Recently, olives and olives have begun to appear frequently on our tables. There are a lot of varieties on store shelves - with a bone, without a bone, dried, stuffed. Everything is very delicious! But is it useful?
Olives and olives - what is it
In our country, there is a misconception that olives are unripe olives. That is, the fruits of the olive, taken from the tree in green, are a product that we call "olives", and the fruits that have ripened to black are, in our understanding, "olives".
In fact, "olives" is an Old Slavonic word (borrowed from Greek) and exists only in our country. All over the world, the fruits of the olive tree, which have reached full maturity and darkened, are called "black olives", but not "olives".
To understand what we eat in the form of a product that says "Olives", let's see how olives are distinguished by their ripeness and color.
one.. Unripe berries, quite tough due to the low accumulation of oil at this stage of ripeness. The color ranges from pale green to olive yellow. The taste is bitter.
2.. The fruits are in the semi-ripeness phase, while the berries are olive, pink, purple, and the ones closest to ripeness acquire a chestnut color. The taste becomes a little softer, but there is still a noticeable bitterness. Such fruits are already used to squeeze oil, there is already a lot of it in them.
3. Fruits at this stage acquire a purple or black color, soft consistency, saturation with oil, some varieties are bitter. Part of the harvest goes for processing in the form of pickles, pickles, pastes, while the bulk of ripe olives is used to obtain oil.
4. And one more state of olives, in fact, which we all call "olives" in Russia is
What determines the color of olives
One of the main parameters by which we can distinguish a ripe olive from a chemically colored one is color heterogeneity. Among naturally ripened olives, it is difficult to find many exactly the same densely anthracite berry color. As a rule, all of them are colored unevenly, since the sun's rays, which give the skin a rich color, do not fall on all fruits. And their color will be spotty and, as a rule, not charcoal black, but purple, dark brown, brown.
What happens to the green olives that enter the canning line? Some of them are washed, bones are removed on a special machine, and then subjected to prolonged oxidation in an alkali solution (caustic soda). This is a rather aggressive environment called food additive E 524. Then the raw material is neutralized with acid, washed with water, salt and iron gluconate are added to the canned food as a color stabilizer (food additive E 579). Sometimes you can find an analogue - iron lactate (E585). For the sake of fairness, it can be noted that these additives are approved for use in food.
Further, according to the technology, some of the unripe green olives are sent to the marinade without oxidation. This is how we get pitted green olives or stuffed with lemon, anchovy, etc. At the same time, the process of removing seeds is automated, and the berries are stuffed manually.
If you want to buy ripe olives that are naturally colored rather than oxidized, then your choice is
Are canned olives good for you?
Fresh olives are a wonderful product, in which there are many useful substances for humans - minerals, vitamins and, most importantly, monounsaturated fatty acids. But canned, salted, pickled fruits are less useful. In this regard, despite their rich taste, in addition, seedless fruits quickly give up the remains of nutrients to the marinade, and their value is reduced to zero.
because it is difficult to remove the bone from them without crushing the pulp.
Green stuffed olives should be bought as seldom as possible. the filling is also canned fish or vegetable stuffed with chemistry., by doing this you will reduce the harm from such a dubious delicacy.
If you are very fond of ripe olives and are not ready to refuse them, purchase obviously ripe large fruits in glass jars, through the transparent walls of which you can evaluate the appearance and color of the filling.
Dried, dried, salted ripe olives are also good, in them all the benefits of the fruits are preserved quite fully. Lovers of sauces can recommend pasta and sauces made from dark olives.
