Olive & Health
It’s hard not to be a cheerleader for your own product: I should imagine that butter manufacturers sleep at night (after reading they’re killing people with their saturated fats) because they found someone to support the merits of their product. Study X, which analyzed the Y people for 30 years, clearly concludes that, despite being high-fat yogurt eaters, they are the healthiest sons-of-guns you can imagine, certainly living longer and more pleasant lives than east-coast tee-shipping red wine drinking virgin olive oil consumers. The same is true for tobacco, airbags, saccharin, trickle-down economics, capital punishment; people will find an argument, a study, a religion, whatever they need to support whatever they want to believe, nay, whatever they need to believe.
It’s ironic then that I’m about to tell you that it has been proven conclusively that a diet rich in olive oil will help you not only live longer, but with a better quality of life (see better, think sharper, be more mobile, have suppler skin, break fewer bones, be thinner). Of course, you could accomplish similar things by cutting fatty red meat out of your diet or eating more vegetables, reducing your alcohol intake, stop smoking, burn an additional 2,000 calories per week anyway you can, stop arguing, read a book. Or imagine what would happen if you did two of those things, say, read a book and use olive oil? That’s not asking too much is it?
My point is, people pretty much know what they have to do in order to have a healthy life and, the fact is, most people don’t do it, at least not until they have their first heart attack or throat tumor. And you know what happens then? They discover olive oil and become its best disciple. They could give me lessons on cold pressing, missing hydrogens and radical ions except that half will be wrong, half will be half right and the last half will want to charge you because they know they’re worth it. In fact, I’d bet that is one of the main things that drew you to the olive university in the first place.
The fact is, your body needs fats. They provide raw materials that help in the control of blood pressure, blood clotting, inflamation and other bodily functions. Fat helps in the absorption and transport through the bloodsteam of the fat-soluble vitamins A D, E and K. Fat insulates the body, helps you maintain healthy skin and hair and provides an energy sink which the body switches to after burning up its ready supply of carbohydrates in about twenty minutes.
Cholesterol: the mere word drives fear into any middle-aged man’s heart. But, as any middle-aged man who’s been to the doctor for a checkup can tell you, there are two types of cholesterol, high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL, the good) and low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL, the bad). The LDL cholesterol is cholesterol carried out of the liver by the LDL carrier (the lipoprotein, a fat). The HDL carrier, conversely, is designed to keep the cholesterol soluble in the blood until it comes back to the liver for recycling or waste disposal. It is a very clever system except for one unfortunate thing; the LDL cholesterol oxidizes as it is traveling along and the oxidized particles built a plaque on the walls of your arteries. Such deposits on your artery walls leads to aterioscerlosis, or hardening of the arteries, which leads to heart attacks (the most common cause of death) and strokes.
This is where olive oil comes in. It has been proven that mono-unsaturated fats such as olive oil (the highest such in fact) are the most effective in reducing your LDL levels and either elevating your HDL levels or certainly not reducing them. Hurray! There is a two-part explanation, either or both of which could be correct:
- Mono-unsaturated fat causes LDL cholesterol to oxidize more slowly (simply because mono-unsaturated fats are cleared from the blood more quickly and this reduces the opportunity for the fats to be acted upon) and
- The 40 odd powerful antioxidant phytochemicals may act to neutralize the LDL cholesterol oxidation.
Conversely, while poly-unsaturated fats are undoubtedly better for you than saturated fats, there have been studies that show that polyunsaturated fats reduce your level of HDL. This is why, in short, many nutritionists and doctors are encouraging their patients to switch exclusively to olive oil.
So, it would appear that oxidation is making your heart stop. That is, unfortunately, only the beginning. Free radical damage is associated with essentially every disease including arthritis, cancer, cataracts, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, you name it. By age 50 approx 30% of our cellular protein has been damaged by free radicals and the odds of getting cancer after the age of 60 is sixteen times greater than before 40 (National Cancer Institute). Cancer is not an if, it is a when. The good news is that proper diet and lifestyle changes can, for example, reduce your risk of colon cancer by 50%, prostate cancer by 15% and lung cancer by 90%.
Which is were antioxidants come in again. They are a molecule that simply completes the electron shell of the free radical and neutralizes it (hopefully before it has caused any cellular damage). A study released in 1993 of Chinese men and women with a high risk for gastric cancer found that the combined intake of beta-carotine, vitamin E and selenium significantly reduced both gastric cancer and other types of cancer. Another study a year later found that beta-carotine actually increased the levels of lung cancer among heavy smokers but that the vitamin E lowered other types of cancer. A study out in July of 2004 by the American College of Cardiology stated that the Mediterranean diet (not to put too fine a point on it, but one rich in olive oil!) seems to lead to lower levels of inflammation and blood clotting markers and leads to less heart disease and some types of cancer independent of weight, smoking etc... There are no conclusive answers yet, but, fortunately, foods rich in antioxidants taste pretty good and you’d be doing yourself a favor by creating a diet for yourself rich in them.
Examples:
- Tea (green in particular - study out in October 2004 showing clear anti-Alzheimer’s benefits),
- chocolate (the darker the better - will almost make you feel more in love. I love that),
- red wine (unfortunately in moderation, but you could also eat the tasty wine grapes or drink a rich tannic grapejuice),
- Brazil nuts will give you a selenium rush (or any animals which eat selenium rich grains or plants),
- tomatoes and watermelons will give you a lycopene boost,
- onions, garlic, leeks, chives are thought to be brilliant against stomach cancer and cholesterol,
- anything with vitamin C (broccoli, strawberries, grapefruit) is fabulous.
Even the humble potato is a bioflavenoid. Anyway, you get the point. It isn't that difficult for you to have a healthy and tasty diet.
There is a second part to the equation, however: At the same time you are neutralizing the antioxidants, you need to stop them from forming. Suntan lotion is a good idea to keep mutations away. Also, curiously, too much exercise produces too many free radicals. Guidelines suggest burning less the 4,000 calories a week with exercise. Don’t drink (forces your liver to kick out free radicals), don’t smoke (its like an oxidation factory), blah blah blah. Reminds me of the joke, ‘If you don’t drink, eat right, don’t smoke, exercise, don’t cuss, etc..., you might not live to a hundred, but it will sure feel like it.’ Let’s make a compromise, start with a good suntan lotion. And use extra-virgin olive oil worthy of the name. And read a novel. Okay, go ahead, have some strawberries.
My final health point is, what about the other mono-unsaturated oils? There’s really only one worth mentioning and that is Canola oil. Canola oil was invented in 1974 in Mannitoba (thus its name from ‘Canada oil’) and is a derivative from the rapeseed (which is essentially unsuitable for human consumption because of 30-60% erusic acid - the Canadian researchers brought this level down to 2% with their hybrid). It is approx. 60 percent mono-unsaturated, 30 % poly-unsaturated and 10% percent saturated. It also has the benefit of containing alpha linolenic acid (commonly known as omega-3) which olive oil does not have and most evidence indicates is absolutely essentially if you want to avoid being surprised by a heart attack. It is clearly better than saturated fats, but, as a mass-produced seed oil without the olives' phytochemical complexity (think how easily polyphenols, the potent anti-oxidents in olive oil, can be rinsed away by water alone), I don’t think it is a comparable alternative. And I couldn’t find anyone to disagree with me. In short, cook only with olive oil and eat a mackerel now and again.
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