Is Drinking Olive Oil Healthy?
In Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Jane Jacobs wrote about an isolated North Carolina hamlet that her aunt visited in 1923:
One of my aunt’s tasks there was to see to construction of a church. . . One of the farmers donated, as a site, a beautiful knoll beside the river and my aunt suggested the building be made of fine large stones which were already quarried, as it were, needing little dressing, there for the taking in the creek and river beds. No, said the community elders, it was a pretty idea but not possible. . . . Entire walls and buildings of stone would not be safe.
These people came of a parent culture that had not only reared stone parish churches from time immemorial, but great cathedrals.
Likewise, nutritional wisdom is forgotten. Drinking olive oil now seems absurd to some people. But it was practiced in at least one place in the not-so-distant past:
In a mountain village in Crete, [Ancel] Keys saw old farmers working in the field who drank only a glass of olive oil for breakfast; he later verified that one of them was 106 years old.
From Todd Tucker, The Great Starvation Experiment, p. 204. There is a whole organization (Oldways) devoted to preserving ancient foodways and using them for nutritional guidance. The best practitioner of this approach has been Dr. Weston Price, a dentist, whose work is nicely summarized here. Dr. Price traveled the world looking for economically-primitive societies (”native peoples”) with ancient eating habits and excellent health. Their diets, especially the common elements, would suggest what a healthy diet must have.
Two of Dr. Price’s conclusions are relevant to the Shangri-La Diet:
1. “All native peoples studied made great efforts to obtain seafood.” This supports my comments about the importance of omega-3 fats, found much more in seafood than in other foods.
2. “The last major feature of native diets that Price found was that they were rich in fat, especially animal fat.” The animal fat in native diets would be high in omega-3 because the animals were eating grasses and other plants, not corn.
When I wrote my long paper on self-experimentation I divided it into two parts: one titled “Stone-Age Life Suits Us” (the common thread of the five examples), the other about weight control (the research behind SLD). The two parts struck me as quite different. Drinking sugar water to lose weight was definitely not a return to a Stone-Age lifestyle. But the big improvements in SLD since I wrote that paper — from sugar water to ELOO, and from ELOO to oils high in omega-3 — brought SLD much closer to the Stone-Age-Life-Suits-Us theme, I now see.
January 19th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
To be exact, everything in moderation will be beneficial…
March 6th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Like mercury?
March 14th, 2008 at 7:09 am
so drinking olive oil is healthy. ^.^
July 11th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Drinking olive oil would be exactly the same as eating it. The taste and feel of olive oil on your tongue is a little yucky though!
September 26th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Im currently taking 100ml each day, hopefully to get my HDL cholesterol up from 80% to over 100% it fell from 90%, I am sure that was because I was eating less fish.
First thing I noticed I do not feel so hungry.
Second, it took about 20 days before I began to like it.
Third, ever since I have been taking Olive Oil my bogey drops are a lot cleaner, honest before that sometime I would think I would need a whole roll of toilet paper before I was happy, now I just need two lots of toilet paper, one to clean up and to make sure it is clean.
Have you ever heard of the joke
“How do you cook toilet paper?”
Brown it on one side then throw it in the pan.
well now I hardly ever get any “Browning”
I only hope my next blood test shows up good results.
September 30th, 2008 at 12:31 am
i am severely anemic and need to take iron supplements. also i am 40 years old and began to notice the beginning of arthritis in my hands.
my aunt ruby who is 87 years old suggested drinking olive oil for the bowel movement issue (iron causes constipation). so i read up on it and learned the benefits to joints and minimizing inflammation.
i have been drink about 10 to 12 oz every day now for about two weeeks and feel great. i agree with the toilet paper entry, great side effect.
so, i highly recommend it.
the trick is to have a glass of water handy and drink the water immediately after you swallow the oil, sometimes even same mouth full. this is how i do it and i have not any problem.
also, do not drink after too much food is in your tummy, you will get sick.
it is best on an empty stomach., and you will not be hungry for hours.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
so Google tells me 1 US fluid ounce = 29.5735296 ml.
so that would be a big cup full, at 250ml per cup.
