Olive Oil

graninthemist - olive oil is good for high cholesterol, and did you know that duck is one of the best - it is high in calories but the low cholesterol means you can eat a lot! and eggs have been proved to not have high bad cholesterol.

Always dismissive of these so called health reports - you wait within months it will have been displaced with something else or proved misleading.

I use litres of olive oil, both in cooking and 'raw'. love it. very healthy, no heart problems and my skin is very good and I look years younger than my age. Again and again I go back to a balanced diet of all food groups in moderation. Yes I could do with losing more weight but that's probably because i'm not good on portion control!

Having watched the programme, I tried two spoonsful of olive oil yesterday. I didn't find it at all pleasant, and quickly swallowed some pineapple to take away the taste and the sheer oiliness. The oil kept repeating on me (coming back to haunt me!), but I shall p persevering inersevere as my cholesterol is high. I just wish I knew if it was doing any good.

Same trajectory in Spain ajanela. Much more processed food and more fat people over the last 10 years. Since leaving the UK I have lost a lot of weight without dieting and I slosh the olive oil with gay abandon. I use it on toast instead of butter when I'm having something like eggs on toast, but still love butter on other things. Never margarine though. It's worth experimenting with different olive oils as some can be bitter and unpleasant. A few pink peppercorns and a little rosemary added to a bottle makes the oil sweeter.

I use rapeseed oil for cooking as I was told it reaches a high temperature before it burns so ideal for stir fries. Olive oil best for salad dressings, for making hummus etc. I have a bottle of each on my counter.

So for that reason alone we won't put MacDonald's into Room 101

Apart from their toilet facilities, Anya I've needed them on many a trip.

Nobody needs MacDonald's ajanela

The Mediterranean diet was added to the world heritage list so recognising it.

In Portugal they always have olive oil on the table and put it on fish and cooked vegetables like we might add butter. They always serve salad with olive oil. I don't see them dipping bread in it as you do other countries and they eat bread without anything.

Since joining the EU they eat more sugary snacks, chocolate and sweets. Breakfast cereals, which they never ate before, have a very high sugar content despite being the same brands available in the uk. They have dramatically reduced the number of smokers sometimes meaning weight increase. More cars, more computers, more TV, less exercise.

But my biggest moan, Fast Food chains. Portugal has so many wonderful small cheap restuarants with good fresh cooked food, it didn't need Macdonalds etc.

I just love dipping bread in 'raw' olive oil, several places serve it including a lovely little poetry/philosophy/painting cafe. One DG likes to dip warmed pitta bread in for a snack.
Optician this morning commented that my likelihood of macular degeneration has decreased since my last eye test and was I eating a lot of leafy green vegetables now. Not especially but from now on, spinach here I come!

That sounds very like eating it with cream.

We had a Lithuanian au pair who made porridge and added a lump of butter when it was cooked so I suppose there is no difference. She said that was how they normally cooked porridge.

I use mainly rape seed oil which is produced locally.

We eat quite a lot of the stuff but cooked as well as raw. So will just up it a bit on the raw side.

I hear what everyo e one is saying 're the sample size etc. But for me it is a chance to do something positive
It won't do any harm and just might help even if only a bit.

DH tried putting the olive oil (only I dessert spoon though) in his porridge this morning - looked revolting to me but he said you could barely discern it- he just wanted to try. I shall continuing putting a little on his salad. As the urine test is not available how do we know if its needed/working. He is thinking of using it as an insurance policy as he has such a high but treated cholesterol.- Sorry I haven't read this whole thread you may have covered this.

You're absolutely right Thatbags, it's far too small a sample to get any meaningful information from it. If I remember rightly from the programme, this was made clear. But what it does suggest is that it certainly is worth further investigation in a more controlled manner.

Thanks, baden. Just been and glanced at your link. The first word that jumped out at me in the title of the report was "can", not "will" or "does". Nothing scientifically definite there. Also, the sample size at 69 was minute and, again, no use to prove anything. You need a sample. size of at least 1000 for any statistics from such studies to be any use at all. The only useful thing about the study that I can pick out right now is that it possibly shows that they need to do a large, proper sized experiment. I'll reserve judgment until that's done.

Or you can do it yourself with chilis, garlic, rosemary, etc ( obviously not all together!).

You can buy olive oil infused with garlic or various herbs. That might be an option for those who don't like the taste.

You're quoting me not the report, thatbags and I put it in those words so that nobody could say that you couldn't be that definite about such a small scale trial. According to the report, these indicators show the potential for damage to the heart and the very small scale results appeared to show that this potential was lowered. Since this reduction is achieved by taking a naturally occurring oil which has no adulteration, I for one am quite happy to give it a go. The side issue of paid tests are another issue.

weak, not week

What I've said there has nothing to do with whether I like olive oil.

I'm sceptical. Here's why:

"proteins.... in the blood which indicated a likelihood of developing heart disease - and the olive oil reduced the prescence of these proteins by over 6%."

"likelihood" is too vague a term to mean anything without some kind of probability assessment alongside. You can have a strong likelihood and a very week likelihood. Which is this?

If the "likelihood" is already low because of other factors (I think one's genes are important when it comes to heart disease, for instance), then a reduction of that low likelihood by 6% isn't going to make much difference, even if the claim is true.

I think this is just another fad.

I would and do find it very easy to eat 20mls of uncooked olive oil - it's a very small amount!

I love it anyway and if it's doing me good then all the better.

Well surely if you are trying to lose weight / eat healthily you eat lots of salads and you use it as a dressing anyway? We eat salads for lunch most days but include all sorts of ingredients so they are never boring. (Salad leaves, tomatoes, cucumber plus extra ingedients like avocados, nuts, dried fruit, cheese, eggs, tuna, ham or garlic sausage sometimes, cheese etc).
Or in hummous, or poured over cooked vegetables or even in gazpacho?