I’m reading a magazine, “Eating Well”, March 2020, with an article, “The Real Mediterranean Diet”, pp. 4-13. I thought I had recently seen a post from you asking about how to lower your LDL, without medication, so when I read this part, I thought of you. You might want to pick up a copy to read the entire article:
Blockquote “… Indeed, Albaugh noted that, “To the foreign visitor, food seemed literally to be ‘swimming’ in oil.” And, when Keys made his observations, he found as much as 40% of daily calories came from it. Unlike the saturated fats in animal products, the monounsaturated fat that predominates in olive oil has been shown to lower “bad” LDL cholesterol and boost the “good” HDL kind.”
Blockquote “Emmanouil Kapadakis, an olive oil tasting expert at Terra Creta olive oil cooperative in Chania, told me that 1940s-era Cretans were likely to be consuming olives harvested when still green and thus richer in antioxidants. As Katz later explained, these greener olives would have contained higher amounts of a compound called oleocanthal, a highly potent antioxidant that gives olives its slightly bitter edge.”
Blockquote "Oleocanthal has been shown to have anti-inflammatory effects that play a significant role in reducing the risk of chronic diseases, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and certain kinds of cancer. According to a study published in the “Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry” that compared oleocanthal levels in both early- and late-harvest Greek olive oils, batches made from green early-harvest olives had nearly twice as much of the compound than oil from those picked later (however, even the oil made from late-harvest olives still had significant amounts of oleocanthal). … "