When "The Good Oil" Isn't

When, infrequently, my diet comes up in conversation and I tell people that I eat only fruit, vegetables, legumes, whole grains with no processed anything including no oils, they invariably exclaim, “No oils? Not even healthy oils like olive oil?”  Then, I ask them, "How many whole olives would you eat at one meal?” They usually say “Ummm, five or six”. Then I ask them how many tablespoons of olive oil they consider to be one serving for use on a salad, for example. “One or two”, they usually answer. But, I suspect that they might occasionally use more than that when push comes to shove.

Then, I tell them that one tablespoon of olive oil contains the oil from an average of 44 medium sized olives, so that they are eating the oil (essentially fat) from as many as 40 to 80 (or more) olives on their salad. Of course they don’t believe me and figure I am trying to pull some kind of guilt trip or devious vegan trick on their carnivorous selves.

But, no, this Good Oil, Heart Healthy label for olive oil is simply one example of the kind of marketing ploy the big food industry has used to promote their products despite the damage that the Standard American Diet (SAD) of mucho meat, fried everything (in healthy oils, of course), and processed, condensed food products has done to us as individuals and to us as a food-wealthy culture.

Real “Good Oil” is any oil that occurs naturally in whole foods the way nature (or God, if you are so inclined) intended us to eat it. Olive oil is a good example of how the concentration-through-processing gambit of the industrialized food industry has fooled us all into thinking that if a little is alright and even healthy for you, then more than is naturally available in whole foods must be really good for you. Another example of something occurring naturally would be sunlight, in that a few minutes of sun exposure per day creates vitamin D production in the human skin while a couple of hours of exposure will produce skin cancer possibly even leading eventually to premature death from melanoma. Too much? Not so good.

More and more, recent scientific research is revealing that many human nutrients, when separated and concentrated from whole foods, are not so beneficial and may even be harmful.

So, the bottom line is to do your own homework, pilgrim. Don’t cheat off the work done by the large industrial food processors and the FDA, their lackeys. Just like way back in Mrs. Blaine’s English class, you might be copying the wrong answers and flunk the test! The correct information about what you should eat is out there. Go look for it yourself at the library or on the internet. Get at least two independent opinions based upon PEER REVIEWED SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, not funded by commercial food producers or food distributors, or their lackeys (I love that word), and take responsibility for your own health.

By the way, I gleaned my previously stated “olive oil facts” from the internet sites of two olive oil producers.  To see for your self how many olives it takes to make a one-liter bottle of olive oil, just click here and here. You do the math.

And, next time you have a salad just chop up some whole olives and add a splash of vinegar with some herbs and pepper on it instead of that olive-oil dressing. It will taste great and you'll be doing your heart and waistline a big favor.