If you have ever embarked upon the paleo diet, then you’ll know how tricky that it can be. However, a lot of adherents think that the sacrifices are worth it, claiming to have a noticeable improvement in their overall wellbeing, as well as their mental and physical health.
However, there will be certain foods that you might not want to give up on the paleo diet. One of those could be the much-loved Italian snack – olives. Well, if you do like to munch on food as an appetizer to your main meal and want to stick rigidly to your paleo diet, then you’re in luck – olives are very paleo-friendly.
This food is pretty much preserved as it is found in nature. Paleo is all about natural food, and olives are as natural as they come. Even when preserved in brine, you can count on all the ingredients involved being very natural. Even the saltwater is not tampered with!
So what kind of olives are best for the paleo diet? Can you have too much of this food? How will it affect your digestion and your overall health? What are the nutritional properties of your olives? How can the paleo diet affect your health? What are the benefits of going on a paleo diet?
Well, if you want answers to these questions and a whole lot more, then we would certainly suggest that you keep reading. We’ll discuss how olives and paleo intersect and how best to enjoy this food as part of your new diet.
We’ll also give you a list of some of the nutritional properties of olives and how they can improve your health.
Olives: Can They Be Eaten On A Paleo Diet?
The answers to this question might sometimes vary, although that all depends on what kind of olives you’ll be getting in your shopping basket. Some people think that because these olives are cured, then they are in some way processed – even if this is an ancient form of it.
However, a lot of the preservation methods for olives actually contain no artificial colors or preservatives and use natural ingredients such as sea salt (otherwise known as brine). These are a very ‘real’ food, coming as it would in nature, making it suitable for the paleo diet.
The olives will not negatively interact with your body, as your digestion will be able to handle the rich whole salt and flesh of the olive. You can eat an olive if you don’t think that the natural method of it getting treated would be considered ‘processed’.
The simple fact is that you cannot eat olives fresh off the trees, as they will be too tough and not very tasty.
Nutrition Facts About Olives
There are many benefits to including olives in your diet, one of the main ones being that they are very high in antioxidants, which are very good for helping your body fight off illnesses. Studies have shown that these wonderful fruits also help you to ward off cancer and auto-immune diseases.
Olives are also a crucial ingredient in olive oil. This is one of the healthiest forms of oil that you can get on the market, being low in saturated fats. We would recommend frying up some chicken with some olive oil and then serving it with a scattering of whole olives!
These olives are also very light of calories, with around 10 olives containing around 59 calories overall. They do contain quite a few carbs and are low on protein and have a moderate amount of fat. If you are on a keto diet, then you should probably avoid eating too many olives.
What Is The Paleo Diet?
The paleo diet harkens back to the paleolithic era, attempting to replicate the diet of our ancestors. This cuts out all processed foods, as this would not have been the type of thing that our ancestors were eating back in the day.
There is some skepticism over this diet, as some scientists have suggested that our digestive system really has changed with the times and that reverting to a more primitive way of eating will actually set us back and cause some chaos in your immune and digestive system.
People who do suffer from auto-immune diseases and bowel conditions such as IBS have been the most vocal proponents of this condition, claiming that their gut inflammation has severely decreased after adopting the paleo diet.
This is because there are fewer grains in the diet, which the body does find harder to process.
The Benefits Of The Paleo Diet
This has been shown to reduce auto-immune diseases and people who suffer from conditions such as ME were shown to have improved mobility and cognitive function after dining out on this diet.
This is also great for improving mental clarity and the quality of your skin. Proponents of this diet have claimed that because this diet is much more in keeping with the way we would have eaten in the wild, that it is much more in sync with our bodies.
Our Final Say
We hope that this article has helped you better understand the paleo diet and the olive and whether or not you can incorporate them into your diet. If you are buying fresh olives from a deli or local farmer’s market, then you should have no problem incorporating these into your diet.
There are also plenty of health properties that come with eating olives, as they are very high in vitamin E and antioxidants. However, these olives are very rich in salt, so if you have sodium intake issues, you might want to eat olives in moderation.
