"J" Olive Oil

Fashion Wire Daily:

Its all about oil -- olive oil that is: The new wellness collection from Norma Kamali, unveiled last week, is called Brand XV, as in extra virgin.

People are keeping marriages together in Italy thanks to olive oil, jokes Kamali of the new concept line, a mixture of scents, beauty products and homeopathic remedies -- all based on olive oil.

Renato Iregui, a Basque-born Wall Street type, ignited Kamalis interest in the juice of the olive when the two met at the World Series last year. We sort of got drunk on olive oil, says the designer of an extended tour the pair took through Italy and southern France. They are places where theres the same sort of reverence for olive oil as there is for wine.

Health and changes in taste have sparked a huge boom in olive oil demand in the past decade, but probably no one has come up with quite such novel approach as Kamali, even if she claims no great credit. All these uses have been around for a thousand years, some even written in the Bible, she downplays.

It seems that everyone is now (re)discovering olive oil. We saw some great looking bottles of olive oil at The J Winery in Napa Valley last spring (pictured above). Why all the fuss?

It turns out that olive oil is good for you. Monounsaturated fat, found in olive oil, almonds, cashews, avocados, and polyunsaturated fat, found in vegetable oils, are good for you. These fats add flavor to your food, give you a sense of fullness and help to slow down the rate at which carbohydrates are converted into blood glucose, which keeps your insulin levels low. Since high levels of insulin are pro-inflammatory, balanced insulin reduces inflammation which, in turn, has a vast array of health benefits.

"The bottom line is this: It is perfectly fine to get more than 30 percent of your daily calories from fats as long as most of those fats are unsaturated," says Dr. Walter C. Willett, M.D., Chairman, Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health in his book, "Eat, Drink and Be Healthy.

Eat right. Live better.

-Tim