The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016) | Hacker News Reader

The Bitter Truth About Olives (2016)

nationalgeographic.com

86 pointsbpierre85 comments

> Black olives, though labeled as “ripe” on supermarket cans, actually aren’t: these, a California invention

Maybe that's true of all black olives in the US, I don't know, but black olives are supposed to be ripe olives. Only the cheapest black olives are not ripened, and at least in France they cannot be called just "black olives".

They're easy enough to distinguish as they are smooth and firm like green olives, rather than soft and maybe a bit shriveled.

These are very particular canned olives in the US that have a different taste. Twenty or thirty years ago they were the only black olives you could get here. They are still available, but now you can easily get real tree-ripened black olives as well.

yeah- kinda the olive version of the maraschino cherry

That analogy shouldn't work but does.

In Germany we have both types as well, the colored ones, in my experience, all say "gefärbt" (colored) on the front of the packaging (no idea if they have to or if the brands are just trying to avoid extra regulation). They are easy to distinguish by both taste and look (well, and price) from real black olives though.

It’s sadly both allowed and common in France [1][2], the term they use is either “olives noires” (black olives) or “olives noires confites”.

[1] https://www.carrefour.fr/p/olives-noires-entieres-3560070340...

[2] https://www.carrefour.fr/p/olives-noires-denoyautees-crespo-...

They do have to say "confites" (I don't know how to say that in English), they can't call them just "olives noires", but I didn't realize they could write "olives noires" on the package and say "ingredients : olives noires confites". That seems very dishonest.

But in Belgium they can just call them "olives noires / zwarte olijven" and indicate "stabilisator E579" in the ingredients, which I think is even more dishonest.

> but I didn't realize they could write "olives noires" on the package and say "ingredients : olives noires confites". That seems very dishonest.

Exactly, and they also often define the iron gluconate as either a stabilizer or an iron additive, rather than a colorant. They sometimes go as far as putting “enriched with iron” on the front label, suggesting health benefits.

I usually shop for the ones with the most iron. The good ones are 4% RDA per serving.

Colorants can have health benefits.

Black olives in Canada and the U.S. refers exclusively to "California ripe olives" (at this point not the brand, which IIRC still exists, but the process), they've been called that in North America for longer than they've existed elsewhere, so to mandate the name be qualified on shelves would cause more confusion than it would solve.

I dunno this sounds rather dismissive of the average person.

That they couldn’t cope with such a non-shock is a bit helicopter parenty, and being overly concerned with gramas sensibilities regarding trivial things.

Riots in the streets over it? I mean when we don’t riot over real drama, why not over changing labels on olive cans?

My grandma has an olive grove. When I last visited her, she offered me a jug of cured olive. I told her I find cured olives still bitter. She seemed very surprised and said she can't taste anything but olives recently. Maybe she leaves them a little bitter, because the bitterness is very "tasteable".

I find it interesting how olive is praised in places it's planted. It's not just my grandma who adores olive. If you chat with anyone from her town for enough time, they will surely bring the subject to olives, cured olives or olive oil.

What's even more weird is all abrahamic religions mention olive in their books.

As other people have mentioned, olive trees are native to the Canaanite region so they strongly feature there because that's what people were used to seeing. But to add to that, you'll also see a lot of mentions of Cedar trees (with some psalms and songs describing how the "voice of god" shakes the cedars in the mountains of Lebanon). Lebanon cedar was incredibly famous in antiquity for its resilience. Egyptians had it imported for buildings because they didn't have naturally growing trees that were as sturdy as Cedars.

It's interesting to note that Yahweh in the bible still holds that old thunder association that the original canaanite deity had, and that cedar seems to be to him what oak is to european thunder deities (oak is very much associated with Jupiter/Zeus/Tarannis).

Fun fact: The cedar is mentioned 75 times in the Old and New testament of the Bible.

> What's even more weird is all abrahamic religions mention olive in their books.

Not weird at all. After all they all originate roughly from the same region.

Exactly, and they mention pretty much every other major food item from the area too.

Also, being direct influences on one another, it would be enough for the old testament to make a big deal out of olives, to make the conditional probability of the others doing so very high.

It does, doesn't it? I'm fairly sure there's an olive branch mentioned at the end of the deluge story.

That's right, the dove brought an olive leaf. And another significant mention is as part of the anointing oil - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_anointing_oil

Right, it would be weird if they mentioned potatoes or tomatoes in their texts.

Although a lot of Americans get confused when "corn" is mentioned in various translations of the bible, not understanding that maize is not being referenced (which would be very weird indeed) but that the word "corn" used to (and still does to some extant) be used to refer to grains in general and wheat was probably being referred to.

