The Veg-Fruit Wed, 01/16/2013 - 9:39pm by nfocha Tags: Week 1 My diet is the sun and moon; when I eat well (about 95% of the time), I am a bit health-crazy. However, if I decide to take a leisurely retreat from my healthy habits, I enjoy my break thoroughly. My diet most days can be termed a vegetarian diet. A loose definition of vegetarianism is a diet that excludes meat, fish, and poultry. Therefore, meals can be expected to consist of vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains, etc. Of course, this is excluding that 5% of the time when I ache for a steak. Anyway, the main reason I became a vegetarian was that I wanted to be just like Tina Turner, also a vegetarian. No, just joking. Actually it was a decision made during my years at community college. A boy handed me a flyer with a website on it that, out of sheer curiosity, I looked up.
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The Veg-FruitWed, 01/16/2013 - 9:39pm by nfocha Tags:
Week 1
My diet is the sun and moon; when I eat well (about 95% of the time), I
am a bit health-crazy. However, if I decide to take a leisurely retreat
from my healthy habits, I enjoy my break thoroughly. My diet most
days can be termed a vegetarian diet. A loose definition of
vegetarianism is a diet that excludes meat, fish, and poultry.
Therefore, meals can be expected to consist of vegetables, fruits, nuts,
grains, etc. Of course, this is excluding that 5% of the time when I
ache for a steak. Anyway, the main reason I became a vegetarian was
that I wanted to be just like Tina Turner, also a vegetarian. No, just
joking. Actually it was a decision made during my years at community
college. A boy handed me a flyer with a website on it that, out of sheer
curiosity, I looked up.
Tina Turner singing "Simply the Best"
For twenty minutes I watched blood drain from animals while they
were still alive and I saw animals beaten, kicked, cursed, and tortured.
After that, it did not really matter whether it was a gimmick or not; I
just could not go back to meat. I later learned that 18% of the world’s
pollution was due to animal production and that the overconsumption
of meat in American was leading to our population’s increase of
obesity, cancer, and heart attacks (Bittman). Although I believe that
vegetarianism was a wonderful decision for me, it did require me to
find new edible favorites. One of these discoveries was olives, which
do not just have interesting origins, but delicious and amazingly
healthy benefits.
Olives are fruits of the Olea europea tree (a remarkable tree that
typically lives for hundreds of years). As just-picked olives are too
bitter to eat, curing methods depending on the olive variety, region
cultivated, and desired taste, texture, and color are used to reduce
their intrinsic bitterness before they are consumed. Contrary to belief,
olive color does not always correlate to olive maturity. Some olives
start green and remain green or
end up black, while others start black and remain so or turn green. For
instance, the California Mission Olive, which is the olive that is
particularly unique in the United States, are typically picked green and
un-ripened, lye-cured, and exposed to air to trigger the oxidation and
conversion to a black outer coat (Slevkoff). In addition to the olive’s
scrumptious taste, they are known to promote numerous health-
protection nutrients. Most recognized are the olive’s considerable
antioxidant and anti-flammatory properties. On another note, diets
containing olives also decrease the risk of osteoporosis in estrogen
lacking individuals; a health benefit discovered by French researchers
testing the effects of olive rich diets on ovary-less rats (Olives).
As olives are a delectable treat and remarkable source of antioxidant
and anti-inflammatory phytonutrients that have the potential to protect
from diseases in the cardiovascular, respiratory, nervous,
musculoskeletal, immune, inflammatory, and digestive systems, I think
we all have a perfect excuse to eat these black and green treats daily.
Bibliography
Shifko, Robert. “Nutritional Benefits of Black Olives”. LIVESTRONG.COM
The Limitless Potential of You. 17 October 2010. eHow Health. 16
January 2013. < http://www.livestrong.com/article/281836-nutritional-
benefits-of-black-o....
“California Mission Olive”. Slow Food USA Supporting Good, Clean, and
Fair Food. Mission Olive Preservation, Restoration and Education