Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-02-25
OLIVE CULTURE.
THEIR VALUE AS AN ARTICLE OF
FOOD.
Their Essential Qualities and the
Substitute They Afford for
Other Sustenapce.

DIR. j. 2. Widney, writing on the sub
ject of the olive for food, in recent issue
of the Practitioner, remarks as follows:
Fat as food is the essential in some
form to the physical well being of man,
and nature seems to have provided for
each climatic zone supply OF fatty ma.
terial best suited to it. The Esquimaux
finds in the blubber of the walrus or the
seal the strong animal fat, rich in hydro
carbons, which he instinctively Graves, be-
cause of the SYSTEMS need of strong
heat-producing diet to enable him to keep
up bodily temperature and thus do battle
with the rigorous Arctic colds.
The animal life of the polar region is
marked by a tendency of the abundant
formation of fat. In the warmer regions
of the world, on the contrary, animals pos
sess less fat-producing and fat-storing
power, and men lose their appetite for
animal foods. Yet even in the tropics fat
in some form is necessity in the food of
man. Corn and wine ard oil were ever
symbols of earthly well-being, not only in
the promised land OF the old Hebrew, but
to all the races clustering about the shores
of the Mediterranean. And it is the
vegetable oils that replaced the grosser
animal fats of the more northern climates
as being better adapted in their dietetic
uses to the higher temperature
The animal fats, if used to any great ex-
tent in the warmer climates, seem to de-
velop disease in the human organism 1t
took the English colony of India a century
to find out that the strong meat diet of the
north used in the climate of India inva-
riably produced diseased liver and death.
Now that they are learning by experience,
and adopting the light vegetable diet of
the natives, they endure the climate much
better.
The oil which in southern ATTITUDES has
most generally taken the place of the ami
NAL fats is the oil of the olive. 1t is
lighter and less heat-producing than the
oils or fat of animal origin. 1t is used in
cookery, is an ingredient of every salad,
and, in the shape of picked fruit, takes
somewhat the place of meat upon the
table. Its higher nutritive value is shown
by the fact that the laborers of the Riviera
perform the severest toll upon the diet
chiefly of black bread and olives.
One who has never personally tested the
olive as an article Of food can hardly
understand its value. The writer has fire.
quently for days at time in warm weather
almost lived upon bread and olives, feeling
as well nourished as upon meat diet.
The culture of the olive seems to be al
most coeval with the races of the Orient
Under the shade of its fruit-laden branches
rested the old patriarchs in the old tent OF
Syria. 1t accompanied the Greco Latin
in his migration along the shores of the
Mediterranean. 1t passed with the Ro-
man arms to Gaul and Hispania, and cross
ing the ocean with the Conquistadores
adds its pale-green foliage to the verdure
of every old mission orchard from Vera
Cruz 10 Monterey.
Whenever we find a plant thus accom-
panying man for thousand years in his
migrations across oceans and continents, it
Is because of positive utility or food
value which it is proved to possess for the
human race.
Somewhat of the extent of that economic
food value as estimated by one nation may
be surmised from the fact that in Italy the
number Of olive trees under cultivation is
100000, covering 100000 acres.
1t is safe rule to follow that the foods
which people have adopted after inhab-
ing Tor generations any especial belt or eli
mate, are the foods best suited to the re-
quirements of the system in that climate;
that back of it is the working of some gem
eral law
Il, then, for thousands of years the races
dwelling within this climate belt which
the Anglo-Teuton is now, for the first
time in his races history, making his home,
have thus proven the economic food value
Of the olive and its especial adaptability to
the dietic demands of the climate, he, if
he would accommodate himself to his sur
roundings, would do well to learn a lesson
from their experience, and test in his di-
etary the olive. And, indeed, we can al
ready see in the rapidly-multiplying olive
orchards and long rows of barreled olives
at the groceries, indications that the les
son is not unheeded.
But what will be the physical effect upon
this meat-eating Anglo-Teuton of the $50
thermal of so degrees as he moves south
ward TO take up his abode in the isother-
NAL belt of 60 degrees, and abandons the
animal diet of his fathers for the olive of
the Grseeo-Latin