I love olives. Do not expect a reasonable discussion. You can have my olives when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers - or teeth.

We used to grow lots of them around here but the market crashed a few years ago due to cheap imports. Lots of groves were ripped out and replaced with more profitable crops - pistachios for instance. The olive curing and packing operations closed their doors. Olive towns, such as Lindsay, went into free-fall.

That has changed a bit in recent years as olive love became more widespread. Now the emphasis is on fancy varieties, high value fruits and oils rather than commodities.

The news that olives are sources of "good fat" has increased worldwide demand for the luscious, versatile fruits. Olives have become extremely popular, enjoyed as condiments, appetizers, spreads, and additions to salads and sauces. Their heart-healthy oil has is also enjoying superstar status in kitchens around the world.

The olive's reputation as a health food is being borne out by modern science, as studies of olive-consuming Mediterranean peoples have shown. To keep the world's olive lovers satisfied, an intensive wave of olive planting has occurred in the past decade in many parts of the world. Traditionally, olives have been cultivated in the Mediterranean region. But fresh water is becoming increasingly hard to come by in semiarid areas, and irrigation of most new olive plantations is often accomplished with low-quality sources of water that contain relatively high levels of salt.

They have discovered that you can grow olives in moderately saline water though some varieties do better than others. That's nice, good to know, but what's really needed is better systems for producing fresh water from salt water. The demand for water is high and rising, and not just for growing things.

It also seems likely that olive groves will be popping up in other places that have more water - like here, again. But they need to figure out how to do the curing in less polluting ways.

Raw olives cannot be eaten because they contain the bitter glucoside oleuropein, which must be neutralized. Unripened olives are processed in several ways. The simplest method, still used in home curing, is to salt them or soak (submerge) in a strong salt solution (one cup of salt per quart of water), and twice a day throw out the bitter fluid. Commercial production of green Spanish olives involves soaking in lye (sodium hydroxide), then 6 to 12 months in a weak salt solution (brine) to promote lactic fermentation. Soaking in brine also tenderizes the parenchymatous mesocarp. Black olives, such as the wonderful pitted Kalamata olives in Greek salads, are produced from lye curing and oxygenation.

In the past the effluent was just dumped and so produced toxic hot spots near packing and curing plants. That won't do. As noted above the curing method contributes as much to the sensory value of cured olives as the cultivar that is grown and the agronomic system used.

Another ineteresting olive health factoid is that it eases your pain.

a chemical in premium olive oil acts a lot like ibuprofen, the anti-inflammatory drug used to relieve headache and arthritis pain. That may help explain why the vaunted Mediterranean diet is so good for us.

It's not only the high density lipids, it is also the anti-inflammatory drugs.

The setting for this oddball epiphany was a medieval castle in Erice, where Beauchamp had gathered with other scientists, cookbook authors and chefs for an international symposium on food science. In and around the talk about airy souffles and the nature of salt, he sipped something sublime: freshly pressed, extra virgin olive oil from family groves belonging to another attendee.

He noted its sunny color, its velvety feel and fruity aroma. And then, aha! The oil caught in his throat and made him cough.

Beauchamp recognized the irritation. He'd felt it during taste tests of liquid ibuprofen at Monell, the nonprofit research center he directs, which exists to learn about smell, taste and chemical sensation.

To make a long story short, he returned home and gave a taste of the Sicilian oil to fellow Monell scientist Paul AS Breslin, who had been studying ibuprofen.

"It became instantly clear to me there was something like ibuprofen in there," said Breslin, who knows intimately the bite of chili peppers and the tingle of ginger.

It's actually slurping rather than sipping that is required. You suck it off a spoon with enough force to aerate the oil and if, when it hits the back of your throat, you feel a slight sting and an urge to cough then you know it's the kind. The other sensory factors matter too. The slurping is to help taste and feel the oil, not just a way to judge the potency of the anti-inflammatory drugs. But in my view skip the "mild" olive oils and go for the gusto, the freshly pressed, extra virgin, expensive stuff rather than just any old oil.