On Fri, 30 Nov 2001 22:46:56 +0100 Esben Brun <[log in to unmask]>
writes:

> As far as I know  unprocessed olives are  inedible !
> and   olive oil,  surely  is  a "processed, concentrated  food"  -
> very  un-paleo.
>
> (I love sundried black olives, and good olive oil)


Now that strikes me as a great "paleofood" question...  I'm not really up
on olive processing, but maybe you provide the answer in your own
message...  Are "sundried" olives processed in any other way besides
drying?  If the olives were allowed to remain on the tree long enough,
would they "dry" and become edible?

If so, I'd imagine that they would be quite oily, so going from oily
sundried olives, to squeezing the oil out would be only a tiny step.  It
would be much like squeezing the juice out of fruit, except that with
fruit juice, it would be concentrating sugars which are a potential
problem.  With olive oil, at least at the moment, the substance seems to
have no negative effects.  So, while there's a bit of a caution applied
to excessive consumption of fruits (with fruit juices needing even more
caution), I would think that olive oil would be as appropriate as any
animal derived fat (and better at least by our current understanding).
________________________________________________________________
GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO!
Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less!
Join Juno today!  For your FREE software, visit:
http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/.