Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Olive Oil: Mother Nature's Gift

Transcript

Olive Oil: Mother Nature's Gift · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Do Do Do do? Do you like that? Huh oh,
0:05
Speaker 1: I never get tired of the trumpet fair of Josh Clark.
0:09
Speaker 1: That's right. So that means that there's a new announcement
0:12
Speaker 1: for a new show. Uh. Fans in San Francisco and
0:16
Speaker 1: the Bay Area in general and northern California should not
0:19
Speaker 1: be surprised that we are coming back to s F
0:22
Speaker 1: Sketch Fest for what is this four years in a row,
0:26
Speaker 1: easily for if not five. Yes, it is one of
0:30
Speaker 1: our favorites. It is the premier comedy festival in the
0:34
Speaker 1: country in my opinion, and we are always super happy
0:37
Speaker 1: that our buddy Janet Barney invites us back. Yep. So
0:40
Speaker 1: on Thursday, January sevent Chuck, we are going to be
0:44
Speaker 1: doing a stuff you should know live show at the Castro, right,
0:47
Speaker 1: that is correct. And the next day on Friday, we're
0:53
Speaker 1: both doing our own thing too, so you can see
0:55
Speaker 1: Josh and Chuck and then Josh and Chuck. Yeah. Actually
0:58
Speaker 1: I think I'm on Saturday, but yeah, okay, Well mine's
1:01
Speaker 1: on the eighteenth on Friday, and I'm doing an End
1:04
Speaker 1: of the World live show where you can come here
1:07
Speaker 1: and we talk about the end of the world and
1:08
Speaker 1: all the reasons we should try to not let that happen.
1:11
Speaker 1: It should be pretty cool, that's right. And I'll be
1:13
Speaker 1: doing my second ever live movie Crush with very special
1:17
Speaker 1: live guest, Busy Phillips, and we'll be talking about the great,
1:20
Speaker 1: great Noah bomboch classic film Kicking and Screaming, one of
1:23
Speaker 1: my favorite movies. Awesome. So you can get all the
1:26
Speaker 1: information you need and tickets by going to the s
1:29
Speaker 1: F Sketch Fest website. Uh and they will have schedules, tickets,
1:33
Speaker 1: all that jazz, and we will eventually have links up
1:35
Speaker 1: I'm sure on s Y s K Live and we
1:38
Speaker 1: will see you San Francisco in January. Tickets go on
1:41
Speaker 1: sale tomorrow. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how
1:47
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to the podcast.
1:56
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant's Jerry over there,
2:01
Speaker 1: and this is Stuff you Should Know, the flowing podcast
2:07
Speaker 1: of all time. Pretty great. You're getting good at those,
2:12
Speaker 1: Oh man, you'd think after ten years i'd actually be decent. Adam,
2:16
Speaker 1: you're getting good, getting sharp ten years, Chuck, good lord,
2:21
Speaker 1: going on eleven dude, Yeah, you know, yep, it's true.
2:27
Speaker 1: Eventually it will be eleven, that's right, and then twelve
2:31
Speaker 1: and then pretty much of infinity after that. I would
2:34
Speaker 1: guess when you say, I feel like we're almost daring
2:38
Speaker 1: each other to keep going at this point. You know. Yeah,
2:42
Speaker 1: instead of doing that, Chuck, instead of just going on
2:45
Speaker 1: like this, let's do alive oil instead. Yeah. Man, it's
2:49
Speaker 1: kind of cool that ten and a half years in
2:53
Speaker 1: you can still look around the world and say, or
2:58
Speaker 1: looking our pantry for that matter, sure and say, man,
3:02
Speaker 1: olive oil. That's topic up next. Those little cinnamon candy
3:06
Speaker 1: toppings that you put on cakes. It's after olive oil. Obviously,
3:12
Speaker 1: it's just intuitive. But Chuck, I think you should announced
3:16
Speaker 1: everybody who wrote this article for us. Yeah, the Grabster.
3:20
Speaker 1: We've we've been lucky enough to uh to get the
3:23
Speaker 1: Grabster to kind of pump out more articles for us
3:25
Speaker 1: here in the near future. Yep, we just Grabster. That's right.
3:29
Speaker 1: It's super great because the Grabster does really good research
3:32
Speaker 1: and gives us good stuff. So we are basing this
3:35
Speaker 1: one on a Grabster article, which is just phenomenal. It's
3:38
Speaker 1: been a while, yeah, man, so, um so there's a
3:42
Speaker 1: lot of pressure on Ed during this entire um episode,
3:46
Speaker 1: I guess is what we're trying to say. I think
3:48
Speaker 1: he nailed it. This is very thorough. It is yeah,
3:51
Speaker 1: he's he's good like that man, And it is um.
3:54
Speaker 1: It's so thorough, in fact, that I think we should
3:56
Speaker 1: just go ahead and start at the beginning, the very beginning,
3:59
Speaker 1: which is basically where Ed started it. He fast forwarded
4:02
Speaker 1: a little past the the um the cooling of the earth,
4:08
Speaker 1: but then picks up where um where olives actually started.
4:11
Speaker 1: And apparently, in a two thousand and thirteen study of
4:16
Speaker 1: um chlora blast no chlora plast um, d NA jeans
4:23
Speaker 1: in olives. Apparently that is a part of an alive that,
4:27
Speaker 1: like from tree to tree along a lineage, the d
4:30
Speaker 1: NA gets passed along, so you can actually trace the
4:32
Speaker 1: lineage of trees. Some researchers traced the lineage of olives
4:38
Speaker 1: domesticated olives all the way back about six to eight
4:42
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, somewhere around the border between Turkey and Syria.
4:48
Speaker 1: That is where the first person said, Hey, I kind
4:51
Speaker 1: of like the cut of your jib wild olives, but
4:54
Speaker 1: I think I can make you a little better. Let
4:56
Speaker 1: me harness you and force you into domestication. Here you
5:00
Speaker 1: go into the ground between what will eventually be Syria
5:04
Speaker 1: and Turkey. Yeah, and that's like you were saying, just
5:06
Speaker 1: when people caught on two, you know, like domesticating a
5:11
Speaker 1: wild animal. But wild olives they've been around as long
5:15
Speaker 1: as olive trees have been around, and olive trees have
5:17
Speaker 1: been around, Like there's evidence that you know, fossilized pollen
5:22
Speaker 1: and evidence that shows that took Took and all all
5:26
Speaker 1: his gang we're eating olives, right, Yeah, they were eating olives,
5:31
Speaker 1: and then so were their bird friends were eating olives too,
5:33
Speaker 1: and wild olives are, like, I think, a little more bitter,
5:37
Speaker 1: and they're smaller, which is why that that early um
5:41
Speaker 1: horticulturists that I can do better. I'm a human being.
5:45
Speaker 1: I basically owned this planet, so I'm gonna make this
5:48
Speaker 1: olive tree do what I wanted to. And they did.
5:51
Speaker 1: They olives grew bigger and less bitter. I don't want
5:54
Speaker 1: to say sweeter because that's not quite quite the right word,
5:57
Speaker 1: but it's just less bitter, more edible, and over time
6:01
Speaker 1: they they've resulted in something like seven hundred different cultivars,
6:06
Speaker 1: which a cultivars um with olives or with any plant,
6:10
Speaker 1: it's a. It's a version of the same species, but
6:13
Speaker 1: it has different characteristics. Yeah, because of the human hand.
6:18
Speaker 1: The human hand. Excuse me. So when we got involved
6:22
Speaker 1: and we said, hey, let's domesticate this stuff, we did
6:24
Speaker 1: so because of those reasons. Um, maybe we want different
6:29
Speaker 1: kinds of olive us. Maybe we want to scale this
6:31
Speaker 1: thing and have an olive grove and get a higher yield.
6:34
Speaker 1: Maybe you want them bigger and fatter, Maybe we want
6:37
Speaker 1: them less bitter. So depending on who was growing them
6:41
Speaker 1: and domesticating them. Uh, it really kind of varied on
6:45
Speaker 1: what kind of all of you were going to get.
6:47
Speaker 1: But the point is there were lots of different kinds
6:51
Speaker 1: of and still many many different kinds of olives. Would
6:53
Speaker 1: you say, seven hundred seven hundred cultivars from what I saw, Yeah,
6:56
Speaker 1: and they're all just a little bit different from their
6:58
Speaker 1: little buddy next to them. Yeah. At some point somebody said, oh,
7:01
Speaker 1: I'd love to see an orange all of No one's
7:04
Speaker 1: ever done an orange all before, and they just got
7:06
Speaker 1: to work doing that, and now we have Actually I
7:08
Speaker 1: don't think that exists, but that's a pretty good example
7:11
Speaker 1: of what could have happened had somebody a thousand years
7:14
Speaker 1: ago said I want to see what an orange all
7:16
Speaker 1: of looks like. We would have an orange alive cultivar.
7:20
Speaker 1: That's right, But that's it. I mean, it's just basically
7:22
Speaker 1: difference in size shape also the size of the tree,
7:26
Speaker 1: the shape of the tree, all all of trees. Remembering
7:28
Speaker 1: our pando Um episode, how could I forget? Man, that's
7:32
Speaker 1: a good one. I love pando as well, Chuck Um.
