To paraphrase Shakespeare, an olive leaf by any other name would taste just as bitter! So, why would you possibly want to take olive leaf extract?
Well, back in the olden days, medicine, or things that were good for you, were meant to taste bad. It was just the way it was. Now, thankfully, we have sweetening agents to make what's good-for-us taste palatable.
Green Tea Extract Capsules
To look at it, you wouldn't think that the olive leaf would pack much punch - it's an unassuming, slender, grey-green leaf with a silvery underside - but inside, it is brimming with a remarkable collection of more than twenty powerful phytochemicals.
What on Earth are phytochemicals?
I'm glad you asked. It's what we call the naturally occurring chemicals in plants that aren't essential for us to live, but which have been shown to benefit us.
The most widely known of the olive phytochemicals, found in the leaf, bark and fruit, are the two polyphenols called oleuropein (pronounced Oh-lee-ah-ro-pin) and hydroxytyrosol (hy-droxy-ty-ro-sol). These are the main culprits causing the bitter taste, but this bitterness is part of what protects the tree from other organisms that might want to nibble on the leaf. This leaves more leaves for us humans!
It's interesting to note that although few creatures will feed on olive leaves routinely; in Australia, in times of drought, kangaroos and cockatoos have been seen chewing on the bitter-tasting foliage. Maybe they instinctively know that something in the leaf will protect them in hard times.
Hard times stress the body, whether human or animal, and stress of any sort makes the immune system work harder. When the immune system is overloaded, we are all more vulnerable to the agents of disease, or pathogens.
This is where olive leaf extract comes in, because it contains a host of beneficial chemicals to help us fight off disease. It does this in two ways; by destroying many of the microbes (germs) that cause disease; and by neutralizing a wide range of free radicals, which cause tissue damage. These two actions depend on the antimicrobial and antioxidant properties of the olive leaf.
In case you want to know, a few of the other chemical compounds in olive leaf that serve to protect and strengthen us so well (besides oleuropein, and hydroxytyrosol), are caffeic acid, luteolin, rutin and quercetin. You may have heard of these antioxidants before, because they can also be found in commonly eaten foods.
Some examples of the dietary sources of these antioxidants are: apples and radishes for caffeic acid; celery, green peppers and chamomile tea for luteolin; buckwheat, asparagus and citrus fruits for rutin; and blueberries and broccoli for quercetin. But the olive leaf extract has them all, and more!
Now, I suspect that you noticed that I said at the beginning of this article that oleuropein and hydroxytyrosol are found in the bark and fruit of the olive tree as well as the leaf. And, I imagine you might therefore be wondering, why don't we just eat lots of good-tasting olives and olive oil?
It's true that olive oil is a wonderfully beneficial oil, especially if it's extra virgin olive oil; and it's true that olives are tasty, nutritious and good for us, but neither of these olive products have anywhere near the quantity of oleuropein and other healing ingredients that the leaf has.
A good quality olive leaf extract can contain up to forty times the concentration of polyphenolic antioxidants as does the purest, freshest olive oil. One of the reasons for this is that most of these chemical compounds are water-soluble, and they are lost in the process of making the oil, or pickling the olives for eating. This is why neither the oil nor the olives taste as bitter as the leaf extract.
Considering the huge benefit of taking olive leaf extract, in times of stress and ill-health, a little bitterness is not a great hardship. Even so, producers have found a way to make the medicine more palatable. Good quality, fresh-leaf liquid extract is reasonably pleasant to taste, probably because it is mixed with glycerine. There is also the option of capsules, which completely bypass the issue of bitterness.
So, to paraphrase Shakespeare once more, to take the olive leaf extract, or not to take the olive leaf extract. That is the question. And the answer, my friend, is entirely up to you.