> Although a lot of Americans get confused when "corn" is mentioned in various translations of the bible, not understanding that maize is not being referenced (which would be very weird indeed)

A lot of people even in the Old World have forgotten that maize is an import. For example, for several centuries now the staple food of the poor in Romania was mamaligă, mush from ground maize like Italy’s polenta. (Mamaligă still remains popular as a quick and convenient dish, made tasty with cheese and sour cream). If you wonder out loud among Romanians what mamaligă was originally made from, a lot of people will tell you that it must have always been made from maize; they aren’t even aware that maize was brought to Europe after 1492.

Also, even more archaically, to grains of salt - for example, those used to cure corned beef.

Most brits still picture wheat fields if you say 'cornfield', even though maize is grown here too these days.

> Tomatoes and potatoes in the Bible? Was it aliens?

Please delete this before the history channel finds it.

Joseph Smith would like to have a word with you...

I have many olive trees in my garden and the dogs seem to like them raw from the ground. Guess they don't notice the bitter protection effects.

When it was really cold outside my dog would find frozen poop and gnaw on it. Yum!

In Portugal, after harvest in the Winter, we cure olives in water and salt, sometimes some herbs. This produces a fermentation that allows for preserving olives for a whole year. Around Easter they'll be good.

But before this, one needs to put them in water that is changed every now and then - this gets rid of the bitterness. If one wants them ready for Christmas, slicing them slightly is necessary to speed up the process.

There are naturally black olives: the Galega variety is usually black, with shades of dark green. They're the best in my opinion, but only for eating. They have lower levels of oil than most varieties.

I predict that olive oil will soon go through the transition that orange juice did. When I was a kid, people viewed orange juice as healthy. Now we see it as unhealthy -- just the sugar. Maybe some vitamin C, but not many people get scurvy. Whatever health benefits it has are overwhelmed by the otherwise empty calories.

People want to believe more olive oil will make their diet into a healthy Mediterranean one, but it's basically just fat -- whatever health benefits it has are overwhelmed by the otherwise empty calories.

They both benefited from effective marketing, not making people healthy.

You might be on to something, except that your comment is likening fat to sugar. These two things are not similar in terms of their effect on dietary health.

You may well be right about olive oil, but the inclusion of that near-conflation makes your argument seem not very compelling.

Generally unsaturated fats are considered more healthy than saturated fats. So if you get n calories it's 'better' to get them from non-saturated fats than saturated fats.

Humans need fat in their diet.

Humans don't need sugar as in fructose from fruits.

Ergo, olive oil is healthier than sugar or butter. But the same argument can be said for most non-saturated fats.

Olive oil is not some miracle food that will cure you from all earthly ills but then again, nothing really is.

Empty calories are not healthy but that's a bit of a strawman if I may say so - people can overeat anything that has enough calories.

> I predict that olive oil will soon go through the transition that orange juice did.

I guess it's possible, but juice was at one point considered a healthy alternative to eating fruits. Olive oil is considered a healthier/tastier alternative to other fats (not that fat is necessarily unhealthy).

Just to tell you olive oil is not an American fad like orange juice. People in southern Europe, ME and northern Africa have been using it for a long long time.

You are 30 years late. In the 80's processed sunflower seed oil, was seen as the healthy (and cheaper of course) alternative to olive oil, and benefited from massive marketing campaigns.

Can't really remember the supposed claims, but involved the usual transfatty acid, saturated / insaturated fat mumbo jumbo.

Fast forward to today, and the sunflower oil is the devil incarnate while olive oil is the hero again.

The same happend with vegetable butter vs animal butter.

I wish i could backup with a source, but I'm really not finding any, and even if I did, most likely would be in Portuguese, so not very useful.

Are you talking of industrial orange juice? I've never heard squeezed oranges to be considered unhealthy.

If you take a fresh orange, squeeze it and drink/eat ALL of the result, then that's fairly healthy. You're balancing out the fructose with lots of fiber which are supposed to help slow the absorption of that sugar. Also by consuming it right away, the other nutrients don't have time to oxidate.

Orange juice as sold in stores has a lot less pulp (even the "high pulp" has less than what you'd get from an orange. It is also pasteurized, and the taste is harmonized by adding various types of extracts of oranges—though since those extracts came from oranges, they are allowed to call the result 100% orange juice, which I find rather misleading.

Pretty much all sweet fruit juice is not healthy* because of the sugar content.

The evidence is piling up that sugar is responsible for a great deal of health issues in the modern world.

I read the sugar content is too high in orange juice. It was recommended to eat the whole fruit instead so there is less sugar and more fiber.

There are already lots of people that believe olive oil is unhealthy. People who subscribe to a "whole foods" diet believe all forms of refined foods, including oils, can have negative effects on health, and there is quite a lot of research which supports these claims:

http://www.plantplate.com/Guide/Detail?GuideID=1009

The problem with fructose, its effects on the liver, and the mitigation of these effects from eating the whole fruit with its fibre and other nutrients, is now very well established scientifically. I would not be surprised if we reach a similar level of understanding about refined oils.

