Happy Heart Month!
For those of you who know me, I used to grow and produce Extra Virgin Olive Oil during my ranch life about 10 years ago. We made the most delicious early harvest Tuscan style extra virgin olive oil. It was grassy, pungent and fresh. This is when I fell in love with Olive Oil and learned so much about it. Olive oil is one of my favorite foods. I love everything about it, and best of all it is a powerful nutrient source and essential for a healthy heart!
Olives are like grapes, there are over 100 varietals and the type of oil produced depends on varietal, region, climate, season, farming, harvest time etc. etc. There a different olive oils from all over the world, just like wine and they are not all created equally.
Just like all food, the fresher the better so a local, fresh pressed oil is your best source of the highest nutrients, best quality and finest flavor. Many of the olive oils in stores are not fresh and often have some rancidity. Locally we have a great store called We Olive www.weolive.com. It is a terrific resource for some of our fabulous local olive oils and also a great place to taste different blends and varietals. It’s the olives version of wine tasting. You can also buy bulk fresh oil for cooking and baking. If you are not local they ship nationwide! The world of olive oil is vast and wide but this is a great place to start learning.
Here is some food wisdom to inspire you to use more olive oil and if you already do then you will be happy to know what a gift it is to your heart!
Extra Virgin Olive Oil…A gift for your Heart and your Health
Fresh, certified Extra Virgin Olive Oil has many health benefits. It has been proven to decrease the risk of Heart Disease, High Cholesterol, Cancer, Diabetes, High Blood Pressure, and Breast Cancer.
- Lowers Cholesterol – high in Mono-unsaturated fat, which helps to increase HDL cholesterol (good cholesterol), which in turn decreases the LDL cholesterol (bad cholesterol).
- Powerful Antioxidant – Olive Oil has 40 or so powerful antioxidants. Antioxidants neutralize Free Radicals. Free radical damage is associated with essentially every disease… Arthritis, Cancer, Heart disease, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, Cataracts and many more.
- Helps fight and prevent Breast Cancer – Olive Oil is high in Oleic Acid, which decreases the risk of cancer. It also increases the effectiveness of the Breast Cancer drug Herceptin.
- Anti-inflammatory benefits – Recent studies have shown that a substance found in Extra Virgin Olive Oil called Oleocanthol has powerful anti-inflammatory properties. Inflammation is believed to contribute to diseases like Heart Attack, Stroke and some Cancers. They believe that Olive Oil may act like (however not as powerful as) some anti-inflammatory drugs that help reduce the risk of these diseases. It is also believed that this may be the contributor to the effect of the Mediterranean Diet.
Nutritional Information
- Vitamin E (a natural antioxidant) per tablespoon – 1.6mg, or 2.3 IU (International Units)
- One tablespoon provides 8% of RDA for vitamin E.
- Vitamin K: The richest sources of vitamin K are green, leafy vegetables. One serving of spinach or collard, for instance, or two servings of broccoli give four to five times the RDA. The greener the vegetable, the higher the content, say the researchers, because the vitamin is associated with the chlorophyll. Vegetable oils–soybean, canola and olive–and dressings containing them are the second best source – USDA
- Fatty Acids: Olive Oil is a complex compound made of fatty acids, vitamins, volatile components, water-soluble components and microscopic bits of olive. Primary fatty acids are Oleic and linoleic acid. Oleic acid is monounsaturated and makes up 55-85% of olive oil. Linoleic is polyunsaturated and makes up about 9%. Linolenic, which is polyunsaturated, makes up 0-1.5%
- Antioxidants: The flavonoid polyphenols in olive oil are natural anti-oxidants which have been shown to have a host of beneficial effects from healing sunburn to lowering cholesterol, blood pressure, and risk of coronary disease. There are as many as 5 mg of antioxidant polyphenols in every 10 grams of olive oil. Many other nut and seed oils have no polyphenols.
How the taste of Olive Oil influences your health…
- Bitter – When tasting some varieties of Olive Oil, a bitter taste can be detected. This is actually a positive attribute due to the fact that more of the antioxidant Oleuropein is found in the bitter oils.
- Burning– When tasting fresh Olive Oil, it often can have a burning quality to it’s flavor. Oleocanthol, the anti-inflammatory part in Olive Oil, causes this.