Horsea,

If I ever saw someone pouring gobs & gobs of the stuff over food, I'd smack it out of their hand and yell, "Barbarian! Don't you know you could bathe in that and take ten years off your appearance?!"

I wonder if the issue with a raw (or reasonably "raw" plant fat is to consume it uncooked. I have read that the key is to use olive oil in a raw fashion; that when it's cooked it becomes more viscous in the body or something...

But then they'd get mad at you for implying that they need 10 years taken off their appearance...

Banana who: re raw plant fat vs cooked. I think this may be correct. I know that saturated fats (animal or plant) are reputed to be "better" for you than plant oils, but perhaps no distinction has been made between more- or less processed, ie, heated. There's no doubt that heating anything changes a food's quality so drastically that when "they" are doing their endless research on effects of food, they should do these experiments with both cooked and raw versions before they publicize their conclusions. I actually believe that lack of distinction here has caused much trouble.

LOL- oops I did it again...meant to put a parentheses and it became a winking smiley! Kind of creepy that it goes along with the gist of my remarks but cool at the same time...

If you want the ultimate oil, its best within the whole food. Pressed olive oil for people on 'sad' diets, is probably a lifesaver! My friends mother uses it in cooking daily, and she just turned 80, and she has excellent skin, and mentally is functioning very well, but she does have some health problems.

Its probably better than other pressed oils, like corn, sunflower and soybean oil because oleic acid is less prone to oxidation.

Have you ever tried sun dried olives? those are great.

Tamukha Wrote:
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>I use olive oil to remove my eye makeup; I couldn't do that with the whole fruit.

PFT! I can just see you rubbing two olives on your eyes Hillarious!

I love olives, I was in San Fran when I was pregnant with my first and I'd buy a jar of Barianni (sp?) raw kalamata olives at the market weekly, I could have eaten a jar a Day! They make a lovely raw olive oil too.

Sundried olives are so delicious, bitter and yummy. Too salty though, I have to soak them in water for a few hours to make them palatable for me.

As for olive oil, unless you're paying a LOT of money, you're not actually getting real pure extra virgin oil at all. Something with the labelling laws allows for an unlabelled blend but there's no way to even produce a bottle of real olive oil for what's it's sold in the store for. And then people cook with it, that's the kicker. Why buy Cold Pressed if you're just going to heat it anyhow? What a waste. Worst oil to heat up too, better to go with a flavourless coconut.

Canada and the US lack strict labeling laws on olive oil so "extra virgin" can be pasted on just about anything by unscrupulous dealers, however not all labels are false. California researchers found 69% labeled extra virgin don't meet standards, the flip side is that 31% just might.

"At Britain's biggest supermarket, Tesco, yesterday a litre of Napolina extra-virgin olive oil cost £6.49 and a litre of Filippo Berio olive oil was £3.20, against £1.20 for a litre of rapeseed oil." [www.independent.co.uk]

Britian would be selling it under strict EU laws. The good stuff costs double. It's expensive but available anywhere.

..of course the EU defines "extra virgin" as olive oil pressed so as not to exceed certain temperatures (which happen to coincide with "Raw", and this is advantageous to everyone since flavor is lost upon heating, so processors naturally keep temperatures as low as possible to maintain value.

edit: ha, the way those smilies unexpectedly pop up when punctuated a certain way.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/14/2010 01:29PM by loeve.

Coco,
Its not as common, but there are UNsalted sundried olives. I actually got some from a supplier associated with a raw foods board. Its difficult enough to find sundried in any form, salted or unsalted. The usual are those pickled, dyed black ones in a can. I hate those things.

My parents, and friends parents probably have only known canned pickled olives. I don't know if I can introduce them to anything else. They think I eat weird stuff already. Teff, what is that? Cactus pears? Yali? Durian? Sura?

Where do you live? I'm in Canada, there are sundried olives in the jar or in bulk in nearly every grocery store I've been to. I don't know who's eating them though, aside from my mom and I the rest of the family wouldn't touch them. Meh, their loss. I'll look for the unsalted kind.

Coco,
I live in New Jersey. In theory I should be seeing them just about everywhere, as Italians are way into food in general, and olives especially. but then again, i am finding that perhaps thats a sterotype. The locals seem to like a lot of processed pasta, tomato sauce, meat and cheeses. They also seem to like olives in vinegar brine, and even the black dyed ones in a can. Then again my 'new family' likes to shop at a very conventional store with very affordable, and very cheap food.

I love canada,stores up there seem to have more variety, and often have higher grade foods available, even if in only small amounts. I used to buy very pure dead sea salt with no perfume up there. Just naturally it had a faint pleasant smell which I really enjoy. For some reason dead sea salt in the states NEVER has that quality. Its either scented, or baked or something to remove that subtle scent.