7:36
Speaker 1: But we were talking about long lived trees. Alive trees
7:40
Speaker 1: are like pretty long lived themselves. There's a couple they're
7:44
Speaker 1: supposed to be two thousand years old. And I saw
7:46
Speaker 1: one called the olive tree of vuvess on Crete and
7:50
Speaker 1: it's thought to be three thousand years old, and it's
7:54
Speaker 1: one it's it's just a perfect tree. Have you seen it? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
7:58
Speaker 1: because Creedeas was the seat. Crete was the seat. That's
8:02
Speaker 1: what it says on all the t shirts olive seat.
8:05
Speaker 1: Right back in the day during the Bronze Age, I
8:08
Speaker 1: believe um create was like the seat of olive oil
8:11
Speaker 1: production for the world. And there's a temple at Nos Sos.
8:15
Speaker 1: I think that's how you say it right in the
8:16
Speaker 1: case Island. Yeah, yeah, it's not Canosis, okay um That
8:21
Speaker 1: temple is thought to have housed I guess at any
8:23
Speaker 1: given times sixteen thousand gallons of olive oil at any
8:27
Speaker 1: at any point, like you could walk in there and
8:30
Speaker 1: you would find about sixteen thousand gallons in clay amphory. Yeah.
8:35
Speaker 1: As and as far as the tree goes, like you said,
8:37
Speaker 1: they can't. They generally are very old, they grow very slowly, UM,
8:42
Speaker 1: and like you said, they can range in size. It's
8:44
Speaker 1: it's pretty uncommon to have super tall ones because we
8:47
Speaker 1: have domesticated them to be a little bit easier to cultivate,
8:52
Speaker 1: which means smaller and shorter summer like shrubs sometimes uh
8:57
Speaker 1: as far as North America and South America. They are
9:00
Speaker 1: not native to our lands, although um they do grow
9:03
Speaker 1: because Europeans brought them over. So now the United States,
9:07
Speaker 1: in Mexico, h Chile, Argentina and Australia successfully produce olive
9:13
Speaker 1: oil outside of the UM. Obviously the Mediterranean region which
9:17
Speaker 1: is still I think Tunisia, Italy and Spain or are
9:21
Speaker 1: the people who are really pumping that stuff out right
9:23
Speaker 1: the leaders for sure. And the reason I mentioned our
9:25
Speaker 1: bird friends UM is because olives actually spread really easily.
9:31
Speaker 1: Birds I guess eat the olives poop the seeds out,
9:35
Speaker 1: which I feel bad for a bird because all of
9:37
Speaker 1: pits are fairly big, you know sure, I mean if
9:43
Speaker 1: you were I wouldn't want to poop out in all
9:44
Speaker 1: of pit I can imagine if I were a tiny
9:46
Speaker 1: little bird, that'd be a big ordeal. But that's how
9:49
Speaker 1: all of trees like spread And since they thrive actually
9:53
Speaker 1: in fairly semi arid conditions like too much waters not
9:58
Speaker 1: good for him. They can survive cold snaps pretty well. Uh,
10:03
Speaker 1: they spread pretty easily, and they can be grown all
10:06
Speaker 1: over the place, not just in the Mediterranean. Yeah. And
10:10
Speaker 1: ed h, I love how he put it here, like basically,
10:12
Speaker 1: don't take me or anyone else to task about all
10:15
Speaker 1: these dates because domestication of the olive tree and the
10:21
Speaker 1: and the beginnings of olive oil could have started in
10:24
Speaker 1: different places around the world at different times. Um. And
10:28
Speaker 1: he said, basically, it's not important to try and like
10:32
Speaker 1: nail down a specific date and region because it is conflicting.
10:36
Speaker 1: And what's important is is that the olive and the
10:39
Speaker 1: olive oil industry. Uh. Well, I guess it's an industry now,
10:43
Speaker 1: but back then it was just called olive oil. Um.
10:46
Speaker 1: It was super important. It wasn't just it's not just oil,
10:52
Speaker 1: you know, it was important to religion and culture and
10:55
Speaker 1: really had a had a big impact on these ancient empires. Yeah,
11:00
Speaker 1: makes the point to say, like this, this region that
11:04
Speaker 1: produced like the world's three major religions, or two of them,
11:08
Speaker 1: at least three of them, three of the four, the
11:11
Speaker 1: big four. I'm going with that now, the Big five Man, Jewish, Christian, Islamic,
11:17
Speaker 1: and scientology, right, the Big four. Okay, let me just
11:21
Speaker 1: say that it produced three of the world's major religions
11:25
Speaker 1: also some of the great great earliest cultures. Um, they
11:29
Speaker 1: all came about in this place where olives and then
11:33
Speaker 1: olive oil production was pretty pretty widespread and plentiful. And
11:38
Speaker 1: he doesn't go so far as to say like one
11:40
Speaker 1: necessarily influenced the other, but they were definitely intertwined. And
11:44
Speaker 1: it's it's you can make the case, like you know,
11:47
Speaker 1: they didn't say, um, you know, chicken eggs are for
11:51
Speaker 1: the gods or something like that, al of o is.
11:54
Speaker 1: It's special in its own strange way to human culture,
11:58
Speaker 1: especially the earliest, um, faint famous contours of human culture. Yeah,
12:03
Speaker 1: and so important that even the word oh I l
12:07
Speaker 1: just for all the oils is derived from the Latin
12:11
Speaker 1: word for olive oil, specifically oleum, So you could, you know,
12:16
Speaker 1: you could even say that olive oil is sort of
12:18
Speaker 1: the the o g the original oil, right, And it's
12:21
Speaker 1: like Popeye's girlfriend would be olive olive oil, that's right?
12:27
Speaker 1: Or which is or just color oleum? For surely that
12:31
Speaker 1: was his pet name for Uh. Should we take a break?
12:34
Speaker 1: I think so, we're starting to get a little charged up.
12:36
Speaker 1: Might as well defuse it, and all right, we'll be
12:39
Speaker 1: back to talk about how olive oil played apart in
12:43
Speaker 1: all this culture and mythology. Let's all right, Chuck. So,
12:59
Speaker 1: as I mentioned oiler alert, um, Christianity is one of
13:03
Speaker 1: the world's big three religions, and olive oil makes an
13:06
Speaker 1: appearance in it. Did you know that I did? Um, well,
13:11
Speaker 1: olives do at least? Yeah, and Ed actually over delivered here,
13:15
Speaker 1: I think, oh ye, yeah, I agree, he was. He
13:18
Speaker 1: was kind of showing his stuff. He got excited. But
13:21
Speaker 1: what we'll go through some of these um. Obviously, in
13:24
Speaker 1: the Book of Genesis, if anyone's ever heard the story
13:26
Speaker 1: of Noah, after the flooding, Noah sends out that dove
13:30
Speaker 1: and says, hey, dude, go out there and see what's what,
13:35
Speaker 1: what we have in store for us, what's alive, what's dead?
13:38
Speaker 1: And give me a report. And the dove said, sure thing, Noah,
13:42
Speaker 1: and flew away and came back with an olive branch.
13:45
Speaker 1: So it might sound like someone's under delivering, Mr Dove,
13:52
Speaker 1: but what that meant was is there's life out there
13:55
Speaker 1: because the olive tree is growing and everyone loves olives.
14:01
Speaker 1: Right there you go. That was the implication. Chuck. You're
14:04
Speaker 1: basically a biblical scholar at this point pretty much. But
14:08
Speaker 1: I mean, think about the dove carrying the olive branch,
14:11
Speaker 1: like that's almost worldwide. Somebody can point to that and
14:13
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, that's that's a good feeling. Is what
14:16
Speaker 1: that symbolized. We all know what that means. That means
14:18
Speaker 1: there's a fight coming, right or somebody doesn't want to
14:22
Speaker 1: fight anymore. So here's here's an olive branch that I
14:25
Speaker 1: taped to a dove and I'm throwing it at you.
14:28
Speaker 1: What else? Um Oh. One of the things that struck
14:33
Speaker 1: me was that olive oil wasn't always used as um food.
14:37
Speaker 1: It was used as definitely as an offering to the gods.
14:40
Speaker 1: It was portioned out very exactly and precisely, and we
14:44
Speaker 1: actually have um tablets with linear B writing for the
14:47
Speaker 1: Messenian culture that show that it was um taking very seriously.
14:52
Speaker 1: It was like you get this little quarter ouns of
14:54
Speaker 1: olive oil. You get this quarter ouns of olive oil,
14:57
Speaker 1: sign your name here to say you got your olive
14:59
Speaker 1: oil kind of thing, and then part of it even
15:01
Speaker 1: goes to the gods, right right, Yeah, that's yeah exactly,
15:05
Speaker 1: and they have to sign for it, they do zeus um.
15:10
Speaker 1: But then it was also used in bathing culture as well. Yeah,
15:14
Speaker 1: I mean Emily has olive oil and her soap, right, Okay,
15:18
Speaker 1: so this was a little less soapy than that. This
15:21
Speaker 1: is a little more straightforward wherein you would take I
15:24
Speaker 1: believe this was the Greeks, right or the Romans? Uh,
15:28
Speaker 1: what's the difference? Now? It was in Athens. Okay. So
15:31
Speaker 1: the ancient Athenians would use all of oil that was
15:35
Speaker 1: infused with like an herb or something like that and
15:38
Speaker 1: pour it on their body and then use a stick
15:40
Speaker 1: called the sturgil to scrape it off, and that was bathing.
