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Top 5 health benefits of olives

Olives are small, oval fruits with a hard, inedible stone that are traditionally grown across the Mediterranean, but also in California. They come in varying shades of green and black, depending on when they are picked – green being unripe and black, fully ripe. 

Once picked, olives are either pressed and made into oil, or they are cured and then marinated – otherwise they taste very bitter. They can be consumed whole (with the stone removed, or pitted) or they can be used in cooking.

Olives vary in taste and size depending on their variety, region, and marinade or stuffing. You may find olives labelled by country – such as Spanish or Greek – or you may be more familiar with their specific variety name, such as Kalamata.

Nutritional profile of olives

One tablespoon (8g) of olives (in brine) provides:

• 9Kcal/35KJ
• 0.1g Protein
• 0.9g Fat
• 0.3g Fibre
• 8mg Potassium
• 5mg Calcium

Olives are typically high in salt due to the fact that they are cured or packaged in brine or salt water, containing about 0.6g salt per five olives. The NHS recommends no more than 6g salt for adults, and between 2g-5g a day for children depending on their age.

What are top health benefits of olives?

1. Rich in antioxidants

Olives are rich in plant compounds called polyphenols which have effective antioxidant properties. The beneficial effects of these compounds include reducing the risk of chronic diseases such as atherosclerosis and cancer. 

2. Are anti-inflammatory

One of the polyphenols in olives is called oleocanthal. This compound appears to share the same pharmacological activity as ibuprofen, and acts as a natural anti-inflammatory. Interestingly, this useful property has been associated with positive changes in those with rheumatoid arthritis.

3. Supports heart health

Although high in fat, the majority is a beneficial mono-unsaturated variety called oleic acid. This fatty acid is associated with a reduced risk of heart disease. Oleic acid may help in this way by regulating cholesterol balance and reducing blood pressure. 

4. May support bone health

Animal studies suggest the plant compounds in olives helps prevent bone loss, although these findings look positive human evidence remains wanting. That said, those that follow a Mediterranean diet do appear to have a lower incidence of fracture. 

5. Are a fermented food

Olives are one of the most popular fermented foods, by consuming such foods you are adding beneficial bacteria and enzymes to your intestinal flora, which increases the health of your gut microbiome and digestive system and may enhance your immune function. 

Are olives safe for everyone?

A dietary staple for many of the world’s healthiest populations, olives are considered a good choice for the majority of people. That said, rare reports of allergy have been recorded, although these are typically to the pollen of the olive tree rather than the fruit. 

The curing process to which olives are subjected increases their salt content, so if you follow a low-salt diet you may need to moderate the amounts you eat.

Reference: BBC Good Food

The Traders are Kidnapping Our People-5-King Leopold's Ghost

Our fathers were living comfortably, They had cattle and crops: they had salt marshes and banana trees.

Suddenly they saw a big boat rising out of the great ocean. The boat had wings all of white, sparkling like knives.

White men came out of the water and spoke words which no one understood.

Our ancestors took fright; they said that these were, vumbi spirits returned from the dead.

They pushed them back into the ocean with volleys of arrows.

But the vumbi spat fire with a noise of thunder. many men were killed. Our ancestors fled. The chief and wise men said that these vumbi were the former possessors of the land.

From that time to our days now, the whites have brought us nothing but wars and miseries.

The tatlantic slave trade seemed further confirmation that Europeans had come from the land of the dead, for after they took their shiploads of slaves out to sea, the captives never returned. Just as Europeans would be long obsessed with African cannibalism, so Africans imagined Europeans practising the same thing.

The whites were thought to turn their captives' fleshin to salt meat, their brains into cheese, and their blood into the red wine that Europeans drank. African bones were burned, and the grey ash became gunpowder. The huge, smoking cooper cooking kettles that could be seen on sailing vessels were, it was believed, where all the deadly transformations began.

The death tolls on the packed slave ships that sailed west from the Congo coast rose higher stil, when some slaves refused to eat the food they were given, believing that they would be eating those who had sailed before them.

As the years passed, new myths arose to explain the mysterious ojects the strangers brought from the land of the dead. A nineteenth-century missionary recorded, for example, an African explanation of what happend when captain descended into the holds of their ships to fetch trading goods like cloth.