> but it's basically just fat -- whatever health benefits it has are overwhelmed by the otherwise empty calories.

What a very ill-informed comment. Fats like olive oil are extremely good for you, especially those high in polyphenols. It can help significantly with coronary heart disease and lower cholesterol levels - the calories are far from empty.

I have a great love for both of these delicacies! :) Note: I don't drink orange juice bought from a shop, I make it myself from the oranges I buy. And I don't really care about their health effects. I just love the taste.

Fats are not "empty calories."

They are essential to brain development.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20329590

Current research suggests that the right fats are important to maintaining brain health.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170621103123.h...

Fat also appears to play a role in immune function.

I can't readily find a source to cite which nice and neatly says "The right fat is critical to immune function." In fact, googling that brings up a bunch of articles that say, basically, "Too much dietary fat harms your immune function."

But a tldr of my understanding: Bone marrow is fatty and that is where a lot of our immune cells are produced.

Well, more olive oil with less butter seems a healthier option.

Maybe some Vitamin C?! Orange juice is 71% vitamin C! And there is NO added sugar except maybe in the cartons you must be buying at your grocery store.

Olive oil is basically "just fat"?! You make me think that you think the fat in olive oil is no different than the fat in pork or beef.

With those thoughts in mind, most of what you eat is just a little of this and just a little of that and "basically just fat" but it's too early in the morning for me to give you an education.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19532058

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18316661

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17434335

> Maybe some Vitamin C?! Orange juice is 71% vitamin C!

Not it's not 71% vitamin C, it's about 0.05% vitamin C.

125 ml of orange juice provides about 71% of the daily vitamin C needs (60 mg), which is probably what you meant but very different from what you actually said.

Yes, it's what I meant but it will be lost on so many people.

But even what you meant is wrong. When you remove the juice from the fiber (orange, apple, mango, etc) it becomes a sugary drink [0]. Added sugar doesn't mean anything, sugar is sugar is sugar [1]. By removing the fiber the overload of sugar the liver has to deal with is no different than drinking soda. While fruit juice may have a few minor benefits here and there research is stating that it's not healthy outside of small quantity. Parents give their kids (at least in the US) way too much juice [2] and it's become a learned habit as kids grow up to drink juice because they've been told it's healthy. What they weren't taught was healthy rationing.

[0] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/fruit-juice-is-just-as-...

[1] https://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/the-growing-concern-of-overcon...

[2] https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/childrens-healt...

Maybe you need to be a little less "sureaboutthis"

The benefits of Vitamin C have been wildly overstated, thanks mainly to Linus Pauling, whose theories on its therapeutic and preventative effects have been consistently debunked in large studies, with some studies even associating high doses of Vitamin C with increases in some types of cancer in mice:

https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pauling.h...

Fruit juices should be seen as a form of processed sugar - even if the processing is not as substantial as making table sugar. Whole fruit - such as a whole orange or grape or apple - is a much better and nutritional choice.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/17/health/fruit-juice-sugary-dri...

https://www.diabetes.co.uk/food/juice-and-diabetes.html

https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f5001

Doesn’t the Bmj article say oranges increase the risk of type 2 and that fruits are all different. Blueberries are good, oranges and strawberries not so much. Still better than juice but that’s to be expected.

> And there is NO added sugar

This is NO good argument - even without added sugar, orange juice is on par with coke (about 10 gram sugar/100 ml).

No sugar added! lots of water removed

I will put people who say this in the same category. Anyone who thinks added sugar is the same as fruit sugar...well...

Fruit juice contains high amounts of sugar. There's not much difference between the sugars in fruit juice and the sugars in cola. Fruit juice is not a healthy drink. This myth causes harm. Parents give their children fruit juice because they think it's healthy, and this causes toot decay.

https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/childrens-health/...

> Like fizzy drinks, fruit juice and squash can be high in sugar, which can cause tooth decay. Because sugary drinks can be high in energy (calories), having these drinks too often can also lead to weight gain and obesity.

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/water-drinks-nutrition...

> Unsweetened 100% fruit juice, vegetable juice and smoothies can only ever count as a maximum of 1 portion of your recommended 5 daily portions of fruit and vegetables.

> For example, if you have 2 glasses of fruit juice and a smoothie in 1 day, that still only counts as 1 portion.

> That's because fruit juice and smoothies don't contain the fibre found in whole fruits and vegetables. Have other types of fruit and vegetables for the other 4 (or more) portions.

> Fruit juice and smoothies also contains sugar that can damage teeth. It's best to drink them with a meal because this can help protect your teeth.