15:46
Speaker 1: Part of bathing, I should say, I just made so
15:48
Speaker 1: many Italians and Greeks mad because you said this is
15:53
Speaker 1: the same thing. Well, I mean, it's to be fair.
15:56
Speaker 1: Rome definitely modeled its culture almost exclusively classical grease. So
16:01
Speaker 1: come on, I was just joking though. Sure they know that.
16:04
Speaker 1: Give it, give him. I was just choking into like
16:06
Speaker 1: a stereotypical Italian accent. That'll complete it. He's just a joke,
16:13
Speaker 1: you know, perfect man. So Uh, of course ancient Egypt
16:17
Speaker 1: was involved. Um, it feels like anytime you're talking about
16:21
Speaker 1: some great you know, from olive oil to peanut butter,
16:24
Speaker 1: well not peanut butter, you can go find it on
16:26
Speaker 1: the walls of the tombs of ancient Egypt. Uh. And
16:29
Speaker 1: of course the Romans just like it's either the Roman
16:32
Speaker 1: Empire or the Chinese or the ones who are gonna
16:35
Speaker 1: make advances by leaps and bounds. And in terms of
16:39
Speaker 1: olive oil, it was the Roman Empire who was like
16:42
Speaker 1: really got those agricultural techniques down pat for kind of
16:46
Speaker 1: scaling it on, you know, as far as their scale goes. Plus,
16:50
Speaker 1: they were the first ones to really spread olive oil
16:52
Speaker 1: production beyond the Mediterranean and I think the Middle East. Um,
16:57
Speaker 1: because the Roman Empire spread so far and because olive
17:02
Speaker 1: oil is such an integral part of that culture. They
17:05
Speaker 1: took olive oil basically everywhere with them, and olive oil
17:08
Speaker 1: cultivation or production, all of cultivation and olive oil production
17:13
Speaker 1: went far and wide because of the Romans. And again,
17:17
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why they were able to spread
17:19
Speaker 1: the stuff far and by is because alive trees grow
17:21
Speaker 1: pretty well and all sorts of different climates. As long
17:24
Speaker 1: as they're not over watered, they're gonna do okay. They
17:27
Speaker 1: like bright sunlight. They're hardy, evergreen shrub like trees. Um though,
17:35
Speaker 1: you can get more all lives by by watering them,
17:40
Speaker 1: um more than just neglecting them, But you don't want
17:43
Speaker 1: to over fertilize them. From what I understand, there's like
17:46
Speaker 1: a lot of they're really low maintenance fruit bearing trees
17:50
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, But yes, they're there. You
17:53
Speaker 1: step up the fertilizer, you step up the water if
17:56
Speaker 1: you want to like do commercial alive oil production. But
17:59
Speaker 1: if you just have like an olive tree at home
18:01
Speaker 1: and you're just growing it for fun, it's you can
18:04
Speaker 1: go out of town for a while and not have
18:05
Speaker 1: to worry about your olive tree. Gina, who's into this,
18:09
Speaker 1: uh big time. Uh, Chad Crowley, he's into growing olives. Well,
18:15
Speaker 1: he's into olive oil and like to the point where
18:19
Speaker 1: like his retirement job might be olive oil, like olive
18:23
Speaker 1: farming and growing and cultivating. Does he grow olives? No,
18:27
Speaker 1: but he's he's into it, like doing a degree that
18:29
Speaker 1: I didn't fully understand until I talked to him about
18:31
Speaker 1: It's really cool. We should tell everybody, all the millions
18:34
Speaker 1: of people listening who don't know who Check Crowley is.
18:37
Speaker 1: He directed? Um that our TV show Stuff. You should
18:41
Speaker 1: know the TV show. He was the director, producer. He
18:44
Speaker 1: had a lot to do with it, and that scarred
18:45
Speaker 1: him so much that he just wants to go live
18:47
Speaker 1: on an olive farm. It's pretty much right. So the
18:51
Speaker 1: fruit of the olive tree is the olive, and they
18:56
Speaker 1: they ripen to black, purple, sometimes a little red. Um.
19:00
Speaker 1: If you see a green olive, that means it's not
19:02
Speaker 1: ripe yet. I did not know that, did you know?
19:05
Speaker 1: Because I hate olives? Yeah, that's right. I was kind
19:08
Speaker 1: of hoping that I had like imagined that, But I
19:11
Speaker 1: don't like olives. That's crazy, man, I love olives. A
19:15
Speaker 1: lot of people don't like olives, dude, that's crazy. Whatever,
19:19
Speaker 1: they're crazy. They're crazy. They're crazy, all of you crazy. Know,
19:23
Speaker 1: it's called personal taste that we respect. I guess, remember,
19:28
Speaker 1: I guess I keep forgetting when it comes to olives. Yeah,
19:32
Speaker 1: so as uh, the the oil in the olive um
19:38
Speaker 1: increases as it ripens, so you want them. It's kind
19:41
Speaker 1: of a a very tight line that you walk as
19:45
Speaker 1: an olive farmer because you want these things to ripen
19:49
Speaker 1: as much as possible to get the most oil. But
19:52
Speaker 1: if they overripen and then just start falling off the tree,
19:55
Speaker 1: they're no good. You gotta pick it off the tree.
19:57
Speaker 1: So like winemakers, it's a very stressful thing to watch
20:02
Speaker 1: that crop, I can imagine, and it comes down to
20:05
Speaker 1: sometimes the day or the hour of the day to
20:08
Speaker 1: really maximize your yield. Yeah, because if you think about it,
20:12
Speaker 1: you know, you have an olive tree with a bunch
20:13
Speaker 1: of olives growing on it. You have to time the
20:16
Speaker 1: the ripening of those olives not under ripe, not over ripe,
20:20
Speaker 1: but also not every olive on that tree is going
20:23
Speaker 1: to ripen simultaneously, so so you not only do you
20:26
Speaker 1: have to time it so that they're right, but the
20:28
Speaker 1: maximum number of olives on that tree are right at
20:31
Speaker 1: any given period too. But up beet. That is super
20:34
Speaker 1: stressful farming, way more stressful than corn farming. Corn basically
20:40
Speaker 1: grows itself. You just sit around in your easy chair
20:42
Speaker 1: and say, hurry up, corn, getting your your basket. Yeah,
20:45
Speaker 1: and then it just farts it off the tree right
20:47
Speaker 1: onto your plate the stalk and does a little bow
20:50
Speaker 1: and says how do you do? And you just clap
20:53
Speaker 1: from your easy chairs. And I love corn trees so
21:00
Speaker 1: uh some. I mean, if you have a small farm
21:02
Speaker 1: and you're like an old, old family business, and in Italy,
21:07
Speaker 1: let's say, you might still be hand picking these things,
21:11
Speaker 1: which is great. But big major operations they have what
21:15
Speaker 1: they called shaker machines and they drive through the farm
21:19
Speaker 1: and shake the tree. Have you ever seen one of
21:22
Speaker 1: those things? Yeah? And shaker machines are I mean, it's
21:25
Speaker 1: not just specific to olive trees. They use them for
21:27
Speaker 1: all sorts of fruiting trees. They just they just shake it.
21:30
Speaker 1: They do. It's like the trees like and it's like okay,
21:35
Speaker 1: that's over. It's it's kind of interesting to see. And
21:37
Speaker 1: then like there's a I guess a catch that catches
21:40
Speaker 1: the stuff falling off the tree and then it shoots
21:42
Speaker 1: it up a conveyor belt over into like a truck
21:45
Speaker 1: driving beside it. There you go, you just harvested a
21:48
Speaker 1: bunch of olives. Boom. But that's a that's like a
21:50
Speaker 1: commercial thing. That's a commercial Oh yeah operation. Right, Like
21:54
Speaker 1: if you have if you're like a mom and pop
21:56
Speaker 1: operation like you were saying, or if you're you're harvesting
22:00
Speaker 1: from very very old trees, you would not use one
22:03
Speaker 1: of those machines. Yeah, you wouldn't want to go to
22:06
Speaker 1: a thousand year old olive tree and and introduce it
22:09
Speaker 1: to the shaker machine. Mean, that would be so mean.
22:14
Speaker 1: It's like I've seen empires rise and fall, and now
22:16
Speaker 1: some jerk has got a new haul and shaker machine
22:19
Speaker 1: running that runs on diesel. Yeah, thanks Todd. So flavor
22:25
Speaker 1: of an olive oil is going to depend on a
22:28
Speaker 1: lot of things. And and olive oil and wine they
22:31
Speaker 1: grow in similar regions a lot of times, and they
22:33
Speaker 1: have a lot of similarities, which is why often when
22:36
Speaker 1: you'll go to wine country, there'll be a wine shop
22:38
Speaker 1: that also sells olive oil, or an olive oil store
22:42
Speaker 1: that also sells wine. And you start to wonder where
22:45
Speaker 1: where's the line? Dude? You me and I went to
22:48
Speaker 1: Calistoga in either Sonoma or Napa, I cannot remember. I
22:53
Speaker 1: think it's Napa. And it's absolutely true. It's there's like
22:57
Speaker 1: they're they're almost one and the same as just go
23:00
Speaker 1: from a wine shop too, an olive oil shop, but
23:02
Speaker 1: they're just it's the most amazing olive oil you've ever
23:05
Speaker 1: tasted in your life. That's the best I want. So
23:07
Speaker 1: it just to be clear, you hate all of us,
23:09
Speaker 1: but you like olive oil, and I understand they're totally different.
