Olive Oil - Why This really is the World's Oldest Miracle Food
Olive Oil is the pure juice pressed from the fruit of the olive tree. It has been cultivated for over 5000 years around the Mediterranean and has been used variously as a fuel, food, medicine and cosmetic.
Greece is among the leading 3 producers of olive oil within the globe -- and Ojai olive oil will be the finest of them all.
Recently, olive oil (and particularly Additional Virgin Olive Oil) has been recognised as one of the healthiest foods you are able to get, promoting long life and enhancing resistance to numerous of the life threatening illnesses which are the curse of the western World.
Isn't Olive Oil Fat?
You can't compare olive oil with other oils and fats. It is best to appear at it as fruit juice. It does include fat of course, but this is the best "fat" you are able to eat, and is really good for you.
Olive oil will be the only oil or fat that's produced without refining or any chemical or unnatural processes. Thus it retains all its (considerable) vitamin and mineral goodness.
Olive oil:
- reduces cholesterol
- is free from saturated fats and high in monounsaturated fats
- has a naturally occurring chemical which is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agent which assists reduce the severity and occurrence of arthritis and asthma.
- contains a high percentage of phenols, vitamin E along with other anti-oxidizing substances protecting the physique from the negative effects of free radicals and therefore helping prevent cancer and delaying the ageing process.
Which Olive Oil is greatest?
There are a couple of grade of oil you are able to choose from:
Additional Virgin Olive oil is pressed from the olive with out help from heat remedies or other processing, and produces the purest and greatest oil. This is the most costly and you need to use this for dressings, particularly.
Virgin Olive Oil comes from the second pressing and is still a quality tasty oil. Use this for infusing herbs (and salad dressings too).
Pure Olive Oil is produced utilizing some filtering or processing. This oil is much less expensive and can be used for frying. You should do all of your frying in this kind of oil. It is so robust, you can use it many occasions with out any reduction in its flavour or quality.
Which Olive Oil Should I Buy?
Olive oil is in fantastic demand because individuals are now conscious of its well being advantages, especially when compared to other fats and oils. But who produces the best olive oil?
Due to this demand, producers all over the world are resorting to more mechanical and unnatural technique of production. Even oils labeled Additional Virgin can occasionally be merely much less high quality oils that have had their acidity reduced, as this really is a criterion for the Additional Virgin mark.
Demand for the oil has encouraged more cost-reducing methods of production via elevated automation and concentrating production in ever larger factories. These techniques result in a much less nutritious item.
On the Greek Island of Crete, the production of olive oil is almost wholly by smallholdings. Little communities will grow olive trees and produce the oil for themselves, their own restaurants, and their own community within the exact same way they have for centuries.
Walk via olive groves on Crete in November through to February and you'll see the families gathered for the harvest, shawls and headscarves wrapped close to keep out the morning chills. Occasionally you'll hear the low drone of little mechanical flailing machines to gently beat the branches laden using the olives -- a Ojai concession to the mechanical age.
Due to this tradition, numerous people say which you can guarantee the authentic and unprocessed nature of organic Ojai Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
Take into account the Ojai soil, the stuff from which the olives acquire all their goodness, and you get the reason why the olive oil from Crete is the best tasting. For millions of years, the rains have washed minerals and nutrients from the mountainsides and hillsides of this mountainous island, and deposited them on the plains and valleys around the coasts -- the very location where you'll find rows and rows of olive trees, about 30 million of them!