Olive oil

hi again from Italy.

you know, even though this is a beautiful city, I just can’t wait to get home! being out of the house, in a hotel-although it is a beautiful hotel, is just not me!

tom cruise and his fiancé were next door to my hotel while they were in Rome before their wedding. the helicopters buzzed all day long! Boy, all the people and the press blocking everything-so silly.

I could not wait for them to leave. Life is such a circus when he is around!!

Last weekend, I went to a baptism up in Venice and the host, knowing I was a raw “person” (as they call me here) made sure that there was enough raw food for me to eat.

As I eat fish and meats, dairy etc. this was rather easy as he had great tartars and marinated fishes and cured meats-salads, too!

I ate like a queen!

funny how so many people think they will starve if they go raw-I find it rather easy and, oh-so pleasant! I have no problem eating except when it is not in my control-for example, I had been working on two sets and they were confused as to what to serve me. since one film location was far out of Rome, I could not go to a restaurant so I had to eat what they brought me! every day they brought bresaola- a cured meat, and salad. they would argue with me every day abut the olive oil-

“senora” they would say. “we know it does not SAY freddo on the bottle, but believe us it is great olive oil!”

nope, I have to bring my own-even into restaurants as I know the pressing of olive oil has changed over the years-and now they do it by machine and THAT is not cold pressed-at all.

I even had an argument one night-imagine arguing in Italian-with a gentleman who owned the biggest olive oil producing company in Italy. he told me how proud he was of the business. he told me that he made so much money producing oil, that he could revamp his factory and get machines to press the hot oil!

I nearly fainted!

I looked at him and I said, “you will make too many people fat!”

I tried to explain the idea behind raw and cold pressed but he would not hear about it-and of course, I could not expect him to even want to understand since he just invested to revamp his empire!

but really, the people of Italy eat so much olive oil and they liberally pour it on food. and because I USED to be raw and cold pressed, they actually could loose weight on it. but now, they still used it liberally, and they are getting fatter-and they don’t know why.

I mean, they really all the time complain to me about their weight-as they never had before

and I read an article-I forget where-that said that the Italian kids are the fattest kids respectively in growing population, in the world!!

see, their food process has changed, but their habits and their knowledge of their food did not!

this to me is dangerous. if you don’t know how your food is made, or what is in it, then how can you control your health and weight?

like this assistant told me this summer while working with me on my film “twist the cap”

she said she worked in an organic cherry orchid-but the cherries were not organic.

I said how did you do that?

she said, we only said the cherries were organic so that we could collect more money for them. but really, to grow organic is too expensive….

imagine?