23:12
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I love olive oil. Okay, So have you
23:14
Speaker 1: have you gone to olive oil shops and just done
23:16
Speaker 1: like little shots of olive oil? Dozens and dozens? Aren't
23:20
Speaker 1: they just amazing? Yeah? Man, I like the grassy kind.
23:24
Speaker 1: I like the nutty kind. But it's and I think
23:28
Speaker 1: I've told you this before, really good olive oil can
23:32
Speaker 1: really give me like a chemical burn on my throat.
23:35
Speaker 1: So it has to have like kind of a buttery
23:38
Speaker 1: quality to it, I guess for me to really like it. Yeah,
23:41
Speaker 1: and this is the kind of olive oil that you
23:43
Speaker 1: don't you're not like even cooking with necessarily, you're you're
23:46
Speaker 1: drizzling it on your salad, or you're dipping your bread
23:49
Speaker 1: in it and stuff like that, or you're injecting it
23:51
Speaker 1: for its anti inflammatory properties. Hold on, okay, we'll get there,
23:56
Speaker 1: all right. But that flavor, like I was say, and
24:00
Speaker 1: like wine or the grapes that make wine, is affected
24:04
Speaker 1: by the soil that you grow it in the climate,
24:07
Speaker 1: how much rain it got that you know, the general
24:10
Speaker 1: tar war, it really can change the the end product
24:13
Speaker 1: of that olive and thus that that oil that you're
24:16
Speaker 1: going to get. And you know, the old school oil
24:20
Speaker 1: oiled people, olive oil experts, let's say, they'll say that,
24:26
Speaker 1: you know, if you really want a great olive oil,
24:30
Speaker 1: you won't even find it on some big mass farm.
24:32
Speaker 1: It's like you can find it the best stuff on
24:35
Speaker 1: like just an olive tree that's growing somewhere in Italy
24:39
Speaker 1: on somebody's property, right that wasn't necessarily raised for that purpose,
24:45
Speaker 1: and it's growing alongside other kinds of trees, uh, and
24:49
Speaker 1: not like smashed together against a bunch of other olive trees,
24:52
Speaker 1: which is basically permaculture, is what he's describing. Yeah, I guess,
24:56
Speaker 1: so you know, we remember the permaculture up where it's
24:58
Speaker 1: like you grow crops with around other trees and other types.
25:02
Speaker 1: Just a bunch of different types of plants together produce
25:05
Speaker 1: better crops. But over there they just say it's Italy, right, man,
25:11
Speaker 1: They're gonna they're gonna really be happy with this one.
25:14
Speaker 1: So UM. Apparently they also hybridized to um, which explains
25:20
Speaker 1: how we've gotten seven hundred different cultivars of of um
25:24
Speaker 1: domesticated all of plants. You just take a tree that
25:28
Speaker 1: that does one thing really well, like produces big fat
25:30
Speaker 1: orange olives, and you take another tree that um does
25:35
Speaker 1: really well in a closet, and you graft them together,
25:38
Speaker 1: and now you have a tree you can keep in
25:40
Speaker 1: the closet that produces big fat orange olives. And it's
25:44
Speaker 1: the biggest freak of nature olive tree anyone's ever seen.
25:48
Speaker 1: Pretty amazing, So, Chuck, I think we've kind of beat
25:50
Speaker 1: around the bush, as it were, tree long enough. Let's
25:55
Speaker 1: talk about how you actually make olive oil. It's pretty
25:59
Speaker 1: cool they because it's so easy in in practice. Like uh,
26:05
Speaker 1: as that points out, it's a stone fruit. It's a
26:07
Speaker 1: droope like a plumber, a peach where you have that
26:11
Speaker 1: pair of carp that flesh on the outside and then
26:14
Speaker 1: that hard seed right in the middle that you were
26:16
Speaker 1: talking about that a bird's anus cannot handle. But unlike
26:22
Speaker 1: those other kinds of like say, stone fruit, you don't
26:25
Speaker 1: get the oil from the seed. There's some in there.
26:28
Speaker 1: You can get some in from from there, but it's
26:30
Speaker 1: really hard to do. Um. What makes olive oil different
26:34
Speaker 1: from other kinds of fruit oils or vegetable oils in general,
26:38
Speaker 1: is that it doesn't come from the seed. The oil
26:40
Speaker 1: comes from the actual all of itself, which I guess
26:43
Speaker 1: that's what I would have thought, but I didn't realize
26:45
Speaker 1: that most of the most of the oil we get
26:48
Speaker 1: comes from seeds, although it makes total sense because some
26:51
Speaker 1: flower oil doesn't come from like the flower petals, it
26:54
Speaker 1: comes from the seeds. Yeah, But olive oil is different.
26:57
Speaker 1: It stands kind of on its own in that way
26:59
Speaker 1: that you get the oil from the all of the
27:01
Speaker 1: part of the all of you eat the fruit. That's right.
27:04
Speaker 1: And in the process of getting that oil is starting startlingly,
27:10
Speaker 1: startlingly old fashion simple. Uh. You you mash that olive uh,
27:18
Speaker 1: we'll call it the flesh or the pair of carp
27:20
Speaker 1: You mash that into a paste, You press that paste
27:23
Speaker 1: to get the oil, and then you clean it up.
27:25
Speaker 1: You get it. There's a little bit of solids and
27:27
Speaker 1: a little bit of water left over, and you and
27:29
Speaker 1: you remove that. Um. What has changed over the years
27:33
Speaker 1: is how we do that, because back in the day,
27:35
Speaker 1: you know, they would use stone wheels. Um. Like when
27:39
Speaker 1: you see like a donkey walking in a circle attached
27:42
Speaker 1: to a contraption, just hating life. Hating life, that's what
27:47
Speaker 1: that donkeys doing. It's rolling a big wheel in a
27:49
Speaker 1: circular path over and over all day long, smashing these
27:52
Speaker 1: olives into a pulp. That pulp is called a pomis uh.
27:57
Speaker 1: And then finally in the twentieth century they started using
27:59
Speaker 1: things like steel drum grinders or and this one would
28:03
Speaker 1: surprise me, um hammers mechanized hammers, which is not a
28:07
Speaker 1: good idea now it's not. It probably seemed like a
28:09
Speaker 1: good idea in the fifties when they introduced it. And
28:12
Speaker 1: now they're like, this is this makes terrible olive oil.
28:15
Speaker 1: And somebody said, I know we'll do. We'll just sell
28:18
Speaker 1: it for really cheap in the supermarket. And they said genius. Yes,
28:21
Speaker 1: because the friction, right, because heat, heat is no good.
28:24
Speaker 1: That's why they call it cold pressed, like good stuff
28:26
Speaker 1: is cold pressed. Heat is no good for olive oil.
28:29
Speaker 1: It makes it, Uh, it just changes the changes the taste.
28:33
Speaker 1: It does very much. So it introduces tastes you don't want.
28:36
Speaker 1: It can also paradoxically get rid of tastes you do want,
28:39
Speaker 1: so you it's it's not good at all to introduce heat.
28:43
Speaker 1: And that's another reason why olive oil kind of stands
28:45
Speaker 1: on its own as far as vegetable oils go. With
28:48
Speaker 1: just about every other oil you you cook with, like
28:51
Speaker 1: a vegetable oil or seed oil, it's um, it's it's
28:56
Speaker 1: heat is necessary to get the oil out of the seat.
29:00
Speaker 1: With olive oil, you don't use heat, and so it
29:03
Speaker 1: preserves a lot of the flavors that you lose with
29:05
Speaker 1: other vegetable oils, which is why so many vegetable oils
29:09
Speaker 1: just taste exactly the same. It's like because did this
29:12
Speaker 1: all just come from the same vat where if you
29:14
Speaker 1: take a sip of olive oil, you know that's olive oil.
29:18
Speaker 1: There's no mistaking whatsoever. Yeah, you don't want to take
29:21
Speaker 1: a sip of like just standard vegetable oil. You you
29:24
Speaker 1: you don't want to, but you can't well, I'm sure
29:27
Speaker 1: you could, but they're not gonna put that on your
29:30
Speaker 1: plate with balsamic vinegart or restaurant with a little pepper
29:32
Speaker 1: grind on top. It depends on the restaurant. You think, Yeah,
29:37
Speaker 1: I could see it. So the grinding process, you have
29:41
Speaker 1: to do this long enough so the malaxation process emerges,
29:49
Speaker 1: and from what I gather, that's when actual oil is
29:53
Speaker 1: released from these cells and then they start to combine
29:56
Speaker 1: with one another until it's like recognizable oil. Is that
30:00
Speaker 1: about right? Yeah, Like tiny tiny little particle droplets start
30:04
Speaker 1: to combine into larger, fat droplets of oil, and you
30:07
Speaker 1: just get more oil out of the the the actual
30:11
Speaker 1: all of itself, right, And that's that's just to get
30:14
Speaker 1: the pulp, pomasy pulp mhmm, you're exactly called pomas, it's
30:19
Speaker 1: not pomisy, yeah, p O M A C E. Right. Yeah,
30:23
Speaker 1: But that's not the actual pressing of the oil that
30:25
Speaker 1: comes next, right, that's just the crushing of it to
30:28
Speaker 1: loosen things up to kind of get the party started.
