Olives Or Olives - What Is The Difference And The Benefit? Varieties. Photo

2023 Author: Ava Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 07:13

"What to take - olives or olives?" - many of our compatriots think, perplexedly sorting through jars with these delicious fruits on the store shelf. But really, what to choose?

Olives are a fruit that came to us from the Mediterranean countries. Jars with olive tree fruits have taken a confident position on the shelves of our stores, having won the hearts of consumers with their unusual taste and abundance of useful substances. However, in our country some olives have a separate name - olives. That is, it is customary to call green fruits olives, and black fruits - olives. In reality, there is no separate fruit called "Olive". All over the world, olives have only one name - "Olive".

Useful properties of olives

The olive tree is immortal - the peoples of the Mediterranean believe, amazed at its extraordinary resilience. Such a tree grows very slowly, but its life span reaches two and a half thousand years. The fruits of the olive tree are ready to give those who consume them a lot of useful and necessary substances for the body.

Of course, the main product produced by the fruits of the olive tree is the well-known olive oil, which is incredibly beneficial for cardiovascular diseases.

Olives can be divided into two main groups: fat-fortified (from which the olive oil is extracted) and table olives (less "oily"), which we consume in their natural form.

Many people know that olives have a large number of useful substances, due to which they are classified as foods of high nutritional value. However, what kind of vitamins are ready to enrich our body with these wonderful fruits remains a mystery for most of the consumers of this product.

So, olives are rich in unsaturated fatty acids (very necessary for our body), proteins, vitamins of group B, C, E, P, potassium, phosphorus and iron. The acids that make up olives are practically irreplaceable "building blocks" for the cell walls of our body.

A person of any age can afford to enrich and decorate his diet with olives. After all, the use of these fruits will serve as an excellent prevention of stomach ulcers and liver diseases, as well as have a beneficial effect on the heart and blood vessels. Even the seeds of the olive fruit, once in the body, will not harm it, since they are completely digested by the gastrointestinal tract.

Varieties of olives

The olives that we see on store shelves undergo mandatory culinary processing. This is no coincidence. Because of the bitterness and hardness, fresh olives are inedible. During processing, fresh product is salted, pickled, seasoned with pepper, lemons, anchovies, and so on. The selection on the shelves of our stores is mainly limited to canned olives. Although at home, these fruits can be tasted in dry salting.

Depending on the degree of ripeness and the method of processing, olives are divided into several types:

• "Green olives" - usually picked before ripening, and the color can vary from green to light yellow.
• "Combined olives" are usually picked during ripening, however, before full maturity, and the color can vary from pink to chestnut.
• "Black olives" (in Russian "olives") - it is customary to pick after full ripening.
• Olives "blackened" by oxidation (in our country, also "olives") are usually picked in an unripe form, and then subjected to special processing to acquire a black color.

In general, experts know about three hundred varieties of olive tree fruits, which they distinguish by some taste nuances, shapes and sizes.

A sign of the undeniable quality of this product is the uniform size and smooth surface of the fruit, as well as the absence of preservatives. And you shouldn't buy a jar of olives if it is deformed or expired.

So, with a little attention and care, you can safely enjoy the fruits of the olive tree, saturating your body with a mass of useful substances.