What to do with bar olives???

boomerising

One of my favorite snacks is a few olives from the olive bar at the supermarket. Generally medium sized ones but I also like the giant black cerignolas and the little brown ones sometimes called “leccino” variety. I am stunned I can’t find a sufficiently detailed entry that measures the serving by volume rather than weight (or number of olives, which obviously doesn’t work if sizes are mixed, and having to actually count small foods is one of the things I hate most about “dieting”).

Market olives almost always have some oil on them and while I do usually rinse them to get some of that off, it’s only partially effective. This is an item that could easily be wildly over- or underestimated, as the wide range of calorie counts in the database shows. I can’t afford to get it wrong either way while trying to adhere to a 1400-calorie limit. And these olives are one of my very best friends when a craving hits. Plain ones in brine from a can are nowhere near as satisfying as the market preparations with garlic, hot peppers, herbs, etc.

Does 10 calories per olive sound reasonable? (No, the olives I choose are not stuffed with anything.) And does anyone have a solid calorie count for something like “mixed deli olives” measured by cup fraction?

ghudson92

I share your frustration on this. Most supermarkets now do jars of olives that come with garlic, chilli, feta.. all the good stuff (if you're in the UK I know this is true for Sainsburys, Waitrose, Tesco and Asda). You can find them in the pasta aisle usually, or not too far away, and they contain all the nutritional info so are easy to track. Sorry I haven't been able to resolve your issue but this is the best compromise I could find when experiencing the same problem. In my humble opinion, I believe these to be just as good as the olives from the deli bar.

Unknown

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mskimee

Same with sun-dried tomatoes! The oil is a pain to log and the calories are listed as "per 100g drained" but how drained is drained when it comes to oil? Is it so the oil no ,longer drips or on a paper towel and patted dry?? I feel your pain and I'm interested to see others solution to this!!

__TMac__

I know this isn’t the question you asked, but this is a challenging situation where measuring by weight is especially useful/necessary. It’s likely that most olives will have similar calorie counts by weight (assuming no stuffing). And the different sizes and round shapes will mean that a measuring cup will be full of air pockets, and therefore worthless. Weight is the only way to get anywhere close on this item (and on lots of other things).

If you really don’t want to weigh food as a general practice, consider taking your deli tub of olives to the deli counter and ask them to weigh it, and an empty tub. Subtract out the weight of the tub so you get just the weight of the olives. Then just spread the calories over the number of days it takes you to eat the whole thing. This assumes you are the only one eating it AND you’ve tried to drain as much oil from the olives before you put them in the tub.

Or get a scale and just weigh what you’re going to eat in the moment.

lemurcat12

Basically what _TMac_ said -- I don't understand why volume would be preferable to weight.

I like olives and just try to go with type of olive and weight, although I'll just pick one and the weight if I have mixed olives. If you eat a reasonable serving the difference won't matter. I'd agree that by number of olives is useless given the different sizes (unless you find your specific type of olive, and even then weight is much better). Usually there's a weight estimate too and you can use that. If you are concerned about including the pits you can weigh them after but from experience they are really light.

hesn92

If you’re rinsing then that leads me to believe you’re bringing them home before eating?? Can you use a food scale and weigh them instead?

boomerising

__TMac__ wrote: »

If you really don’t want to weigh food as a general practice

Actually, I didn’t say that. What I hate, as I said in the post, is counting things. I have a nice Escali brand scale that I have been using every day since I came back to MFP. I couldn’t do MFP without it.

boomerising

georgyporcupine wrote: »

In my humble opinion, I believe these to be just as good as the olives from the deli bar.

Not to mention safer!! Thanks for your suggestion. I did try looking at some jars at my favorite market the other day and took photos of the nutrition labels on a couple of them, I need to go back and review those. None matched the olive preparations I buy at the olive bar as well as I would have liked but at least they contain oil and give me some further orientation on this. I guess when I feel I’ve identified a plausible calorie count for medium olives dressed in oil and vinegar I’ll do a weighing of the ones I eat and recalculate my per-olive “charge” based on that information.

boomerising

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Basically what _TMac_ said -- I don't understand why volume would be preferable to weight

I feel it’s a lot easier to fill one of the volume measures I have hanging on the knob of a kitchen cabinet, say 1/3 or 1/2 cup, with the olives and then transfer them to a plate or board or whatever (or just eat them from the measuring cup) than to get my scale out, tare the container, wash the container, etc. (I don’t have enough counter space to just leave the scale out all the time and not worry about it getting jostled around, etc., so I put it back in its box and stand it on end after each use. Sigh. )

boomerising

hesn92 wrote: »

If you’re rinsing then that leads me to believe you’re bringing them home before eating??

Correct and thanks for providing that clarification to anyone who may need it. The olive “bar” is not literally a bar. Cannot pay on the spot and stores would not be happy with me if I ate them before paying for them. Though I confess I do occasionally sneak one to see if I like the dressing because they’re too damn expensive to get them home and go “ughhhhh!” (To hopefully prevent a scolding on this: NO, I do NOT touch any of the olives when I do this. I scoop one up with the spoon and drop it into my other hand.)

kimny72

boomerising wrote: »

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Basically what _TMac_ said -- I don't understand why volume would be preferable to weight

I feel it’s a lot easier to fill one of the volume measures I have hanging on the knob of a kitchen cabinet, say 1/3 or 1/2 cup, with the olives and then transfer them to a plate or board or whatever (or just eat them from the measuring cup) than to get my scale out, tare the container, wash the container, etc. (I don’t have enough counter space to just leave the scale out all the time and not worry about it getting jostled around, etc., so I put it back in its box and stand it on end after each use. Sigh. )

Put the measuring cup on the scale. Hit tare. Add olives. Log that weight. Eat olives out of measuring cup.
You can do the same with a plate that already has other food on it. Just stick it on the scale and hit tare, then put on the olives to get their weight. No extra container required.