30:30
Speaker 1: The pressing is number two. So the pomise or the
30:34
Speaker 1: paste is put in. Traditionally it's put onto matt or
30:40
Speaker 1: um like like wooden boards that have holes all over
30:45
Speaker 1: it and then stacked. So you put like say, a
30:48
Speaker 1: matt down, put some of that pomise on top of it,
30:51
Speaker 1: put another mat down, put some more pomas on top,
30:53
Speaker 1: and then you've got a nice little stack going. And
30:55
Speaker 1: then you get a board, and then you go get um,
30:59
Speaker 1: you know, Giuseppe the human giant to lay on top
31:03
Speaker 1: of the board and pressed down. Get the largest human
31:05
Speaker 1: in the village to sit on it, right, and then
31:08
Speaker 1: that actually you're pressing the oil from the pal mess
31:12
Speaker 1: and all that oil is collected, and buddy, you've got
31:16
Speaker 1: the first hints of olive oil. And you could actually
31:18
Speaker 1: stop right there. And some people do. Yeah, today, of
31:22
Speaker 1: course they. I mean the first thing you started doing
31:24
Speaker 1: was hydraulic presses because Giuseppe was busy. There weren't enough
31:28
Speaker 1: Giseppe's to go around, I guess. But today a centrifuge,
31:33
Speaker 1: which I didn't know uh was, is used, which is
31:37
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense because you get a centrifuge spinning and
31:41
Speaker 1: it's gonna sling all that pulp to the outside, and
31:45
Speaker 1: you know, the oil is gonna gonna separate and leave
31:48
Speaker 1: that pulp behind and there's no heat whatsoever. They still
31:51
Speaker 1: call it cold pressing even though it's not even being pressed,
31:55
Speaker 1: which is interesting. Yeah, I guess that's true. I hadn't
31:57
Speaker 1: thought about that. Like, they don't call it cold spun
32:00
Speaker 1: olive oil. They could, I guess, right, but they still
32:03
Speaker 1: call it cold press. So when you see it on
32:05
Speaker 1: the bottle, that's what that means. There's been no heat
32:09
Speaker 1: or chemical processes to make that oil that you're about
32:12
Speaker 1: to delight in. It's all strictly mechanical and and it
32:16
Speaker 1: doesn't take long with the centrifuges. It's like it happens
32:19
Speaker 1: in minutes. Yeah, almost disappointingly, like you're like, oh, it's ready.
32:24
Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna wait for a little while. Um So,
32:27
Speaker 1: So after that first press, whether it's um whether it's
32:32
Speaker 1: with the centrifuge, or whether it's actually pressed, you have
32:35
Speaker 1: olive oil technically right there. But there's usually a second
32:39
Speaker 1: step involved, because you know, most olive oil is very
32:42
Speaker 1: clear and see through and beautiful, maybe with a little
32:45
Speaker 1: bit of a green into it, most likely some sort
32:48
Speaker 1: of kind of golden color. But there's another step to
32:51
Speaker 1: get to that part. It's it's just basically a filtration step,
32:55
Speaker 1: and for many many many years, several thousand years, I
32:59
Speaker 1: would guess they based really just set the olive oil
33:01
Speaker 1: out to sit and filter on its own, to let
33:04
Speaker 1: the the water particles that were suspended in there, and
33:07
Speaker 1: any little bits of solid matter from the olives leftover
33:11
Speaker 1: that we're still kind of floating around. They would eventually
33:14
Speaker 1: settle down to the bottom as sediment, and then everything
33:17
Speaker 1: on top was pure filtered olive oils called decantation, and
33:21
Speaker 1: it took like four to ten months to get to
33:23
Speaker 1: that point, depending on the type of al of use. Right,
33:27
Speaker 1: so if you want to mass market olive oil, you
33:31
Speaker 1: can't wait four to ten months. I'm sure plenty of
33:33
Speaker 1: people do. But you pay for that. That's the really
33:36
Speaker 1: really expensive stuff that you're getting. What they figured out
33:39
Speaker 1: is you can use the centrifuge again and you can
33:42
Speaker 1: filter out the particular matter in the suspended water, and
33:47
Speaker 1: now you have fully filtered, decanted olive oil that's ready
33:51
Speaker 1: for market. That's right. Then you've still got this, uh,
33:56
Speaker 1: this pulp left over, this stuff that you've extract of
34:00
Speaker 1: the oil, but there's still a little bit of oil
34:02
Speaker 1: in there, and they want to use everything. So this
34:05
Speaker 1: is when they actually use his heat they use heat
34:07
Speaker 1: in a chemical process to get every single bit of
34:10
Speaker 1: that oil out. Uh. And that oil is not something
34:14
Speaker 1: you want to you want to ingest. That's called uh lampanta, right,
34:19
Speaker 1: and that is like fuel oil. Um. And I love
34:23
Speaker 1: that head always puts in there in the industry. If
34:26
Speaker 1: you call someone else's olive oil lampante, that's like that's
34:29
Speaker 1: a what Ed calls a sick burn, Right, It's you're
34:33
Speaker 1: saying that they're olive oil is inedible, it's only good
34:35
Speaker 1: to be used for fuel oil. Yeah, man, that's that's
34:38
Speaker 1: pretty rough. Really, it's I think so too. Just sippy
34:43
Speaker 1: would he would smash if he heard you call us
34:45
Speaker 1: olive oil just sip to smash. So you want to
34:49
Speaker 1: take a break and then come back and talk about
34:51
Speaker 1: whether olive oil is healthy or not? Yes, and yes
34:54
Speaker 1: it is, alright, chuck. So everybody knows olive oil is
35:09
Speaker 1: healthy unless you've read articles that say that it's not healthy.
35:13
Speaker 1: It's just it's like, there's very few things that that
35:17
Speaker 1: demonstrate terrible science slash nutritional reporting than olive oil. It's
35:25
Speaker 1: all just very sensationalist. Yeah, here's the deal. Olive oil
35:30
Speaker 1: is is a much better alternative than most other oils.
35:35
Speaker 1: It is a monosaturated fat, which is always better than
35:40
Speaker 1: a saturated fat. It will reduce your LDL cholesterol, which
35:44
Speaker 1: is the bad stuff. And so if you're replacing other
35:48
Speaker 1: oils with olive oil, they will say things in studies like, um,
35:53
Speaker 1: you have a reduced rate of cancer or cardiovascular disease
35:57
Speaker 1: or inflammation. Yeah, it will help reduce inflammation, which we
36:00
Speaker 1: talk a lot about. Has vitamin E and vitamin K
36:04
Speaker 1: and all those things are good for you. But it's
36:08
Speaker 1: like that that can't be good enough to the writers
36:11
Speaker 1: of health books and newspaper articles or web articles, because
36:17
Speaker 1: they championed as this miracle oil that will make you
36:21
Speaker 1: live forever and lose weight all at the same time.
36:24
Speaker 1: And that's not the case, right, And it really kind
36:26
Speaker 1: of ascended in the modern West in the nineties thanks
36:29
Speaker 1: to the Mediterranean diet, which is basically like, look at
36:32
Speaker 1: the Italians. Look at how much postity eat and they're
36:34
Speaker 1: all skinny and healthy and they live forever. What's going
36:37
Speaker 1: on over there? There's a lot going on over there,
36:40
Speaker 1: is the answer. There is, but a lot of people
36:42
Speaker 1: settled on, you know, olive oil is the key. It's
36:45
Speaker 1: the magic potion as it were. Right, Um, it's not.
36:48
Speaker 1: It's it's good for you. But it's good for you
36:51
Speaker 1: in the sense that if you're eating something and you're
36:54
Speaker 1: going to be using like vegetable oil, canola oil, and
36:59
Speaker 1: you're replace it with all of oil, you've made a
37:01
Speaker 1: very good decision. If you sit around and just eat
37:04
Speaker 1: olive oil by the tablespoon all day long, that's bad
37:08
Speaker 1: for you. That's that's that's too much of a good thing.
37:11
Speaker 1: It's more olive oil is really good standing for stuff
37:15
Speaker 1: that's far, far less healthy than olive oil is. Yeah,
37:20
Speaker 1: And like, uh, if you're on the Mediterranean diet and
37:23
Speaker 1: you say and look into those Italians, you know, they're
37:26
Speaker 1: eating fish, and they're drinking red wine, and they're eating
37:30
Speaker 1: lots of fiber, and they're walking up and down the
37:33
Speaker 1: steepest hills on planet Earth, and they're strolling the shores
37:37
Speaker 1: of Lake Cuomo and have a great family structure, like
37:41
Speaker 1: low stress, like all these things combined. It's not like
37:44
Speaker 1: they shouldn't even call it the Mediterranean diet. They should
37:46
Speaker 1: call it being Mediterranean, right, you know. And you can't
37:51
Speaker 1: be from Atlanta and slurpe down to malive oil and
37:55
Speaker 1: then pretend you're from the shores of La Cuomo right now,
37:58
Speaker 1: where's that bag of port crack lens? Exactly? So it
38:02
Speaker 1: is healthy, but just don't we can't over or it
38:04
Speaker 1: shouldn't be overstated how healthy it is. Right. But on
38:08
Speaker 1: the other hand, there have been studies that say, no, no, no,
38:11
Speaker 1: not only is olive oil not healthy, it's actually bad
38:15
Speaker 1: for you. Those have not been borne out in follow
38:19
Speaker 1: up studies, but the basis of those, that whole line
38:22
Speaker 1: of thinking was that when you apply heat to olive
38:25
Speaker 1: oil e g. Cook it or i E. Cook it,
38:28
Speaker 1: I'm sorry everyone who loves latin um, that that you're
38:33
Speaker 1: actually creating toxic compounds in the olive oil, so you're
38:38
Speaker 1: actually hurting yourself. That apparently is not the case that
38:41
Speaker 1: that the amount of heat that we apply to olive
38:44
Speaker 1: oil to cook isn't enough to actually build up toxic compounds.
