For years I’ve cooked with olive oil, dipped bread in olive oil, “drizzled” olive oil onto asparagus, and enjoyed olive oil infused with garlic or rosemary. More recently I’ve begun to use (what is labeled as organic, extra virgin) olive oil as a moisturizer. For use on my face I’ll even squeeze a few drops of juice from an organic lime into the olive oil.
So, what is olive oil and what is its story? Why is olive oil said to be so conducive to good health? This, I am learning, is a long, robust, multi-faceted, and global story with many players, a story that we will examine in small steps.
It is helpful to remember why, in the first place, we “eat.”
We are all sophisticated systems of systems and systems of players, finely evolved, precisely calibrated to the relationships between ourselves and our environments.
Through eating we bring chemical compounds of biological origin (and increasingly, in some cases, of synthetic origin) into our systems and ultimately into our blood (a finely tuned transport system) and from our blood into our cells (of which we each have billions and billions, chugging away and doing their work, each cell precisely calibrated to its particular environment and task) so that they can do their work.
Through breathing we bring atmospheric chemical elements and compounds, such as oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen, into our lungs, and from our lungs into our blood and from our blood into our cells.
Some of the compounds ingested through our food and breathed in through our air interact to better effect with our cells, some less so, towards the optimal performance of the systems of systems and systems of players that we all are, each individually.
Fortunately, nature’s wizardry has evolved a sense of “taste.” Much of the food that contains the chemical compounds that are beneficial to our cells tastes good. We enjoy eating it. Some of the food, however, that tastes good does not lead to optimal performance. In today’s world it is important to consult our taste buds and the label and do our due diligence.
An observation published in an earlier post, about risk and the system of systems that is the built environment, is pertinent:
“You owe it to yourself to call on every dispassionate expert you can find and grab all available data on any risk you are taking on.”
“You’re Buying a Home? Have You Considered Climate Change?”, Ron Lieber, The New York Times, 2 December 2016
Determine your goals, identify pathways towards them, identify risks, “grab” data, proceed with your due diligence, and eat (and breathe, another story) well.
As we proceed along our journey of exploration and learning we’ll investigate and discuss olives and olive oil. Come future posts we’ll examine a variety of foods including peanuts, peanut butter, coffee (a bean), blueberries, and grapes.
See:
“You’re Buying a Home? Have You Considered Climate Change?”, Ron Lieber, The New York Times, 2 December 2016