Mediterranean diet

OLIVE OIL
EAT BETTER, LIVE LONGER
MYRSINI LAMBRAKI
E-mail mirsini@her.forthnet.gr web site://users.forthnet.gr/her/mi
First edition March 1999
Back cover
The fresh juice of olive oil, with it’s ideal chemical consistency and without extracts and improvements, has offered health and longer life to the Mediterranean race for centuries. They used it as the basic oil in their daily diet. Its nourishing, nutritious and biological value for the human organism is essential and that’s why olive oil is included among the 10 most beneficial types of food.
The book you are holding in your hands, which is one more of the writer’s best sellers, accompanies you to a cultural and savoury journey of 5,000 years, where olives and olive oil accompanied the human existence. It provides you with 154 easy and practical recipes in order to make your own hors-d’oeuvres/appetizers, food, sweets, cakes, sauces and marinades with olive oil.
In the second part of the book you will learn about the tasty varieties of Greek olives and their nutritious value. You will also read about how to prepare your own olives as well as 16 recipes about how to relish bread, stews and appetizers.

Section 1: What is Olive Oil
Crete, the most important landmark in the history of the olive tree
• There is little doubt that the small and lithe Minoans were the ones to take over the culture of the olive tree from other eastern Mediterranean peoples. It is here, where the climate is mild and the land fertile, where one of the most important civilizations in the world was developing, that the olive tree found its ideal home. Here it blossomed, giving its oil in plenty, revered and honoured as no other tree.

Climate, soil and men: the perfect balance
• Fertile plains and high mountains are the two most striking elements in the Cretan landscape. Along the mountain chains, thousands of olive trees grow on rather poor soil; the olive tree is not demanding and willingly brings forth its fruit on all soils.
• Cretans love their olive trees as if they were members of the family. As in ancient times, the olive tree forms part of their lives, playing an important role not just in their diet, but in their civilization and in their art.

Olive oil in Cretan diet
• When Robert Pashley, an English traveler came to Crete in the first half of the 19th century, he was astonished at the consumption of olive oil: “I am told here, as in every other place where I have made enquiries, respecting the consumption of oil by each Cretan family, that it may be estimated at 4 okes (a little over 5 kilograms) a week, at least. A mother will hardly give bread to her children without pouring them out some oil into a dish, that they may moisten the staff of life, and render it more savory, before eating it. Oil is used on all kinds of vegetables, as well as in preparing every sort of meat and fish: in short it enters into every dish in Crete, and though all Greeks use a good deal of it, there is a much greater general consumption of it in this island than elsewhere.”

Scientific verification
• A little more than a century later the American Rockfeller Institute carried out a research between 1948 and 1957 among the inhabitants of Crete, declaring in its report: “Cretan diet consists mainly of vegetarian products such as cereals, vegetables, fruit and olive oil… Olives and oil play an important part in the resistance of a Cretan constitution. A foreigner might find that Cretan food actually swims in oil: the consumption of olive oil is a distinctive attribute of the Cretan diet.”

Section 2: Legend and History
Section 3: Olive Oil, A Life Insurance
Composition of olive oil
Vitamin E (3-30 mg)
Provitamin A (carotene)
Monounsaturated fatty acids (oleic) 56-83%
Polyunsaturated unfatty acid (linoleic) 3.5 20%
Polyunsaturated fatty acid (Linoleic) 0 –1.5%
Saturated fatty acids 8 – 23.5% 9 calories per gram

Olive oil: the healthiest of all fats
Fat used in food finds a healthy substitute in olive oil which is 77% monounsaturated fat and naturally cholesterol-free. Olive oil contains no salt, and one tablespoon provides 8%RDA for vitamin E. Olive oil is gluten-free. Gluten is found in wheat and rye, and to a lesser degree, in barley and oats, but not in 100% pure olive oil.

The strongest hearts in the world are the Cretan hearts
The Cretan diet has, over the last few years, been under scientific and medical study, and dietetics and statistics have proved that it ensures good health and longevity. The consumption of olive oil is the main reason for the low number of cardiac disorders among the inhabitants of the island.

Olive oil, cholesterol and coronary disease
Olive oil decreases unwanted cholesterol and limits arteriosclerosis, which is one of the main causes of death in industrial areas where butter and pork fat are used in cooking. Its monounsaturated oleic acid is as effective as its polyunsaturated fatty acids in decreasing the total amount of cholesterol in the blood and it has a positive effect on the HDL, the protective factor against coronary disease.

Olive oil and calories
Many people wonder whether olive oil has more calories than other cooking oils. The answer is: NO. Olive oil has 120 calories per tablespoon. Furthermore, its rich fragrance allows one to use less quantity of olive oil than one would of other less rich oils, thereby reducing the intake of calories even more.
Section 4: How is Olive Oil Produced
Section 5: Grades of Olive Oil as Defined by the International Olive Oil Council
Section 6: Assessing Olive Oil
Section 7: How to Buy Olive Oil
Section 8: Cooking With Olive Oil