38:49
Speaker 1: And if anything, olive oils um smoke point is high
38:53
Speaker 1: enough higher than other kinds of vegetable oils that it
38:56
Speaker 1: actually um is less likely to build up any kind
39:00
Speaker 1: of toxic compounds through cooking. So the jury is still out,
39:04
Speaker 1: as it is on just about everything we understand about nutrition.
39:08
Speaker 1: But from what we can understand, olive oil is not
39:11
Speaker 1: actually bad for you. Okay, it's not a super it's
39:17
Speaker 1: not going to it's not going to give you lasting life.
39:20
Speaker 1: But it's also probably not going to bring you to
39:22
Speaker 1: an early grave either. Yeah, Okay, that's a good way
39:25
Speaker 1: putting it, thanks man. So, uh, when it comes to
39:29
Speaker 1: rating olive oil, because you go to the grocery store
39:32
Speaker 1: these days, and and there is a wide wide range
39:35
Speaker 1: of olive oils you can buy, and this is just
39:37
Speaker 1: in your in your everyday supermarket. Like I'll get some
39:41
Speaker 1: of that good stuff there to cook with. But Emily
39:45
Speaker 1: and I have a store in Buckhead. We go to
39:47
Speaker 1: this lady that we know that makes her own olive oils,
39:51
Speaker 1: and that's where we get our good stuff. Where uh, jeez,
39:55
Speaker 1: haven't been in a while, and I think she moved locations,
39:57
Speaker 1: but it's somewhere in Buckhead. There's one indicator to writing
40:00
Speaker 1: downtown the Cator, a great olive oil store where you
40:03
Speaker 1: can taste, you know, shots and stuff. Is that chair
40:06
Speaker 1: Heads And yeah it probably. But the different grades, uh,
40:12
Speaker 1: they all have to do with the level of refinement.
40:15
Speaker 1: And in this case, the less refined the better because
40:18
Speaker 1: that refining process is what we talked about that we'll
40:21
Speaker 1: strip away that flavor over time. So extra virgin is
40:26
Speaker 1: unrefined olive oil. It's cold pressed, never heated, no chemicals. Uh.
40:31
Speaker 1: Sometimes you can find bottles that say first cold press,
40:35
Speaker 1: which means they didn't just keep pressing it, they just
40:37
Speaker 1: had the one single press. That is the good stuff.
40:41
Speaker 1: And we'll get to whether or I can trust this
40:44
Speaker 1: in a minute. But that's the top quality. Yeah, and
40:47
Speaker 1: apparently the highest top quality extra virgin olive oil is
40:52
Speaker 1: actually unfiltered. It doesn't go through that second step to
40:55
Speaker 1: remove the um water suspended in a little particular matter.
40:59
Speaker 1: It's unfilled altered. Extra virgin olive oil is as far
41:03
Speaker 1: as health is concerned, if it is a healthy product,
41:05
Speaker 1: this is this is the bestows the greatest health benefits
41:10
Speaker 1: and supposedly is the tastiest. That's right. Then there's virgin
41:14
Speaker 1: olive oil, which apparently I've never seen in real life. Um,
41:18
Speaker 1: it's apparently very very rare, but it's it's unrefined. But
41:23
Speaker 1: not as high quality is extra virgin olive oil. Maybe
41:28
Speaker 1: it's just what's the point so people don't even make
41:30
Speaker 1: it right? I don't know, And then there's straight up
41:33
Speaker 1: olive oil. If you've ever picked up a bottle of
41:34
Speaker 1: olive oil, like saying the supermarket and been like, it's
41:39
Speaker 1: a great price on olive oil, and you're looking all
41:43
Speaker 1: over the label, turning it and you can't quite find
41:48
Speaker 1: where it says extra virgin anywhere, and it just says
41:51
Speaker 1: olive oil. What you have is all it's that's the
41:54
Speaker 1: great of it, olive oil or pure olive oil. And
41:57
Speaker 1: it's been bleached and I has been added to it.
42:01
Speaker 1: It's been heated, filtered, smacked around, um, just treated very
42:07
Speaker 1: very poorly, and then ended up on your grocery store
42:10
Speaker 1: shehelf for nothing. You can use that on your bicycle chain. Yeah,
42:14
Speaker 1: there you go, and that's about it. Or if you
42:16
Speaker 1: go to a terrible restaurant and they ran out of
42:18
Speaker 1: canola oil, they might use this kind of olive oil
42:22
Speaker 1: for your for your little plate with some bread. Uh,
42:24
Speaker 1: then you have light olive oil. This is more refined
42:27
Speaker 1: even um, basically no flavor. Uh. And we should mention
42:32
Speaker 1: though that that standard olive oil. Sometimes they do mix
42:34
Speaker 1: in a little extra virgin to give it a little
42:36
Speaker 1: flavor and try and charge a dollar nineteen. Yes, but
42:39
Speaker 1: they probably call it extra virgin olive oil. Yeah. Well again,
42:44
Speaker 1: we'll get there. Don't believe the hype everybody. Um, but
42:49
Speaker 1: the light olive oil basically has no flavor. Uh, and
42:52
Speaker 1: it it is not lighter in calories. So that's it's
42:55
Speaker 1: somewhat misleading. That's a big deal because you would think
42:58
Speaker 1: that if somebody sees a bottle of light olive oil,
43:01
Speaker 1: I would think like, oh, it's good. It's diet olive oil.
43:03
Speaker 1: It says weighs less, right, he say, um, apparently, And
43:08
Speaker 1: here we start to get so there's also palmise olive oil, which, um,
43:12
Speaker 1: that's lamponte is. It's not for eating, it's for burning basically. Yeah.
43:18
Speaker 1: And then organic, like with a lot of organic things, Um,
43:22
Speaker 1: there there's no standard enforcement enforcement body for organic in
43:27
Speaker 1: the case of olive oil. So maybe it is, maybe
43:31
Speaker 1: it didn't, but there's definitely you shouldn't bank on that.
43:33
Speaker 1: But that kind of opens the door to this controversy
43:36
Speaker 1: in the olive oil world, like where if somebody somebody
43:40
Speaker 1: can slap organic on their olive oil bottle and charge
43:42
Speaker 1: you more for it, but there's no way for you
43:45
Speaker 1: to verify that it is organic. There's nobody watching things
43:49
Speaker 1: like that, even though there's the International Olive Oil Council
43:53
Speaker 1: and the now the North American Olive Oil Association, and
43:56
Speaker 1: both of them are the standard bearers for the olive
44:00
Speaker 1: oil industry, but they're just not big enough, and I
44:03
Speaker 1: guess their teeth aren't quite sharp enough to regulate this
44:07
Speaker 1: giant industry that's really boomed since the dyeties. So there's
44:12
Speaker 1: nobody with the ability to actually make sure that the
44:16
Speaker 1: olive oil that's being sold to say, like the purest
44:20
Speaker 1: extra virgin olive oil, actually is extra virgin olive oil,
44:24
Speaker 1: or is even olive oil at all. It could just
44:26
Speaker 1: be like plain old vegetable oil that has nothing to
44:30
Speaker 1: do with with olive oil and never has with just
44:33
Speaker 1: a little bit of um extra virgin olive oil mixed
44:35
Speaker 1: in for taste. Yeah, because I mean they use they
44:39
Speaker 1: have standards, they have like actual standards for the number
44:43
Speaker 1: of chemicals, uh minimums and maximums and stuff like that,
44:47
Speaker 1: But it really comes down to human tasters, people that
44:51
Speaker 1: actually taste this stuff and say, no, this is metallic
44:54
Speaker 1: or muddy, there's no way this is extra virgin olive oil.
44:58
Speaker 1: Fail or fuss d That's another one. I love that word.
45:04
Speaker 1: But there just aren't enough mouths on these UH in
45:08
Speaker 1: these associations to keep up with the massive, massive industry
45:13
Speaker 1: that is olive oil industry. And so the most pessimistic
45:20
Speaker 1: UH people out there will say of the olive oils
45:24
Speaker 1: that say extra virgin are not right, And that's again
45:29
Speaker 1: the most pessimistic. But I mean, let's just say it's fifty.
