Nutritional & Τherapeutic Properties

Nutrition & Health

The oil consisted of antiquity key element of Greek food. There were three oil qualities:

• Omotrives or omfakinon called high grade and exported from olives long, without fading.
• The second meal was good quality oil.
• Vulgar oil characterized the inferior oil from overripe or bruised olives.

The oil other than staple food an essential fuel for lighting, since oil burn the lamps. This use of it survives today in candles. Also prevalent was the use of physical hygiene. Apply body oil protected from the sun or cold. After the baths were spreading body and crown with perfumed oil, as this was the main ingredient of many perfumes.

The production of aromatic oil in Greece is attested in Mycenaean era from the Linear B tablets of Pylos. Also Theophrastus in his work On Odour and Dioscorides save information about the materials and the aromatic oil production recipes.

Τherapeutic Properties

Olive oil was used in ancient times for its healing properties. In the Hippocratic Corpus we can find more than 60 medicinal uses. It was suitable for the treatment of skin diseases, as healing and antiseptic in wounds, burns in gynecology, as a contraceptive method and as as remedy for ear problems.

It was well know from these ancient times that olive oil helps to minimize the risk of heart disease .

In addition to the olive oil, olive leaves and olive flowers were used for their healing properties in a form of liquid/drink, used as eye drops and for the treatment of inflammation of the gums and stomach ulcers.