For centuries, olive leaves were used to feed cattle. Now some grenadines want our nutrition to revolutionize

How much is an olive leaf? Here is a question that probably has not done many people in the world and the truth is that it has not been asked for a good reason: because it is almost nothing. In fact, historically no more than as food complement to cattle has been used.

Changing that it is gerund. Everything else is A field paid to pseudoscience. That is precisely what you want to change The people of the Biorevaleaf operational groupa group of researchers from Granada obsessed in “fully revalue the olive leaf as a source of phytochemicals and nutrients with bioactive character.”

That is, obsessed with the idea of ​​converting that “by -product” into an essential piece to extract functional ingredients in food and enriched oils.

But is it really for something? On paper, it serves a lot: the olive leaf is rich in fiber, proteins and Other “phenolic compounds such as hydroxytitus, tyrosol, aglicone, oleaceine and oleocantal, “oleuropein.” What begins to tell us research is that allow reducing oxidative damage And, by extension, many of the diseases that arise with age.

The first step would be to introduce all these bioactive components in olive oil (creating a whole new generation of enriched producer). But the second would go further and bring those compounds beyond, throughout the food chain.

And how do you want to do it? That, without a doubt, is the most interesting part. It is under study, but Cidaf, the University of Granada, the Oleícola company Torres Morente and Agrifood Cooperativas de Granada They are trying of implementing fermentation processes and ecosstable extraction techniques.

Spain in front of the future of the olive grove. In the early 90s, Spain and Italy They disputedhand in hand, the throne of the first world producing country of olive oil. This year, for the first time, Türkiye has surpassed the transalpine peninsula and has become the second great international producer. It is no accident.

In the last 30 years and while the world produces twice as much oil that then, Italy first stagnated and then began to decline. Today, Italian olivers cannot produce even half of what the country consumes.

Figures. According to the Italiaolivicola Studies Center In 2024, half of 1.1 million hectares of olive trees in the country are in the process of abandonment. 200,000 hectares are in a state of total abandonment and more than 300,000 are managed with “purely maintenance practices.” It is a slow agony that Spain tries to dodge.

But it is not easy. The productive bands They put producers in a complex balance that threatens to denaturalize the entire industrial sector. It is not an exaggeration: one of the great paradoxes of Spanish olive oil is that, despite growing 15% a year, More than 500 oil mill will close In the next decade.

Initiatives like this leaf or as those that are coming doing with the olive bonethey want to solve this by carrying the olive tree: today, the oil mills (and the rest of agri -food industries) are one of the few industrial structures that articulate empty Spain. If we lose them, the rest of the social framework will suffer a lot.

Image | Nazar Hrabovyi | Bee Naturalles

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