45:33
Speaker 1: That's terrible. Yeah, it really is, because I mean, and
45:36
Speaker 1: it's terrible for a couple of reasons. One, you're getting
45:38
Speaker 1: ripped off. I mean, you might be paying for olive
45:41
Speaker 1: oil that is just not up to snuff and it's
45:44
Speaker 1: not as good as you think it is. That's that's
45:47
Speaker 1: bad enough. But if you're you're getting olive oil because
45:50
Speaker 1: you want to be healthier, right, and it turns out
45:53
Speaker 1: that it's not only good, not good olive oil, it's
45:56
Speaker 1: not even olive oil. You're not getting those health benefits.
46:00
Speaker 1: You may even be eating something more than you should
46:04
Speaker 1: and it's actually just vegetable oil, which is actually not
46:07
Speaker 1: good for you in any way, shape or form. Really, Um,
46:11
Speaker 1: that's that's just bad. So you're getting ripped off and
46:13
Speaker 1: you're you're being abused health wise. Yeah, and it's uh.
46:19
Speaker 1: I mean, we kind of made fun of the bottle
46:21
Speaker 1: that says extra virgin olive oil, but you can get
46:25
Speaker 1: the four dollar bottle and that could be fake. It's
46:29
Speaker 1: not just the little cheap e's. I mean, that's a
46:32
Speaker 1: pretty good warning sign. But you would think that if
46:35
Speaker 1: you paid, like, you know that for the fifteen dollar
46:37
Speaker 1: bottle next to the seven dollar bottle, that that's the
46:39
Speaker 1: real deal. And that's not always the case either, really, bs,
46:45
Speaker 1: I know, and I didn't run across like how you
46:48
Speaker 1: how you can be sure? But I don't know, man,
46:50
Speaker 1: I think there is no way to be sure. I
46:52
Speaker 1: bet do a little research on your own, find out about,
46:57
Speaker 1: you know, get a few brands that you know are
47:00
Speaker 1: doing the right thing, and seek those out. And I
47:03
Speaker 1: want to say, like, well, if you go to you know, Sonoma, Nappa,
47:06
Speaker 1: you know, Provalance or somewhere where they they know what
47:09
Speaker 1: they're talking about with olive oil, you'd have to have
47:13
Speaker 1: like pretty like iron cones to open up an all
47:17
Speaker 1: like a high end olive oil shop and sell vegetable oil.
47:20
Speaker 1: So surely that'd be a good place to do it.
47:22
Speaker 1: But then remember there was that whole mass Brother's chocolate
47:25
Speaker 1: thing where they were just selling like melted down Hershey's
47:28
Speaker 1: to everybody for like eight bucks a bar, and everybody
47:31
Speaker 1: went for that. So I don't know. I would guess
47:34
Speaker 1: you would have to befriend and olive oil producer who
47:38
Speaker 1: you knew and trusted, maybe let them hold some of
47:41
Speaker 1: your money for a little while, see what they did
47:43
Speaker 1: with it. Uh, and then when they gave it all
47:45
Speaker 1: back a couple of years down the road, then you
47:47
Speaker 1: could confidently start buying olive oil from them. And that's
47:51
Speaker 1: the only way, or just U we'll maybe we'll throw
47:54
Speaker 1: chat a little seed money, okay, and partner with them,
47:58
Speaker 1: and then we'll just have our own supply. He's a
48:00
Speaker 1: trustworthy guy for sure. Yeah, Okay, cool, there we go wrong? Nice? Uh?
48:06
Speaker 1: And then the final thing we got to talk about.
48:08
Speaker 1: And again I think ED did a thorough job. But
48:10
Speaker 1: I feel like we could do like three or four
48:11
Speaker 1: more shows on olive oil. Why not, But we're not
48:14
Speaker 1: going to. Okay, But the final thing here is olive
48:20
Speaker 1: oil is great. We all love it. It's it's the
48:23
Speaker 1: best oil to me aside from sesame oil, which also
48:26
Speaker 1: love um, but it is it is not great for
48:31
Speaker 1: the environment. The mass production of olive oil has some
48:34
Speaker 1: pretty big drawbacks to it. Yes, I had no idea
48:39
Speaker 1: about this. Yeah, and it made me like, go oh man,
48:42
Speaker 1: I knew it was a catch. Always something's always something. Um. So,
48:47
Speaker 1: when you produce olive oil, that that stuff that you
48:50
Speaker 1: press all the oil out of the leftover olives. That's
48:54
Speaker 1: called alive cake. And apparently one of the things that's
48:57
Speaker 1: left over from this stuff our feet alls, which polyphenols
49:02
Speaker 1: are actually kind of good for you. Phenols can be toxic,
49:05
Speaker 1: they can be irritants, they can be really bad for
49:07
Speaker 1: you if you ingust them orally. And when you make
49:10
Speaker 1: olive oil, you have all this left over all of cake,
49:13
Speaker 1: and when you spread it out there in the fields
49:15
Speaker 1: to just kind of get rid of it, it runs
49:18
Speaker 1: off and contaminates the local water supply. Um the water
49:22
Speaker 1: that's used to create olive oil. It uses a ton
49:25
Speaker 1: of water, and the wastewater can actually be treated in
49:29
Speaker 1: typical municipal wastewater plants because it's too toxic. Again, this
49:34
Speaker 1: does not mean that you're olive oil is toxic. It's
49:37
Speaker 1: the stuff left over or that comes from the production
49:40
Speaker 1: of olive oil that can be toxic to two people
49:43
Speaker 1: and bad for the environment. So yeah, there's like a
49:45
Speaker 1: big environmental impact, especially in small um rural areas where
49:51
Speaker 1: like the whole local economy depends on olive oil. They
49:54
Speaker 1: don't have the means to dispose of the stuff properly
49:57
Speaker 1: UM where it has the real environmental impact. But it's
50:01
Speaker 1: bad for for everybody. Just because it doesn't impact you
50:05
Speaker 1: over here where you're enjoying the olive oil doesn't mean
50:07
Speaker 1: you're not also still responsible for the impact that's going
50:11
Speaker 1: on halfway across the world where the olive oil is
50:13
Speaker 1: being produced. You know, isn't it amazing that they can
50:16
Speaker 1: treat human poop waste water but not olive oil wastewater.
50:21
Speaker 1: It is we can put a man on the moon
50:22
Speaker 1: who can poop up there and we can treat that,
50:26
Speaker 1: but we can't treat olive oil wastewater. The good news
50:29
Speaker 1: is is as we speed into the future, UM, there
50:32
Speaker 1: are new methods of reducing the amount of waste uh,
50:35
Speaker 1: And there are new methods of detoxification for that waste
50:39
Speaker 1: to be a little less harmful UH. And they're looking
50:42
Speaker 1: at other things that they can do to help put
50:45
Speaker 1: some of that waste actual use UM, like as fuel
50:49
Speaker 1: or you know, stuff like that. So I mean they're
50:52
Speaker 1: they're trying to get it under control, but it is
50:55
Speaker 1: a black eye for sure. They are feeding as much
50:58
Speaker 1: as they can to just Seppi, who's just ingesting it
51:01
Speaker 1: and metabolizing this stuff. But he can only eat so much,
51:05
Speaker 1: poor Giseppe. Uh you got anything else? No, Although I
51:09
Speaker 1: have a feeling if I traveled through southern Italy somebody
51:12
Speaker 1: would grab me at some point and say, come on,
51:15
Speaker 1: sit up on the sit on the olives. Will you'd
51:18
Speaker 1: be the Giuseppe standard. Well a second, if you tour
51:23
Speaker 1: southern Italy, bring me back some olive oil, will you? Okay? Okay? Um? Well,
51:28
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about olive oil, you can't.
51:31
Speaker 1: There's nothing more to know because Egg covered it all
51:33
Speaker 1: for us. Good job, ed Um. You can type the
51:37
Speaker 1: words olive oil into the search bar of your favorite
51:40
Speaker 1: search engine and it will bring up the whole world
51:44
Speaker 1: of stuff for you. Just be aware, remember about it
51:47
Speaker 1: is not real. Since I said that's time for listening
51:50
Speaker 1: to mail, Oh no, it's not. You know what it's
51:53
Speaker 1: time for? Oh yeah, you want me to say it
51:57
Speaker 1: an administrative d that's right, Josh. This is when we
52:11
Speaker 1: thank listeners for small tokens and large tokens of of
52:17
Speaker 1: love and appreciation, appreciation they've sent to us here at
52:21
Speaker 1: the Atlanta office. And I'm gonna start it off with
52:24
Speaker 1: Lori from Minneapolis, Minnesota, who very sweetly sent my daughter
52:30
Speaker 1: a Free to Carlo action figure because I talked about
52:34
Speaker 1: how much she loved Free to Carlo and she loves
52:36
Speaker 1: loves loves it. Thank you, Lorie, Thank you Lord. That
52:39
Speaker 1: was very nice of you. I am going to start
52:42
Speaker 1: off with Jim Sias and the Crown Royal team who
52:46
Speaker 1: styled us out again. Yeah, man with some fifths of
52:49
Speaker 1: Crown Royal and some very cool rocks classes that have
52:53
Speaker 1: like the little crown on the pittole pillow like in
52:55
Speaker 1: a hologram etched in the middle. Yeah, and it weighs
52:58
Speaker 1: like a pound and a half. It's got some real
53:00
Speaker 1: have to it. Plus they sent us candy too, which
53:03
Speaker 1: is pretty nice. That was very nice. John nord Skogg
53:07
Speaker 1: sent us boy, remember John, he sent us the He
53:10
Speaker 1: calls it a code wheel. What we should probably do
53:14
Speaker 1: is just put a picture of this thing up he um.
