Good Polyphenol Bad Polyphenol

 Cooking & Eating, Farming & Gardening  3 Responses »
Oct 242011
 

When we hear of polyphenols it is usually in relation to what they do that is good for us. Polyphenols are found in plants and are powerful anti-oxidants that put the smack-down on free radicals. Free radicals are unstable molecules that, due to their instability, damage cells. My husband, the scientist and engineer, could give you a more thorough explanation, but Olive Crazy is the writer in the house.

So, when olives are crushed and the first batch of unprocessed extra virgin olive oil is milled out, the resulting oil is high in the good-for-you polyphenols. The polyphenols eliminate the extra electron in free radicals, saving you for pursuits like living to a healthy and ripe old age so you can enjoy your grandchildren.

But Olive Crazy, you say, your title says that polyphenols are bad too – what do you mean?

Polyphenols are bad when they are heavily present in olive waste used as fertilizer. The polyphenols can reach toxic levels and harm the soil and plant growth that the fertilizer is intended to help.

Thanks to the University of Sevilla (Spain) School of Agricultural Engineering, a study was conducted on the use of alperujo as a fertilizer in organic farming. The alperujo is a byproduct of a two-phase centrifugation olive oil milling process.  It is all the olive waste that is left over, solid and liquid, after all the olive oil has been extracted.

The alperujo can be used to generate energy and is being used to do so at two power plants in Cordoba, Spain. It can also be used as mulch after careful composting. The composting process reaches high temperatures which destroys pathogens and weed seeds, breaks down the polyphenols, and converts the organic waste into a stable humus, ready to use in the place of chemical fertilizers.

This technology has been around for a few years, but despite the potential cost savings and environmental advantages the processing technology is not widely available and research money isn’t either. The Spanish government is busy paying for the storage of past harvests which, by the time the oils are bottled, will have fewer of the healthy polyphenols than our bodies need, but that’s another story.

May the sun shine through your branches.

www.olivecrazy.com

When Is EVOO Not Good For You?

 Cooking & Eating, Olives and Olive Oil in General  Comments Off
Jun 122011
 

The answer is – when it’s heated too high. Summer grilling is upon us, at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, and Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) slathered meats and vegetables are being tossed onto grills. As the heat goes higher and you try to put a nice char on your food, all those beautifully nutritious anti-oxidants in EVOO turn into free-radicals.

But, how does that happen? And, what is a free-radical anyway?

All cooking oils have what is known as a smoke point. It is the temperature at which a cooking oil starts to break down into glycerol and free fatty acids and produces smoke. Extra Virgin Olive Oil’s smoke point is listed in several sources as ranging from 320F/160C to 400F/204C. This means that by the time you’ve got your grill good and hot your EVOO covered or marinated food won’t retain the healthful benefits or flavor of the Extra Virgin Olive Oil you just used.

A free radical is any atom or molecule that has a single unpaired electron in an outer shell. Yes, that doesn’t sound too bad but apparently the accumulation of those unpaired electrons cause oxidative damage to us or in simpler terms makes us age more rapidly, both inside and out.

Now, I like grilled foods, I like charred meats and vegetables, and I like olive oil. I have found a happy compromise. If I must use a cooking oil for grilling or high heat, I use grapeseed oil, which has a high smoke point, about 485F/252C. It also has little flavor and I finish my newly grilled food with the EVOO of my choosing – all the benefits and few of the carcinogens. Mmmmmm!

May the sun shine through your branches.

www.olivecrazy.com

Help, My Olive Oil Tastes Awful

 Storing  3 Responses »
Mar 172011
 
It wasn’t until I spent time in Europe and North Africa that I realized that olive oil didn’t have to taste nasty.For years, my Mom’s kitchen pantry housed a small cone-shaped bottle of Pompeian Olive Oil. I’m not sure when she bought the bottle, but I know it made many moves with our family, from Florida to Tennessee to Pennsylvania to a trash can in Augusta, Georgia. No one but Mom used the increasingly stinky, gluey mess inside. Sometimes she used it in her food, declaring it delicious, and sometimes she used it on her hair, extolling the resulting shine and manageability. Years later I realized Mom was on to something, but just not from that poor, rancid bottle. 

Olives come in many varieties, for example, frantoio, koroneiki, kalamata, mission, and arbequina, to name a very few, and the oil that is pressed as Extra Virgin, Virgin, Olive, and other grades of olive oil fit for human consumption vary in taste not only by variety of olive but by grade. Extra Virgin, which is the first press, generally has a stronger flavor than the other grades you can find on your grocery store shelf. But this strong olive fruit flavor isn’t what happened to Mom’s little, well-traveled bottle of olive oil. The olive oil in Mom’s bottle became rancid.

So why does your olive oil taste so bad? It is probably rancid too.

From the time an olive is picked and on it’s way to a press it is in danger of spoiling due to oxidation of the fatty acids in the olive fruit. Once the olive is safely pressed, stored, bottled, shipped to your grocery, and being used in your food the oxidation process slowly continues. There are three ways your bottle of oil oxidizes the fatty acids, the first is by photo-oxidation when light super accelerates the process, second is auto-oxidation which happens during storage in the absence of air the anti-oxidants absorb the free radicals until their aren’t anymore anti-oxidants left and the oxidation process accelerates, and third is called enzymatic peroxidation which is a natural plant enzyme reaction between oxygen and polyunsaturated acids.

Before I give you some tips on storing your olive oil, please do yourself and your family a favor and toss the old olive oil. Add olive oil to your shopping list and experiment with a few different grades and vendors. Have a tasting party with your family and decide which dishes you would prefer enhanced by Extra Virgin, Virgin, or Olive Oil.

Here are three tips for storing your olive oil:

1. Store in a dark cupboard away from sunlight and heat.
2. Store in a cool place, not the refrigerator, at a temperature between 64°F to 68°F or 18°C to 20°C.
3. Decant a large bottle or container of olive oil into well-sealed, small, dark glass containers and store according to steps 1. and 2.

Most olive oils have an 18 to 24 month shelf life from the initial harvest. Once you open the bottle the shelf life declines. So enjoy your new olive oil by pouring it on fresh pasta or toss in a leafy green salad. You’ll find the natural flavors of olive oil will make you Olive Crazy too.

May the sun shine through your branches.