The Africans believed that these goods came not from the ship itself but from a hole that led into the ocean. Sea sprites weave this cloth in an "oceanic factory, and, whenever we need cloth,the captain.....goes to this hole and rings a bell". The sea sprites hand him up their cloth, and the captain "then throws in, as payment, a few dead bodies of black people he has bought from those bad native traders who have bewitchged their people and sold them to the white men".

The myth was not so far from reality.For what was slavery in the American South, after all, but a system of transforming the labor of black bodies, via cotton plantations, into cloth.?

Because African middlemen brought captives directly to their ships, Portugues traders seldom ventured far from the coast. For nearly four centuries, in fact, after Diogo Cao came upon the Congo River, Europeans did not know where the river came from. It pours some 1.4 million cubic feet of water per second into the ocean; only Amazon carries more water.

Besides its enormous size and unknown course, the Congo posed another puzzle. Seamen noticed that its flow, compared with that of other tropical rivers, fluctuated relatively litle during the year.

Rivers such as the Amazon and the Ganges had phases of extremely high water and low water, depending on whether the land they drained was experiencing the rainy or the dry season. What made the Congo different?

The reason several canturies' worth of visitors failed to explore the Congo's source was thet they couldn't sail upstream. Anyone who tried found that the river turned into a gorge, at the head of which were impassable rapids.

Much of the Congo river basin, we know, lies on a plateau in the African interior. From the western rim of this plateau, nearly a thousand feet high, the river descends to sea level in a mere 220 miles. During the tumultuous descent, the river squeezes through narrow canyons, boils up in waves 40 feet high, and tumbles over 32 separate cataracts,. So great is the drop and the volume of water that these 220 miles have as much hydroelectric potential as all the lakes and rivers of the United States combined.

For any sailor bold enough to get out of his ship and walk the land route around the rapids wound uphill through rough, rocky country feared for the treacherous cliffs and ravines and for malaria and the other diseases to which Europeans had no immunity.

Only with enormous difficulty did some Capuchin missionaries twice manage to get briefly inland as far as the top of the great rapids. A Portuguese expedition that tried to repeat this treck never returned. By the beggining of the nineteen th century, Europeans still knew nothing about the interior of central Africa or about where the river began.

In 1816, a British expedition, led by Captain James K. Tuckey of the Royal Navy, set off to find the Congo's origins. His two ships carried a wonderfully odd assortment of people: Royal Marines, carpenters, blacksmiths, a surgeon, a gardener from the royal gardens at Kew, a botanist, and an anatomist.

The anatomist was directed, among other things, to make a creful study of the hippopotamus and to "preserve in spirits and if possible in triplicate, the organ of hearing of this animal."A Mr Cranch was entered on the ship's log as Collector of objects of Natural History; another expedition member was simply listed as Volunteer and Observant Gentleman.

When he arrived at the Congo's mouth, Tuckey counted eight slave ships from various nations at anchor, awaiting their cargoes. He sailed his own ships as far up the river as he could and then set off to skirt the thunderous rapids overland.

But he and his exhausted men grew discouraged by endless "scrambling up the sides of almost perpendiculat hills, and even great masses of quartz."

These came to be called the Crystal Mountains. The river was a mass of foaming rapids and enormous whirlpools.

At a rare calm stretch Tuckey, observed , rather, provincially, that the scenery was beautiful and not inferior to any other banks of the Thames." One by one, the Englishmen began to suffer from an unknown illness, most likely yellow fever, and after about 150 miles. Tuckey lost heart. His party turned around, and he died shortly after getting to his ship.

By the time the shaken survivors of the expedition made their way back to England, twenty-0ne of the fifty-four men who had set out were dead. The source of the Congo River and the secret of its steady flow was still a mystery.

For Europeans, Africa remained the supplier of valuable raw materials-human bodies and elephant tusks.But otherwise they saw the continent as faceless, blank, empty, a place on the map waiting to be explored, one even more frequently described by the phrase that says more about the seer than the seen: the Dark Continent.

Reference: King Leopold's Ghost:Adam Hochschild

The notion of eating raw garlic is enough to have you shuddering in revulsion. In popular folklore, garlic has been used to keep vampires away but the smell itself will keep everyone at bay, regardless if they're vampires or not! The benefits of garlic have been extolled through the ages. From ancient Egyptian and Indian culture to Vikings–all these cultures used garlic in some way or the other. Today, there are even garlic supplements to maximize its positive effects on health.