53:16
Speaker 1: He he built it for I think a boy Scout
53:19
Speaker 1: troop um. And then repurposed it as a wonderful gift
53:23
Speaker 1: for us. But is we now have it hanging up
53:25
Speaker 1: on the wall of the office John, we finally got
53:28
Speaker 1: it up. Is this huge handmade thing of wonder of
53:33
Speaker 1: interlocking gears and cranks that turn and you and it
53:39
Speaker 1: eventually will spit out a paper code. I don't even
53:43
Speaker 1: fully understand it yet, but it looks like something from
53:46
Speaker 1: the ancient past, and it's just pretty amazing. It looks
53:49
Speaker 1: really cool in our office. It's daunting, yes, and yeah,
53:52
Speaker 1: we can't understand it, so it's definitely going to be
53:55
Speaker 1: a wall piece from now on. Yeah, and imagine John
53:58
Speaker 1: has been a fortune shipping that thing too. So many
54:00
Speaker 1: many thanks John. Yeah, and I think we thanked John
54:03
Speaker 1: last time, but that was a far better thank so
54:06
Speaker 1: way to go, chuck Um. We got a We got
54:09
Speaker 1: a lot of great gifts when we went to Australia
54:12
Speaker 1: for our tour um. One of them was Janet from
54:16
Speaker 1: Nano Girl Labs in New Zealand gave us a beautiful
54:19
Speaker 1: hardcover edition of their book, Nano Girl Labs book, The
54:23
Speaker 1: Kitchen Science Cookbook. And you can look up Kitchen Science
54:27
Speaker 1: Cookbook dot com and it has all these different recipes
54:29
Speaker 1: in it, and each recipe is a science experiment that
54:32
Speaker 1: uses ingredients that are super easy to find a super
54:35
Speaker 1: cheap and um. It turns out Janet, the chief operations
54:39
Speaker 1: engineer for Nano Girl Labs, has been listening to us
54:42
Speaker 1: since her teens. Since she was in her teens, So
54:46
Speaker 1: I feel old, but thank you very much for that
54:48
Speaker 1: awesome book. Yes, Emily Cool and Judge with Baxter Sin
54:53
Speaker 1: this uh an invitation to their wedding in Idaho. Nice
54:57
Speaker 1: Mazel tov. I wish we could have gone, uh and
55:01
Speaker 1: Cam and Sonja, so they came to our Melbourne show. Um,
55:06
Speaker 1: and remember they gave us the Tim TAM's and the
55:08
Speaker 1: eight year old Tawny Port first so we could do
55:11
Speaker 1: grown up Tim Tam slams. And I tell you that's
55:15
Speaker 1: the only way to do Tim Tam slams. So with
55:18
Speaker 1: Tawny Port, it's amazing. If you don't know what Tim
55:21
Speaker 1: TAM's are, go to your local world market and buy
55:24
Speaker 1: some and thank me later. Yes, for sure, Krista allen
55:29
Speaker 1: Steen sent us art. Here's what she does. She takes
55:32
Speaker 1: prints of atlas Is, road maps and stuff like that
55:36
Speaker 1: and then paints over them with little sort of throwback
55:39
Speaker 1: kitchen motel signs. And she sent us the Ohio and
55:42
Speaker 1: Georgia because beautiful. You're from Toledo and I'm from Georgia.
55:47
Speaker 1: That's right. They're very cool. Yeah, thank you for those. Um.
55:51
Speaker 1: Jack Hawkins works at Star Wars whiskey. Remember that the
55:56
Speaker 1: Star Wars that we got at the Melvin show. Uh,
55:59
Speaker 1: we got some from him and it is beautiful stuff.
56:04
Speaker 1: You can check it out at star Wars dot com
56:06
Speaker 1: dot a you Alison Gallagher, she's one of my movie
56:11
Speaker 1: crush buddies. She sent Uh, she sent me a mug
56:15
Speaker 1: so this is probably a movie crush thing of Tri
56:17
Speaker 1: Saratops that says crushing it nice. That's awesome. It's very cool. Bill.
56:23
Speaker 1: This has to do with movies. But I don't know
56:25
Speaker 1: if it was movie crushed Bill Wagon or sent us
56:27
Speaker 1: the DVD of Mongol. Oh. Yeah, remember that one that
56:31
Speaker 1: was for us, the one version of the Genghis Khan story.
56:34
Speaker 1: That's that didn't star somebody like Omar Sharif or Um
56:39
Speaker 1: the Duke. That's right. It was like actually a good movie.
56:42
Speaker 1: I haven't watched it yet, but I'm looking forward to it.
56:45
Speaker 1: Ben flour Flo f l O r sent us his
56:50
Speaker 1: h this is very cool reusable carbon fiber drinking straws.
56:54
Speaker 1: Um Plastic straws are a very caused a jure. People
56:59
Speaker 1: should up using them as much as possible. I saw
57:02
Speaker 1: a little stat they oh they said they take um
57:06
Speaker 1: like ten minutes to make, twenty minutes to use and
57:10
Speaker 1: stay in the environment forever. Uh So Ben has a
57:14
Speaker 1: company called Looster l U s t i R. Where
57:18
Speaker 1: he makes these carbon fiber drinking straw as. They come
57:20
Speaker 1: in a little carrying case that you can just throw
57:23
Speaker 1: in your car your purse and if you like to
57:25
Speaker 1: drink out of straws, then you can carry it around
57:28
Speaker 1: and bring your own straw and say no, thank you,
57:30
Speaker 1: I have my own straw. Yeah, it'd be like um
57:33
Speaker 1: medieval times for everybody had to walk around with your
57:35
Speaker 1: own spoon and if you lost your spoon, you starved
57:37
Speaker 1: to death. That's right, um big thanks to Brad Ashmore
57:41
Speaker 1: for sending us his book of short weird fiction. Had
57:44
Speaker 1: he worn a different body, remember that one Angela from
57:50
Speaker 1: Tasmania since some lovely, lovely knitted hats from Australian wool.
57:55
Speaker 1: Nice thank you Angela. Um we got an awesome drawing
58:00
Speaker 1: of us from Eugene Gorman. He did an awesome pencil
58:03
Speaker 1: drawing of us and you can see it and all
58:05
Speaker 1: of his other stuff on Instagram at Gorman Eugene. Check
58:10
Speaker 1: him out. John D send his hand painted portraits. You
58:15
Speaker 1: can go to John D dot com actually j O
58:17
Speaker 1: h n d dot com to check out his art.
58:19
Speaker 1: Thanks John, Those are very cool. The last one I've
58:22
Speaker 1: got is from Ryan and the thirty year old engineer
58:25
Speaker 1: who is apparently still tells people his age when he
58:29
Speaker 1: says hi. He he sent in a pack of pilot
58:32
Speaker 1: friction eraseable pen right. They disappear with heat and reappear
58:37
Speaker 1: in the freezer, and they are pretty awesome. So thanks
58:40
Speaker 1: a lot. Ryan. That's that's that's pretty cool. I'm still
58:43
Speaker 1: I'm still a G two guy, but that's those are
58:46
Speaker 1: nice pens, all right. I just got a couple of more.
58:48
Speaker 1: William Dawson sent uh ukulele for music teachers and music therapists.
58:54
Speaker 1: It's a book that he put together about how the
58:56
Speaker 1: ukulele can be used as music therapy and it's very
59:01
Speaker 1: cool and I do have a Uka lately, so I'm
59:02
Speaker 1: gonna gonna take a look at that for sure you
59:04
Speaker 1: got a future side career ahead of you. And then finally,
59:07
Speaker 1: of course, uh, our buddies Lows Hillary and Mike Lows
59:12
Speaker 1: are sent us along in their collaboration with Flathead Lake
59:16
Speaker 1: Cheese in Montana. They sent usd uh, stuff you should Know,
59:22
Speaker 1: Stuff you should know specific hopping mad gooda cheese so
59:27
Speaker 1: good And we always get that flathead like cheese from
59:29
Speaker 1: them every year and it's just super super kind. It's
59:33
Speaker 1: the most wonderful time of the year it is when
59:36
Speaker 1: we get that cheese. Also, I want to say, um,
59:39
Speaker 1: we haven't heard from Little Bit Sweets in a long time.
59:41
Speaker 1: I hope they're doing alright. Hint hint, Yeah, I'll hit
59:47
Speaker 1: her up. It's been a minute. Please do well. If
59:50
Speaker 1: you want to send us something, that is very nice
59:52
Speaker 1: of you, but you don't have to send us anything.
59:54
Speaker 1: You can just drop a line to say hi. You
59:56
Speaker 1: can go to our website Stuff you Should Know dot
59:58
Speaker 1: com and check out all of our social links. You
1:00:01
Speaker 1: can find me hanging out on my website, the Josh
1:00:03
Speaker 1: clark Way dot com and you can send me Jerry Chuck, Noel,
1:00:08
Speaker 1: Matt Frank, the Chair and everybody an email at Stuff
1:00:12
Speaker 1: Podcast at how stuff works dot com For more on
1:00:20
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
1:00:22
Speaker 1: works dot com.