Talk:Olive oil

From Academic Kids

Olive oil was a central concept in Minoan culture of Crete, where it is thought to have roughly equated wealth.

Well. A central product, sure. And we can't read Linear A, so let's not get into 'concepts' of the Minoans. --MichaelTinkler

Oups! Sorry Michael! Just related what the people and exhibitions on the Knossos told me. Geez! --Anders Törlind

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I've noticed that canned sardines are often packed with olive oil. Should it be noted in the article that olive oil is useful as a preservative? --LostLeviathan 01:41, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Contents

1 Neat trick? 2 Lots still needs to be done 3 A proposed outline 4 Olive oil in France

Neat trick?

How do you combine Extra Virgin with no more than 1% acidity with Virgin with no more than 2% acidity, and end up with Semi Fine with up to 3.3% acidity? Gene Nygaard 21:13, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Although I blew away some of the older verbiage--the words weren't in some very official-looking stuff--does the answer to your question come through? The previous error grew out of the confusion between 'virgin' as a manufacturing process versus 'virgin' on a consumer label, and the lack of the word 'refined'. Combining virgin oil with "olive oil refined from virgin oil" (in other words, not made from olive-pomace oil) gets you something you can sell with a grand label. The refined oil might have 0.1% acidity, which is how the arithmetic works out.

At least, that's my current understanding based on reading things written by marketing people, lawyer people, hybrid marketing/lawyer people, and authors of cookbooks. I may be confused.

I still don't think I've really captured some of these distinction in the main page, and I haven't put my citations in yet (which are mostly IOOC, the body that defines these things). Perhaps after I've been away from it for a few days, I'll revisit the language. Help is always appropriate.

DanielVonEhren 22:55, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Lots still needs to be done

I re-arranged things (I still don't think the overall flow is right, but at least similar things are a little more grouped together, hanging out with their friends).

I (or whoever) still need to write:

• A paragraph on how olive oil is manufactured;
• A section on olive oil in history (it's more than the Minoans);
• A table on the grading and classification (I haven't put it in yet because I have to learn more about how make a table) (And Gene is right about the arithmetic absurdities);
• A table on the market for olive oil--where it comes from (Spain, as it turns out, even when it says Product of Italy), and what countries consume it (this information is available on the IOOC website, but I haven't gotten around to extracting it yet).

And I bet there's more. Thoughts?

DanielVonEhren 05:11, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A proposed outline

I've tried to organize the knowledge about olive oil in way that's appropriate for an encyclopedia. Here's an outline I've come up with; feel free to beat up on it.

My organizing principle here is that if someone visits the olive oil Wiki, they most likely want to know what 'extra-virgin' means, then whether it's healthy, and so on. In other words, I've organized it around what visitors will want to read.

At the top, start with a link to the Wiki Cookbook for olive oil recipes.

1. Commercial market for olive oil
   1. Consumer classification. Similar to the current article, only better
   2. How olive oil is made. A narrative of the common way to manufacture olive oil
   3. The olive oil market.
      1. Marketing bodies. What organizations exist, and are they official, quasi-governmental, or self-appointed
      2. World-wide production. Who makes it
      3. World-wide consumption. Who eats it
2. Olive oil and health. Current research and thought on whether olive oil is good for you (or at least less bad than all of those other oils).
3. Olive oil in history
   1. Biological origins and spread of the olive tree. Probably a brief summary, and a pointer over to the olive tree article (which, by the way, needs work)
   2. Cultural significance of olive oil. It's more than just food
      1. Minoans. The Room of the Olive Press at Knossos, and so on
      2. Greeks. Athena, the Olympics, the City Olive, and so on
      3. Bible. The symbolism and imagery of olive oil in the Old and New Testaments
      4. Romans. The Imperial Olive
      5. Other cultures. Being a whitebread middle-middle-middle American male :-), I have no idea, but there are surely others. For example, do olives figure prominently in the Koran?

Thoughts?

DanielVonEhren 22:36, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Olive oil in France

Hello,

In the article, you say that there is no olive oil production in France, but we have, sorry ! I check the figures for production and let you know.

There is even an "AOC" (high quality standart label) for French olive oil.

--Penven 14:04, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Bonjour Penven

There are a few answers to your question. I think that I'm the one put 'nil' in, so let's see if we can make this better. The numbers in the table are just copied from the source--the IOOC has slightly different numbers. If you have a different source, you should "Be bold!" and adjust the table--with a footnote, of course. :-)

A second answer is that at least in my dialect of English, 'nil' isn't the same as 'none'. If we put in "less than 1%" is might capture it better. I live in California, not far from groves of olive trees, but the US is also listed as 'nil'. I was trying to say that we don't produce a lot, but we consume a lot.

The table tries to present 'big facts' without presenting too much detail. The line between those two goals could be drawn at a different place.

By the way, whether or not we make changes to the production table, if you could do the research on the meaning of 'AOC' classification, and how it relates to the IOOC standards, that would be a highly useful addition. :-)

DanielVonEhren 13:39, 12 May 2005 (UTC)