Our Olive Oil Is Simply the Best

The more I look into the fundamental tenets of biology and nutrition, the more I am convinced that the biochemical approach to the analysis of food is fundamentally flawed. In other words, it is almost universal these days that when we talk about food, and whether this or that food is "good" for us, people refer to its biochemical contents. Examples would be, "nettles are a superfood because they contain an abundance of iron"; "oysters are healthy because they contain zinc"; or "raw milk is better than pasteurized milk because its lactoferrin molecules are intact."

To be clear, I am not saying anything negative about nettles, oysters or raw milk. To me, these are all extremely healthful foods to eat. My issue is, how do we really know what foods are good for us to eat? 

Implicit in the biochemical analysis of food is the idea that chemicals found in the foods we eat enter our bodies and act in us as these same intact chemicals. This is the positive claim behind any chemical treatment, pharmaceutical or nutritional.  In other words, we take penicillin because we expect that the penicillin will find its way, intact, to our middle ear to kill the bacteria allegedly causing the infection in our ear. We take zinc as a supplement or in food, expecting that this same zinc shows up unaltered in our bodies and acts in our bodies as this same molecule of zinc. The cholesterol in our foods somehow shows up as cholesterol in our blood and allegedly sticks to our blood vessels, causing plaque.

I would contend that all of these claims are at best unproven and at worst disproven. The best example is the study of biological transmutations, which has shown that when living beings consume various minerals, they can be shown to be converted into other minerals inside that organism. To put this clearly, at least some of the calcium that hens use to make egg shells comes from the consumption and transmutation of dietary silica. Feeding them a diet rich in calcium will have essentially no effect on the quality of their egg shells, and, depending on the form of the calcium, might actually harm them.

If there is any validity to this argument that, fundamentally, we are not biochemistry sets but rather electro-magnetic organisms who know how to make what we need as long as we are given a full palette of nutrients to work with, how, then, should we choose our food? For me, once I escaped the biochemistry mind set, this decision process became easy. I just eat the foods that healthy, long-lived men and women have eaten for centuries, and, crucially, I choose the best, most properly raised or grown example of each type of food. 

For example, I eat carrots because I like carrots, they are historically eaten, and the carrots I choose are the ones I grow myself (or are grown by local friends) in rich, healthy, "living" soil. I might "process" these carrots using time-honored, slow techniques, such as making fermented ginger carrots. I also eat various animal products, such as goat milk from the healthiest, well cared for, unvaccinated and no-antibiotic-fed goats. Then I turn this precious milk into delicious goat milk kefir.  

This philosophy of food and the food products we carry form the basis of Dr. Cowan's Garden. A great example is our olive oil. Olive oil is a well-established traditional food that has been one of the main fats consumed by a variety of thriving cultures for thousands of years. Growing olive trees is great for the soil, extracting the oil requires minimal processing, and the taste is wonderful. Our olive oil, more than any other olive oil I know, starts with the healthiest trees, grown in one of the world's premier olive-growing regions, and is harvested and processed in the most careful way possible. The proof of this is in the taste and aroma. I use our olive oil almost every day, mostly raw in salad dressings and other sauces and as a dipping oil with a small piece of homemade sourdough bread (using the 1000+ polyphenol one for this treat).  

Food is all about quality, and, in my opinion, no better olive oil is to be had. I encourage you to give it a try; my guess is, you'll never use another olive oil again. 

Learn about our olive oils here.

Best,

Tom