🫒 Olives

Olives are the fruit of the olive tree, an evergreen of lands with hot, dry summers, grown mostly between 30° and 45° latitude. The fruit has only 2.6–6 % sugar but 12–30 % oil and bitter oleuropein, so it is hardly ever eaten off the branch.

Most of the crop, about 90 % by an FAO estimate, is pressed for oil; the rest becomes table olives. Provisional figures from the International Olive Council (IOC) put world olive oil output at 3.57 million tonnes in 2024/25, with 3.44 million forecast for 2025/26. Roughly three fifths comes from the EU, and Spain alone supplies about 40 %. Table olives reached about 3.3 million tonnes, with around 3 million expected for 2025/26.

Olives have been pressed for a very long time. The earliest evidence is thousands of crushed stones at Kfar Samir, a submerged settlement off the Carmel coast in Israel, about 7600–7000 years old. By roughly 7000 years ago the olive was clearly grown in orchards. Where it was domesticated is still debated; the Levant and the eastern Mediterranean are the usual candidates.

Curing removes the bitterness. In the Spanish, or Sevillian, style green fruit goes into a weak lye solution (2–3.5 %) and then into brine, where lactic acid bacteria ferment it. In the Greek style black olives lie for months in strong 8–10 % brine with no lye.

On the shelf and the label. EU retail may offer only four categories of olive oil, and the label names them: extra virgin (EVOO in everyday talk), virgin, “olive oil” (a blend of refined and virgin oils) and olive-pomace oil. Category and origin appear together in the main field of vision, and origin is compulsory for extra virgin and virgin. The label has to say “store away from light and heat”, and retail containers hold up to 5 litres, with a closure that cannot be resealed once opened. Table olives are salty: on EU nutrition labels “salt” is sodium × 2.5. Green olives have 1,560 mg of sodium per 100 g, while the WHO advises adults to stay under 2,000 mg a day.

On health, the EU allows one claim specific to the oil: its polyphenols help protect blood lipids from oxidative stress, provided 20 g of oil contains at least 5 mg of hydroxytyrosol and related compounds. Other effects, such as on cholesterol or blood pressure, were not established by EFSA in 2025.