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The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#31

Post by derrasterpunkt »

mbel wrote: post #7
duck2 wrote: post #3

My grandma has an olive grove. When I last visited her, she offered me a jug of cured olive. I told her I find cured olives still bitter. She seemed very surprised and said she can't taste anything but olives recently. Maybe she leaves them a little bitter, because the bitterness is very "tasteable". I find it interesting how olive is praised in places it's planted. It's not just my grandma who adores olive. If you c…

> What's even more weird is all abrahamic religions mention olive in their books. Not weird at all. After all they all originate roughly from the same region.

Right, it would be weird if they mentioned potatoes or tomatoes in their texts.

Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#32

Post by matwood »

spodek wrote: post #2

I predict that olive oil will soon go through the transition that orange juice did. When I was a kid, people viewed orange juice as healthy. Now we see it as unhealthy -- just the sugar. Maybe some vitamin C, but not many people get scurvy. Whatever health benefits it has are overwhelmed by the otherwise empty calories. People want to believe more olive oil will make their diet into a healthy Mediterranean one, but i…

> I predict that olive oil will soon go through the transition that orange juice did.

I guess it's possible, but juice was at one point considered a healthy alternative to eating fruits. Olive oil is considered a healthier/tastier alternative to other fats (not that fat is necessarily unhealthy).

Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#33

Post by bpierre »

seszett wrote: post #24
bpierre wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s sadly both allowed and common in France [1][2], the term they use is either “olives noires” (black olives) or “olives noires confites”. [1] https://www.carrefour.fr/p/olives-noires-entieres-3560070340... [2] https://www.carrefour.fr/p/olives-noires-denoyautees-crespo-...

They do have to say "confites" (I don't know how to say that in English), they can't call them just "olives noires", but I didn't realize they could write "olives noires" on the package and say "ingredients : olives noires confites". That seems very dishonest. But in Belgium they can just call them "olives noires / zwarte olijven" and indicate "stabilisator E579" in the ingredients, which I think is even more dishone…

> but I didn't realize they could write "olives noires" on the package and say "ingredients : olives noires confites". That seems very dishonest.

Exactly, and they also often define the iron gluconate as either a stabilizer or an iron additive, rather than a colorant. They sometimes go as far as putting “enriched with iron” on the front label, suggesting health benefits.

Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#34

Post by fasterdom »

sho wrote: post #8
sureaboutthis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe some Vitamin C?! Orange juice is 71% vitamin C! And there is NO added sugar except maybe in the cartons you must be buying at your grocery store. Olive oil is basically "just fat"?! You make me think that you think the fat in olive oil is no different than the fat in pork or beef. With those thoughts in mind, most of what you eat is just a little of this and just a little of that and "basically just fat" but it…

> Orange juice is 71% vitamin C > it's too early in the morning for me to give you an education One of those statements was correct. You are off by more than 3 orders of magnitude - an impressive feat.

It's even more impressive when you see that his account is named 'sureaboutthis"

Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#35

Post by wickerman »

duck2 wrote: post #3

My grandma has an olive grove. When I last visited her, she offered me a jug of cured olive. I told her I find cured olives still bitter. She seemed very surprised and said she can't taste anything but olives recently. Maybe she leaves them a little bitter, because the bitterness is very "tasteable". I find it interesting how olive is praised in places it's planted. It's not just my grandma who adores olive. If you c…

As other people have mentioned, olive trees are native to the Canaanite region so they strongly feature there because that's what people were used to seeing. But to add to that, you'll also see a lot of mentions of Cedar trees (with some psalms and songs describing how the "voice of god" shakes the cedars in the mountains of Lebanon). Lebanon cedar was incredibly famous in antiquity for its resilience. Egyptians had it imported for buildings because they didn't have naturally growing trees that were as sturdy as Cedars.

It's interesting to note that Yahweh in the bible still holds that old thunder association that the original canaanite deity had, and that cedar seems to be to him what oak is to european thunder deities (oak is very much associated with Jupiter/Zeus/Tarannis).

Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#36

Post by fsloth »

spodek wrote: post #2

I predict that olive oil will soon go through the transition that orange juice did. When I was a kid, people viewed orange juice as healthy. Now we see it as unhealthy -- just the sugar. Maybe some vitamin C, but not many people get scurvy. Whatever health benefits it has are overwhelmed by the otherwise empty calories. People want to believe more olive oil will make their diet into a healthy Mediterranean one, but i…

Generally unsaturated fats are considered more healthy than saturated fats. So if you get n calories it's 'better' to get them from non-saturated fats than saturated fats.

Humans need fat in their diet.

Humans don't need sugar as in fructose from fruits.

Ergo, olive oil is healthier than sugar or butter. But the same argument can be said for most non-saturated fats.

Olive oil is not some miracle food that will cure you from all earthly ills but then again, nothing really is.

Empty calories are not healthy but that's a bit of a strawman if I may say so - people can overeat anything that has enough calories.

Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#37

Post by Semaphor »

seszett wrote: post #5

> Black olives, though labeled as “ripe” on supermarket cans, actually aren’t: these, a California invention Maybe that's true of all black olives in the US, I don't know, but black olives are supposed to be ripe olives. Only the cheapest black olives are not ripened, and at least in France they cannot be called just "black olives". They're easy enough to distinguish as they are smooth and firm like green olives, rat…

In Germany we have both types as well, the colored ones, in my experience, all say "gefärbt" (colored) on the front of the packaging (no idea if they have to or if the brands are just trying to avoid extra regulation). They are easy to distinguish by both taste and look (well, and price) from real black olives though.

Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#38

Post by jhbadger »

derrasterpunkt wrote: post #31
mbel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's even more weird is all abrahamic religions mention olive in their books. Not weird at all. After all they all originate roughly from the same region.

Right, it would be weird if they mentioned potatoes or tomatoes in their texts.

Although a lot of Americans get confused when "corn" is mentioned in various translations of the bible, not understanding that maize is not being referenced (which would be very weird indeed) but that the word "corn" used to (and still does to some extant) be used to refer to grains in general and wheat was probably being referred to.

Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#39

Post by gdfasfklshg4 »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #17
dasd99 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And there is NO added sugar This is NO good argument - even without added sugar, orange juice is on par with coke (about 10 gram sugar/100 ml).

I will put people who say this in the same category. Anyone who thinks added sugar is the same as fruit sugar...well...

Fruit sugar is fructose the exact same chemical as comprises about half of sucrose and exactly half of high fructose corn syrup.

Fruit sugar is just sugar.

Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#40

Post by windexh8er »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #15
seszett wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe some Vitamin C?! Orange juice is 71% vitamin C! Not it's not 71% vitamin C, it's about 0.05% vitamin C. 125 ml of orange juice provides about 71% of the daily vitamin C needs (60 mg), which is probably what you meant but very different from what you actually said.

Yes, it's what I meant but it will be lost on so many people.

But even what you meant is wrong. When you remove the juice from the fiber (orange, apple, mango, etc) it becomes a sugary drink [0]. Added sugar doesn't mean anything, sugar is sugar is sugar [1]. By removing the fiber the overload of sugar the liver has to deal with is no different than drinking soda. While fruit juice may have a few minor benefits here and there research is stating that it's not healthy outside of small quantity. Parents give their kids (at least in the US) way too much juice [2] and it's become a learned habit as kids grow up to drink juice because they've been told it's healthy. What they weren't taught was healthy rationing.

[0] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/fruit-juice-is-just-as-...

[1] https://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/the-growing-concern-of-overcon...

[2] https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/childrens-healt...

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