Benefits of Eating Raw Garlic

Garlic is a vegetable from the onion (Allium) family and is rich in many vital nutrients essential for a healthy functioning body. Apart from using garlic to flavor foods, garlic has long been recognized as a treatment for certain illnesses. The healthy component of garlic is a sulphurous compound called allicin, which can also be credited for the distinctive smell. This compound is easily absorbed by the digestive tract and transported all over the body. Here are the reasons why you should eat more raw garlic.

Garlic is very high in antioxidants. These are important in the body to mop up any free radicals that can cause cell damage which can lead to some diseases. One of the ways in which free radicals can affect the body is the process of aging. The antioxidants protect the body from diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and dementia which occur as a result of aging. Another use of garlic's antioxidant activity is in acne treatment. Allicin can be used in acne products to minimize inflammation caused by free radicals and kill the bacteria present in blemishes.

1. Studies have found that regular consumption of garlic can lower the total and unhealthy LDL component of cholesterol by about 10-15%. There appeared to be no noticeable effect on HDL cholesterol or the triglycerides.

Garlic has also been recognized to act as an antibiotic–eradicating any bacteria harmful to the body is one of the benefits of eating raw garlic.

1. There are also some anti-fungal properties to garlic.
2. Garlic has an anticoagulant effect on blood thereby preventing strokes, heart attacks or heart disease. Garlic can help reduce your risk of developing atherosclerosis which is plaque formation in the arteries that leads to narrowing of blood vessels.

There is reported evidence that garlic can improve the body's immune system. The study showed that people who consumed garlic had fewer colds for a much shorter duration than people who did not take garlic. If you are prone to colds and flu, you are often encouraged to include garlic in your diet.

1. Garlic has been used in the Far East to reduce hypertension. A study compared a garlic extract supplement with Atenolol, a medication for hypertension. Results for both were comparable and effective at decreasing blood pressure over a 24-week period. The amount of allicin to consume for this desired effect is about 4 cloves of garlic daily.
2. Another study found that individuals eating garlic reduced their risk for osteoarthritis. Some preliminary studies have shown the promise of garlic supplementation in the prevention of bone loss. It is believed that the garlic is able to increase the levels of estrogen in women thus decreasing bone loss. More in-depth study is required to prove this hypothesis which is based on rodent studies.
3. A big consumption of garlic is also associated with decreased risk of certain cancers like breast, colon, and pancreatic cancer.
4. Garlic is believed to deter mosquitoes if it is rubbed into the exposed skin or keeping a few cloves the vicinity.

How to Eat Raw Garlic

Although there are plenty of benefits of eating raw garlic, the unpleasant taste and smell are enough to put anyone off. Here are a few ideas on how to incorporate garlic into your diet:

• Homemade salsa made with tomatoes, onions and garlic. Bear in mind the longer the salsa with garlic stands, the less potency the allicin has–rather add garlic only when the salsa is about to be consumed.
• Pesto: either make your own pesto or opt for the ready-made store-bought variety. Chop some garlic cloves and mix into the pesto. Avoid heating the garlic up, so add the garlic after the pesto has been prepared.
• Salad dressing: add garlic to any homemade salad dressing. Ranch dressing is well complimented by garlic. Another option is to add thinly sliced garlic cloves into your salad.
• Lacto-fermenting garlic cloves can make eating them more palatable. To do this, add cloves to a salt brine and allow to stand.
• Garlic bread: add butter and raw minced garlic to toasted bread as a side to any meal. Avoid heating up the garlic to preserve the potency of the allicin. You can mix up some crushed garlic to butter and spread onto bread that has already been toasted.

• A few cloves of crushes garlic added to guacamole should be enough to spruce up the flavor. Another option for a garlic dip is to mix one crushed clove with 1-4 tablespoons of mayonnaise.
• Homemade pasta sauce with a healthy dose of garlic is a good way to include garlic into your diet.
• Add crushed garlic to mashed potatoes.
• Homemade hot sauce: deseeded peppers blended with some garlic, olive oil, vinegar and salt. They will make a great accompaniment to foods like chips, tacos or enchiladas.
• If you prefer to eat garlic cloves directly: chop them up, place on a spoon and consume to fully enjoy the benefits of eating raw garlic. You can attempt to minimize the garlic breath by consuming at night. You can also try placing some honey on the spoon before you eat the garlic. The honey may mask the garlic flavor. Some people also follow up the garlic with some water or milk.

Reference: : New Health Advisor