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Comment by seszett | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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?

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