demonstrating that walnuts improved FMD whereas olive oil worsened it. [www.sciencedirect.com]

pborst Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Loeve,
>
> Thanks for pointing out that the negative effects
> of olive oil...>

..a 900 calorie high olive oil/high cooked starch meal



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/10/2010 01:55PM by loeve.

After a large meal of bread and oil researchers found...

"..a 900 calorie high olive oil/high cooked starch meal"


Again, I'm not bashing olive oil. I guess the main point is that using canola oil under exactly the same fact pattern (120 grams nonpreservative whole grain bread)did not produce the same impaired FMD outcome. Salmon has relatively high saturated fat but also has Omega 3 oils that olive oil lacks. Again, not bashing olive oil. Point is it should be used sparingly and there are better fat alternatives. Again, Loeve, thanks for pointing out the mediation of adding fruit and vegetables.

Paul

I wonder when the large meal of bread and canola oil hit bottom.

loeve Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I wonder when the large meal of bread and canola
> oil hit bottom.

The Vogel study did the blood work 3 hours after meal time. Hmmm- seed oils seem to take a while to digest. I wonder if they were even in the system...

Digestion times:

1 3/4 hours
ripe olives -


3 1/2 Hours -
safflower oil
sesame seed oil
eggplant
mustard
greens peas, dried
soybean oil
rye

[www.unani.com]

What are everyones thoughts on raw olives, good source of vitamin e and good fats.

powerlifer,

Love them! Too expensive!

curator

they also put a lot of other chemicals too
truly raw ripe olives ripen on the ground

powerlifter

it also contains a lot of minerals too
yes, the lowly olive

Nice one, im sad to admit that ive never tried olives yet so got some raw olives on the way.

I wonder where the idea came from to squeeze fats out of plant foods - seeds, olives, nuts or anything else, why entire populations felt a need to do this. Anybody know the origins? Just off the top of my head, it doesn't seem to be a good idea to consume anything more than a tiny quantity of one portion of a food.

No, "whole" foods aren't automatically good for us all the time, but in the case of seeds, nuts, olives, etc. I would think that whole is better.

Olive oil was used as a preservative and a soap. I figure people started pressing olives because it was a means of concentrating the most useful part of the fruit--the fat. I use olive oil to remove my eye makeup; I couldn't do that with the whole fruit.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/11/2010 05:26PM by Tamukha.

Thanks for your info. Isn't use in soapmaking & preserving a far cry from the way you see people pouring gobs & gobs of the stuff (olive oil and other kinds, too) all over their food!