Olive

Food · Fat & Oil · Food, Typed Supps

Green or black is mostly about ripeness — the thing they all share is the salt from curing.

Stage by stage

Intake (Oil released by chewing): Chewing ruptures the flesh and releases oil that is essentially olive oil in composition.
Small intestine (Bile emulsification): Lipase and bile break the fat into absorbable droplets; the fruit's fibre travels with it.
Bloodstream (Fat and vitamin E uptake): Monounsaturated fat, 7.9mg vitamin E and surviving polyphenols enter circulation.
Cardiovascular & kidneys (Sodium load): 1,460mg sodium per 100g, roughly 45 to 70mg per olive, is a consequence of curing rather than the fruit.

Time to effect

Hours: Fat digestion peaks at 3 to 5 hours; the sodium load appears in urinary excretion within a couple of hours.

Allergens

None of the fourteen major allergens. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.

Eating patterns

Fits: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher, Keto, Gluten-free. Depends on the product: Low-FODMAP.

Satiety

95 on the satiety index, where white bread is 100 — low. Modelled from the Holt et al. (1995) measurements.

Environmental footprint

5.4 kg CO2e and 3822 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Olive oil" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.

Cost band

Mid — roughly £8 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.

Key nutrients

Monounsaturated fat
Sodium
Vitamin E
Polyphenols

Nutrition per 100g

Calories: 207
Protein: 2.2g
Carbohydrate: 0g
of which sugars: 0g
Fat: 21.7g
of which saturated: 2.7g
Fibre: 3.2g
Sodium: 1460mg

Food vs. supplement

Whole olives give the same oleic-acid-dominant fat as olive oil plus fibre and generally more phenolics per gram of fat. The trade-off is the curing salt, which the oil does not carry.

Kitchen tip

Rinsing takes off surface brine only — the salt has soaked into the flesh over weeks of curing. A few hours in fresh water pulls out more, at some cost to flavour. Loose olives in brine are usually naturally fermented and keep more of their phenolics than canned black ones.

Common myth

“Green and black olives are different varieties.” In reality: Usually they are the same fruit at different ripeness — green picked unripe, black picked ripe. The exception is the uniformly matte-black canned olive, which is an unripe olive deliberately darkened with lye, aeration and an iron salt, and which carries the fewest polyphenols of the family.

In the glossary

Bile