The truth about olive oil is that it’s not as healthy as you think, by a long shot. But before you think this is going to be some assault on a food stuff you may love, let’s set the stage first. In small quantities, like spraying olive oil on your popcorn, or lightly glazing a big salad, olive oil is probably fine, and particularly, if you don’t have weight to lose. If you are eating a high nutrient density diet or plant based, nutrient rich superfoods up to 90% or more of the time, picking on olive oil is not necessary.
The truth about olive oil though is pretty shocking. Made popular because of the Mediterranean diet, which was once very vegetable rich, and included liberal amounts of olive oil, we put the emphasis on the wrong stuff. Was it olive oil that resulted in the once healthy, trim Mediterranean people or was it the vegetable-based diet they used to eat?
As you’ll discover it was the vegetable “based” or More Plant Based Nutrient Rich diet, also rich also in fruits, beans, nuts and seeds and intact whole grains with smaller amounts of fish that was the driving force. Notice this is all past tense today as the people of the Mediterranean have joined the rest of the world in eating the Standard American Diet.
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Is Olive Oil then considered a Class 3 item?
Yes, Olive oil is a 3rd class food. It’s not even a food. It’s pure fat, has no phytochemicals to speak of and its 12 calories per TBSP. That’s not a health or natural weight loss promoting substance and certainly is not “nutrient rich”.