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The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#81

Post by dang »

fasterdom wrote: post #34
sho wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? Also, could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

HN is a community. Users needn't use their real name, but should have some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#82

Post by sbuk »

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…

> but it's basically just fat -- whatever health benefits it has are overwhelmed by the otherwise empty calories.

What a very ill-informed comment. Fats like olive oil are extremely good for you, especially those high in polyphenols. It can help significantly with coronary heart disease and lower cholesterol levels - the calories are far from empty.

Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#83

Post by DoreenMichele »

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…

Fats are not "empty calories."

They are essential to brain development.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20329590

Current research suggests that the right fats are important to maintaining brain health.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170621103123.h...

Fat also appears to play a role in immune function.

I can't readily find a source to cite which nice and neatly says "The right fat is critical to immune function." In fact, googling that brings up a bunch of articles that say, basically, "Too much dietary fat harms your immune function."

But a tldr of my understanding: Bone marrow is fatty and that is where a lot of our immune cells are produced.

Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#85

Post by chicob »

In Portugal, after harvest in the Winter, we cure olives in water and salt, sometimes some herbs. This produces a fermentation that allows for preserving olives for a whole year. Around Easter they'll be good.

But before this, one needs to put them in water that is changed every now and then - this gets rid of the bitterness. If one wants them ready for Christmas, slicing them slightly is necessary to speed up the process.

There are naturally black olives: the Galega variety is usually black, with shades of dark green. They're the best in my opinion, but only for eating. They have lower levels of oil than most varieties.

Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#86

Post by tropo »

bpierre wrote: post #33
seszett wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I usually shop for the ones with the most iron. The good ones are 4% RDA per serving.

Colorants can have health benefits.

Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#87

Post by coldtea »

matchbok wrote: post #74
coldtea wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You've plucked an olive from a tree and eaten it? Try it sometime and you'll see... More often than you'll think. But we usually cut them open, and treat them (is this called "curing"?) in water, salt, and oil. But the article starts with "Thank goodness we figured out how to press olives into oil, because eating them raw is not a pleasant option" which is simply not true, except if raw here is meant like "exactly…

Raw: being in or nearly in the natural state : not processed or purified. So, cutting and treating them with water, salt, and oil is not raw....

Well, it's not cooked either and certainly it's not "oil", which the article presents as the only tolerable alternative, so there's that.

Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#88

Post by coldtea »

ska wrote: post #65
coldtea wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You've plucked an olive from a tree and eaten it? Try it sometime and you'll see... More often than you'll think. But we usually cut them open, and treat them (is this called "curing"?) in water, salt, and oil. But the article starts with "Thank goodness we figured out how to press olives into oil, because eating them raw is not a pleasant option" which is simply not true, except if raw here is meant like "exactly…

"exactly as they are on the tree" Wasn't that was the point of the article? You pretty much have to do something to them to make them palatable.

I dunno, was it? It starts with "Thank goodness we figured out how to press olives into oil, because eating them raw is not a pleasant option." -- which implies pressing olives into oil is the only option, and goes downhill from there.

Re: The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

#89

Post by rowanG077 »

coldtea wrote: post #87
matchbok wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raw: being in or nearly in the natural state : not processed or purified. So, cutting and treating them with water, salt, and oil is not raw....

Well, it's not cooked either and certainly it's not "oil", which the article presents as the only tolerable alternative, so there's that.

The article does not present oil as the only tolerable alternative. Most of the article is about olives and not their oil.
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