From chefs drizzling to dietitians dishing, olive oil gets a lot of love. So what about the taste and health attributes of olives? Tossed into salad, on top of pizza, chopped into a tapenade or simply set out with toothpicks for cocktail hour, olives add color, flavor and texture to many dishes. At the School House Restaurant in Sanger, Calif., black and green ripe olives find their way into every course. Candied olives and tangerine marmalade top vanilla bean ice cream for dessert.
Northern California’s Central Valley is olive country, where more than 1,000 family farms produce 95 percent of the ripe olives sold in the U.S. On a recent trip to this agricultural region I learned how olives go from grove to gourmet eats.
Processed is a good thing
If you pluck an olive from the tree and pop it in your mouth, you’d be pretty disappointed. Olives must be cured to neutralize a bitter substance called oleuropein. Curing processes vary worldwide, mostly involving salty brine, but a unique recipe for curing ripe black olives in California was invented in the late 1800s by a housewife named Freda Ehmann. Cured with lye and brine for seven days, olives all start out green but when exposed to oxygen turn ebony black. If you grew up eating black olives and placed them on your fingertips for fun, chances are you were eating ripe olives from California.
A visit to two massive olive canneries, Musco Family Olive Company and Bell-Carter Foods, revealed a few secrets to success including careful selection of olives harvested while still firm so they don’t soften during canning; and continuous monitoring of the fermentation process to produce tasty green and black olives.
Olive Nutrition
California registered dietitian Cheryl Forberg, nutritionist for NBC’s “Biggest Loser” and author of “Flavor First Cookbook,” notes that California ripe olives canned in water are actually a calorie bargain, “They’re pretty low in fat and a good source of dietary fiber to help fill you up.” A serving of medium pitted black ripe olives (five olives) contains just 25 calories and 2.5 grams of fat. And it’s the same heart-healthy monounsaturated fat found in olive oil. What about the sodium in canned olives? Not that high at 115 milligrams per serving; only five percent of the daily value recommended for sodium intake. Forberg says a few olives go a long way to add a lot of flavor to other healthy foods such as vegetables, fish and lean meats, “They’re a foodie friend to help encourage good eating habits.”
Environmental stewardship is an industry goal, too. The fibrous pits, which contain about six percent oil, are burned as an alternative energy source. Musco’s environmental director Ben Hall says, “We produce 15 to 20 five tons of pits per day.”
