I know you guys use olive oil but are olives okay? I have a weakness for kalamata olives.

jenn

I eat them.

http://www.healingcrow.com/dietsmain/paleo/paleo.html

Ten to twenty olives daily are okay, even on "Induction" (1992 Atkins, Induction "special category foods"). Yummy--

But, of course, the caveat: "these foods occasionally slow down weight loss in some people, and may need to be avoided in the first two weeks. If you seem to be losing slowing, moderate your intake of these foods." There's always a catch, isn't there?

Cheers--
Terry-24

Terry, we're not doing Atkins in this sub-forum.

Oops, my bad. I looked at Elsah's plan, not thread. Rewind, all.

I eat them and they don't affect anything negatively. They are a good source of fat.

I don't know..but I think they taste good, so I eat them.

I'm not sure if they caused this, but the freakiest thing just happened to me. It totally surprised me. I just hiccuped, after eating my 3PM snack (that I take with my supplements), and out comes this white powdered cloud out of my nostrils, and man, I thought there was an adverse chemical reaction going on in my stomach or something, because it was very surprising and new to me. I probably just exhaled some of the calcium supplements I just downed. Talk about quick digestion. I literally just swallowed the supplements 5 minutes ago, and they're in powdered form in capsules.

..hmm, but olives are ok for me. I think they might contain more trans fat than is desirable for the health-conscious individual..one serving, probably 5 olives, contains .5g trans fat. and there isn't much fat in olives anyway (maybe 1.5g/5 olives)..this is probably due to the cooking of the olives. Cooking monounsaturated fat at high temperatures will hydrogenate it to make it trans fat. However, if you eat them sparingly and not too often, I'm sure five or ten won't kill you.

That's weird, Capo.

I wish I burped like that! Only maybe in colors like neon blue!

Seriously, I love olives as much as the next person, but I have to suggest that unless they are consumed raw, or can be consumed raw, they are not Paleo. No judgements here, but we need to distinguish what is acceptable vs what is practical from a Paleo standpoint. The olives that I know about in the stores I see are heavily processed, canned, packaged or whatever.

I have to ask the question about Why have I never seen a raw olive? Can you really even eat them raw? And, if not, why are we eating the oil?

It won't help the color of your burbs, but you can turn your blood green.

Just curious but where does the stricture about only eating foods that can be eaten raw come from? Which paleo author proposes that? Cooking has been around for 140,000 years, at least, maybe much longer.

Olives are generally cured or sun-dried:

http://www.lifeinitaly.com/food/olives.asp


Here's info on the curing process, it involves lots and lots of salt.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Whol...Own-Olives.aspx

Glad to see this discussion about olives because as a Newbie Neander I was going to ask about them - having just had 6 with my salad for dinner. I think I will NOT eat them again. These were black, oily, sundried, and very salty - fab!!! But I think they are too processed for my two week experiment.

Proteus, I found raw olives once at the grocery store. I illegally nibbled on one to see what it was like and it was just about the bitterest thing I ever put in my mouth.

I ordered raw olives over the internet a few years ago when I was going through my raw food diet phase. It was a site that catered to raw foodies.

I didn't think they were palatable raw.

As for Why is cooking foods to be avoided? Nancy, to me that is just the ideal type, or the "final test," so-to-speak for a food that could be readily available to an on-the-go tribe. Picking and eating as you go probably was the original fast food. If cooking has been around that long, great, but it just makes more sense to me that if an early human couldn't eat it raw, then what would be the impetus to put it on a stick over the fire?

Speaking of raw vs cooked....

I have a friend who's into Chinese medicine in a big way, and his thoughts on raw vs cooked is that raw foods are "cold" foods, and thus create "cold" responses in the body, and if to excess, disease. He believes that there should be a balance of raw and cooked in order to achieve a balanced diet.

I don't know what I think about this, as I tend to prefer raw over cooked. But I'll take my olives heavily processed.