> I will put people who say this in the same category

The category of "being correct"

Coke uses high fructose corn syrup in the US. The sugar in orange juice is largely fructose. The name is the same because it’s the same thing.

Fruit sugar is fructose the exact same chemical as comprises about half of sucrose and exactly half of high fructose corn syrup.

Fruit sugar is just sugar.

Dietary sugar—sugar that’s bound up along with fiber in its natural setting like fruits & vegetables—is a very different thing from non-dietary sugar. The former is fine; the latter is a chronic hepatotoxin that leads to metabolic disease, including lethargy, irritability, fat gain (sp. interstitial), and diabetes.

> Orange juice is 71% vitamin C

> it's too early in the morning for me to give you an education

One of those statements was correct. You are off by more than 3 orders of magnitude - an impressive feat.

It's even more impressive when you see that his account is named 'sureaboutthis"

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? Also, could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

HN is a community. Users needn't use their real name, but should have some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

> it's too early in the morning for me to give you an education

This is rude.

Fruit sugar is still sugar.

Funny to think "olive oil" is nearly pleonamsatic. Oil from Latin from Ancient Greek comes from the word "olive".

> Thank goodness we figured out how to press olives into oil, because eating them raw is not a pleasant option.

In a word: Castelvetrano.

Olive articles like this!

Sure, but your pun is the pits.

>Thank goodness we figured out how to press olives into oil, because eating them raw is not a pleasant option.

We eat olives raw (and cured etc) for several millennia in my side of the woods, and its a totally pleasant option -- and traditional part of Italian, Greek, etc cuisines...

Black olives are totally not a "California invention" either, and they're totally fine (except perhaps just those sold in California).

Not to mention that "bitter" (within reason) is also a taste in the palette of tastes, not something to run away from.

Maybe Americans (like British) should refrain from opining about cuisine?

You've plucked an olive from a tree and eaten it? Try it sometime and you'll see...

The olives eaten in Italian and Greek cuisines are all processed using one of the methods described in the article to remove the extremely bitter compound oleuropein.

>You've plucked an olive from a tree and eaten it? Try it sometime and you'll see...

More often than you'll think. But we usually cut them open, and treat them (is this called "curing"?) in water, salt, and oil.

But the article starts with "Thank goodness we figured out how to press olives into oil, because eating them raw is not a pleasant option" which is simply not true, except if raw here is meant like "exactly as they are on the tree" (as opposed to the oil or paste form that it seems to imply).

If you’ve treated it by curing it in salt then it’s no longer raw, is it?

"exactly as they are on the tree"

Wasn't that was the point of the article? You pretty much have to do something to them to make them palatable.

I dunno, was it? It starts with "Thank goodness we figured out how to press olives into oil, because eating them raw is not a pleasant option." -- which implies pressing olives into oil is the only option, and goes downhill from there.

Raw: being in or nearly in the natural state : not processed or purified.

So, cutting and treating them with water, salt, and oil is not raw....

Well, it's not cooked either and certainly it's not "oil", which the article presents as the only tolerable alternative, so there's that.

The article does not present oil as the only tolerable alternative. Most of the article is about olives and not their oil.

Now now, many of the British have far more varied and refined palates than you suggest. Since we actually have some of the leading chefs in the world our cuisine has actually stepped up it's game. It's not been the bland stodge we built a reputation for since I was a kid.

A lot of cuisine options open up with international shipping and with international immigration.

It's not a surprise when a climate that can only reliably grow rye, barley, oats, potatoes, beets, and cabbage produces cooks and traditional dishes that don't even recognize the existence of certain flavors. But once the ships make it there and back again, those same cooks are forced to experiment to figure out what to do with new (to them) foods, and sometimes come up with results and combinations that the cooks for whom those foods are native have never even thought to try.

But that has a dark side as well. International food markets also make it possible to replace the cocoa butter in "chocolate" with oil-palm-based oils without being immediately struck down by Ek Chuaj for that blasphemy against cacao.

> Black olives are totally not a "California invention" either, and they're totally fine (except perhaps just those sold in California).

There's a particular kind of processed olive sold in the US as "black olives" which I think this is referring to. If you haven't had one, imagine... imagine that you need to eat an olive, but you hate olives and everything about them, so you invent something that's the shape of an olive but not.

> so you invent something that's the shape of an olive but not.

That makes it sound like those olives aren't actual olive fruit, but manufactured in some manner - which isn't true. They are highly processed, and their black coloring is created as a part of that process - but they are still actual olives.

Imagine eating a small hollow black ball of wax. Okay, maybe slightly salty wax.

These black olives are one of the ingredients in a Taco Bell food-style preparation. That should tell you everything you need to know.

My kids love black olives, but you're right. They have little taste, more texture then anything else.

They're good on pizza.

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