One other thing, before I started to drank Olive Oil I used to rip my skin all the time, & was always catching my finger or hand at work on something, in fact I used /(still do) keep a couple of plasters in my wallet, I frequently had a plaster on my hand or finger, but now I dont in the three months or so I have been drinking Oliver Oil.
In fact a google search on “drinking olive oil” tells you on one of the web site (somewhere).
October 15th, 2008 at 11:07 am
….whoops……sorry to be back so soon.
There seems to be a terrible misconception that once you start drinking olive oil you will spend a lot of time in the “Bog House” getting rid of “bogeys”, I found there is no truth in this claim at all or maybe I was not constipated to start with, so I am very sure I dont take any extra trips to the bog house since I started drinking Olive Oil, so dont drink it thinking it is a horrible tasting laxative (or you might be disappoint?)
This just about completes my range of entries on the subject of “drinking Olive Oil” apart from go for “extra virgin” and buy it in tins or very dark bottles (it goes off with exposer to light)
December 18th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
OK so a tell a little fib now and again (I am back again to say more)
………. and the joke is on me, helped by google. And Doc Martin (UK TV series) is right, dont practice to be a rogue doctor from what you read on internet.
I plugged into google “increase HDL cholesterol” and up popped a few articles, like Olive Oil & a lady who drink 250 mL (a glass) of Olive oil everyday, and some other study . So a gave 100mL a go for the past six months.
So a couple of weeks ago I went to see the doctor on another problem and asked him nicely if I could have a early blood test, I got the results today and I dont think Olive Oil has offered anything like a miracle cure to increase the good HDL cholesterol.
However there is a interesting tread on my Triglyceride less than half (not too sure if that is due to Olive Oil or not) as in the past month or so I got the huff with lunch bars and I dont got there any more for my work lunch.
Blood test results
13 December test result, name of variable, 26 April test result, (ideal).
0.9*, HDL cholesterol (good), 0.8**, (>1.0)
3.0*, LDL cholesterol (bad), 1.9, (<3.0)
1.4, Triglyceride, 3.8**, (<2.0).
I wonder how my next test comes out like in a year or so from now.
………… I hope this works
January 17th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
How are you doing, Eric? I am going to start olive oil diet and I am a bit scared
I would like to read more about others’ experience.
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:12 am
Hi Eva, I gave it up (drinking Olive Oil) and lost the 2Kg I put on when I first started drinking it. My doctor told me to have “evening primrose oil” 1000mg *4 tablets (even thou the instructions says 3*tablets.
February 22nd, 2009 at 4:45 pm
i just tried a tablespoon of olive oil, yuk. i still feel sick in the stomach.
whats a good way to try this?
diane
February 22nd, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Mix it with water. See boards.shangriladiet.com for lots of other suggestions.
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:24 pm
I’ve tried it a couple of times and I find it hard to swallow. I can only take a small amount like 25ml any more and I puke.
March 4th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I have been taking extra light olive oil (ELOO) for the Shangri-La Diet lately - 4 T per day, all at once. (At other times I have taken it 2 T, 2x/day) When I take it by itself, I feel queasy for a while.
I found this tip on the SLD forum and have tried it for the past couple of days. I take it with some milk. The details:
Pinch nose shut. Drink 4 T ELOO. Drink small cup (about 4 oz) of milk. Drink some water to rinse everything out of mouth. Unpinch nose.
The ELOO is in my tummy, my taste buds never knew about it, and I don’t feel queasy.
Too early to report how this affects the appetite suppression.
March 10th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
I found the best way. Pour oil into shot glass and tip a few drips of lemon juice (preferably cold). The lemon juice stays to the bottom and doesn’t mix. When you drink it all you taste is the lemon juice.
June 4th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
i am thinking of trying the olive oil thing, i have a huge appetite ad i would like to control it any suggestions
June 4th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
I suggest you visit boards.shangriladiet.com for lots of help and examples of how people do the olive oil thing.