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What is a Raw Olive?

AziahAziah Raw Newbie

I can’t seem to find raw olives. Maybe they aren’t available around here…or maybe I don’t know what I am looking for. I saw “oil cured” olives…are they raw? Can anyone help? Tanks! ;0)

Comments

  • rachel_akikorachel_akiko Raw Newbie

    Yeah, I’ve never been able to find raw olives. They only have the canned ones with added salt and preservatives. :/ I bet the only way to get them raw is right off the tree.

  • angie207angie207 Raw Master

    The only raw olives I have ever seen are the Sunfood brand. They are carried in my health food store, but you can get them online at www.sunfood.com The Morroccan olives are my favorite ones :)

  • biscuitbiscuit Raw Newbie

    apparantly the best ones that you can buy from supermarkets are black kalamata olives which don’t have alot added to them. Soak and rinse them I suppose as well. There are raw peruvian olives which you can buy online which havn’t been cured or had anything added to them. Then you can put them in stone pressed oil and salt or just eat them as they are :)

  • kminty3kminty3 Raw Newbie

    I always thought the “oil cured” olives were considered raw? no?

  • WinonaWinona Raw Newbie

    kminty – that’s what i thought too! I realize that the oil isn’t raw, but I thought the non-canned bulk olives in the supermarket were raw. are the oil cured olives raw?

  • kminty3kminty3 Raw Newbie

    I”m pretty sure the oil cured ones are but if anyone knows different please speak up!

  • ZoeZoe Raw Newbie

    No the oil is not raw I can’t imagine that a normal outlet would uses truly raw unfiltered oil to cure olives in. Also are you sure they are oil cured? I have never heard of this process, i can’t think how using just oil would cure an olive. They are normally cured in Lye.

    The only truly raw olives i have found were from www.detoxyourworld.com they were peruvian and tasted nothing at all like any ‘normal’ olives I have eaten.

  • justagirljustagirl Raw Newbie

    I get my raw olives from Natural Zing online. Raw olives are normally processed by putting them in salt or brine(salt water),this is necessary to make them edible. When first harvested they contain an Alkaloid that makes them uneatable until they have been “cured” Salt curing is the natural way. Some places use lye(don’t buy those)some are oil cured, but the oil is normally not raw. The brand sold by Natural Zing are either salt cured or “dry” cured and have not been heated above a temp that renders them “cooked” The salt used is sea salt, and not standard table salt.

  • ZoeZoe Raw Newbie

    The ones from detoxyourworld haven’t been cured or processed in any way. They’re just sun dried and they are massive, like the size of a prune!

  • WinonaWinona Raw Newbie

    Excellent clarification, Zoe. In summary… probably all store bought olives in bulk bins have been cured in lye, which is a toxic chemical. So although they’re not heated to high temps, they are chemically altered, which I wouldn’t consider yummy. Too bad to hear… I guess I won’t be binging on olives any more. Good thing I can still eat indulgent nuts and rawsta!!

  • you’re crazy to think that you could even consume a raw olive. The bitterness alone would make you sick. If you mean raw as in un-processed, there is no such consumable product. Olives are leeched of their bitterness via lye, (toxic in excess), salt (toxic in excess), or a daily change of water (toxic in excess), each process taking several weeks. they are then cured in salt or oil. Sun processed olives are, well, processed.

    I’ll be happy to send you each a ‘raw’ olive, if you respond and send postage, I am sure you will find it much better as a processed food.

    Additionally, all nuts are sun cured, and UV is toxic in excess. I very much understand and respect the desire to head toward raw foods, I just find the explanation and dismissal of olives to be arbitrary and trite.

  • TomsMomTomsMom Raw Newbie

    Aziah, sometimes I’ll splurge and buy non-pasteurized, brine-cured olives, but they’re really expensive. I’m going to cure my own this year because I’m greedy. (If you mean fresh olives, though, like off the tree, they are totally disgusting. But you can order them at harvest and have them shipped to you.)

    I”m finding a lot of companies offer jarred olives and claim they are brine-cured, but they neglect to tell you that the olives are heated in the jar. Thus, dead as a doornail. Don’t count on something you find in a refridgerated section of a store to be raw. Usually that is a sales ploy. To be fair, though, there are some brands that are truly “raw”(unheated). CAll up the companies on the phone, or write, and ask if the olives are heat-pastuerized in any way during or after curing. Don’t ask the stores; most will lie.

    I do have some “sun-dried” olives; I don’t know if you would like them as they are rather bitter, and I don’t know what the temperatures were. Because they are imported, I don’t feel confident about the state of their being free from chemicals, either. But they are nice to have for a snack. Sometimes when I want a mouthful of salt and bitter, I chop one up and sprinkle it on avocado in a nori wrapper. Oh God, now I’m hungry:P

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