Olive Oil is Good Food

Good post by Asinus Asium Fricat on olive oil and its benefits over at La Vida Locavore. I am a huge fan of olive oil and use a lot of it. I too use it instead of butter on bread quite often.

The latest research on the wonders of olive oil sheds more light on the suspected association between olive oil-rich Mediterranean diets and reductions in breast cancer risk. Good quality extra-virgin olive oil contains health-relevant chemicals, 'phytochemicals', that can trigger cancer cell death.

Javier Menendez and Antonio Segura-Carretero led a team of researchers who set out to investigate which parts of olive oil were most active against cancer. Menendez said, "Our findings reveal for the first time that all the major complex phenols present in extra-virgin olive oil drastically suppress overexpression of the cancer gene HER2 in human breast cancer cells".

There is also a link to a 'everything you wanted to know about olive oil" site that is worth spending some time on. It focuses on American olive oil producers but there is a lot of information on olive oil in general.