French_Peasant

Get a small digital scale for $7 that is not a high maintenance pain in the butt and that you can whip out without all the hassle. Put the olive container on, tare the whole thing, remove the ones you want, and enter the negative number shown by the scale as a positive in your MFP log. It could not be easier. And then you are not even getting the measuring cup dirty.

boomerising

@kimny72 I like your second suggestion, thanks. First method, I guarantee I would dribble/splatter the olive dressing all over the scale
@French_Peasant You hurt my scale’s feelings. I like my scale. What I *really* need to do is get all the crap off the counter that I don’t use every day but am too lazy to climb up and get out of high cabinets However I do like your suggestion of getting the weight of the portion desired by subtraction instead of addition. Thanks.

boomerising

Another tool I have started building is this index card bundle where I make a card every time I weigh and count a favorite snack (like Beanitos ) so I don’t have to repeat the process. I do most things on my desktop computers or iPad, but I like this physical tool.

jaquieduck

Olives sold from olives bars are always sold by weight, are they not?
I buy about half a pound of olives about once a week. I estimate throughout the week and check to see that it adds up to about 1/2 a pound at the end of the week.

French_Peasant

boomerising wrote: »

@kimny72 I like your second suggestion, thanks. First method, I guarantee I would dribble/splatter the olive dressing all over the scale
@French_Peasant You hurt my scale’s feelings. I like my scale. What I *really* need to do is get all the crap off the counter that I don’t use every day but am too lazy to climb up and get out of high cabinets However I do like your suggestion of getting the weight of the portion desired by subtraction instead of addition. Thanks.

Please give your scale my apologies! Think of it more as getting a pet for your scale, that has a lid and can just kick around your purse or the junk drawer. Really, you can never have too many.

Cbean08

Do you have an Italian market around you? Or a european grocery store? They might have something that is already in a jar that is closer to what you are looking for. You might be able to find something around where they keep the giardinara.

Poisonedpawn78

a quick google search seems to suggest 16-20 calories per greek olive.

boomerising

French_Peasant wrote: »

Think of it more as getting a pet for your scale, that has a lid and can just kick around your purse or the junk drawer.

Thanks for the giggle, I needed that!

boomerising

Cbean08 wrote: »

Do you have an Italian market around you? Or a european grocery store? They might have something that is already in a jar that is closer to what you are looking for. You might be able to find something around where they keep the giardinara.

That's a helpful thought, thanks. We do have a little group of Italian-themed markets I haven't had a chance to visit much lately (used to live closer to them). Hmmmm, tomorrow is a non-gym day so maybe I can work one of them in Browsing their aisles might also spark some new meal or snack ideas for my regimen.

kam26001

mskimee wrote: »

Same with sun-dried tomatoes! The oil is a pain to log and the calories are listed as "per 100g drained" but how drained is drained when it comes to oil? Is it so the oil no ,longer drips or on a paper towel and patted dry?? I feel your pain and I'm interested to see others solution to this!!

You can buy these in a dry pack. Just soak in water.

boomerising

Poisonedpawn78 wrote: »

a quick google search seems to suggest 16-20 calories per greek olive.

That's hard to swallow… pun intended. Even if accurate for market bar olives I think I'd cap it at 15 calories based on rinsing off some of the oil.

There was an entry in the database from "Jason's Deli" that gave 25 calories for 2 olives, which my gut said was the right number, but I couldn't use the entry because it also came up with more than 2000 mg of sodium out of the blue. That would wack out my daily totals pretty much every day, and there's no way there is THAT much salt in the olives I buy after rinsing them. (I'm hypertensive so it's a concern as you can see from my index card tool.)

boomerising

Oh yes!!! I used to buy the dried packaged tomatoes, different brand but same idea as in @kam26001 's photo. Talk about a bucket of salt, OMG. A lot of it does come out if you soak them a while. Then I'd dry them with paper toweling and add a little bit of olive oil and maybe some garlic and herbs to them. Yum!!!

Cbean08

You could do the same to the olives. Why don't you buy a jarred version, remove some of the brine, and add in your own oil/vinegar/herb mix to the jar. Then you can calculate the dressing that you have added to the jar that already has calorie info. Let the jar sit for a bit so the flavors marinate.

boomerising

Here's an ounce of the olives I like to eat:


Based on this little bite of personal reality and on the brief write-up from Livestrong (not that they are any paragon of accuracy) linked below, I think 10 calories per olive is probably okay. My original gut feeling of 25 calories for 2 may be closer to the mark. When I eat the tiny Leccino olives I just count 3 or 4 of them as one. The others, I assume, average out. Not super-critical as long as I'm eating a reasonable portion, as someone said, which is especially important for a hypertensive individual not knowing how much salt is in the market olives. (Another argument in favor of buying jarred mixtures.) Thanks to all who offered helpful comments for settling this question, or as settled as I ever get anyway

https://livestrong.com/article/296457-how-many-calories-does-an-olive-have/