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The Sacred Oil
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Sun, stone, drought, silence and solitude . . . these five elements create perfect growing conditions for the olive tree, according to Italian folk traditions. Olive trees have a titanic constitution that renders them nearly immortal.
Perhaps the olive tree’s magical endurance is somehow captured in the oil of the olives and passed on to humans, for its healing powers are legendary. In fact, one of the main reasons the Mediterranean diet is considered to be one of the healthiest in the world is that olive oil is featured so prominently in its recipes.
Worth Its Weight In Gold
Olive trees were so sacred in Hellenic Greece that anyone who cut one down was condemned to either death or exile. The Greek poet Homer called olive oil “liquid gold.” Greek athletes rubbed it all over their bodies and used olive branches to crown the winners of their friendly games, the same games that we now call the Olympics.
In the land of the Hebrews, King David placed such great importance his olive trees that he had guards posted to watch over the olive groves and storehouses, to ensure the safety of the trees and their precious oil.
The goodness in olive oil
Olive oil is rich in monounsaturated fat and antioxidants like chlorophyll and carotenoids, as well as vitamins A, B-1, B-2, C, D, E and K and in iron.
Virgin, extra-virgin and cold-pressed olive oil
Virgin is a term that indicates that nothing has been done to the oil other than pressing it from the original source, the olives. Extra-virgin means that the oil is taken from the first drops of the
finest olives as they are pressed.
Other oils can be treated with heat, refined with lye, filtered, steamed and chilled to extract and refine them. “Extra-virgin, cold-pressed” oils are made from the finest olives, pressed without
heat or any other processes. Extracting oil in this way is expensive in that it yields less. Heat and other treatments pull more oil out of the original source, but heat destroys the health-giving antioxidants
in the oil. The closer the oil is to the olive’s original state, however, the better it is for your heart – and even though cold-pressed will cost more, it seems the way to go..
What’s a Canola?
You’ve heard of corn oil from corn, olive oil from olives, sunflower oil from sunflowers, but what’s a canola? Actually, canola oil is rapeseed oil, a brownish yellow oil from a turnip-like plant widely grown in Canada. “Canola” is simply a contraction of “Canadian oil.”
Canola, primrose and walnut oils all contain omega-3 fatty acids, substances that help prevent heart disease and that are usually only found in fish.
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