Are these olives still good?

[Monique]

I bought some olives today, prepackaged ones that are not on oil (only a little). I just opened the package and there are white dots on the olives in certain places, at first I thought it were mites (the ones you get on roses), but it's not. It could be mold, but it's not fibrous, but I can whipe it off.

So.. are they still good? I tasted one before I noticed the white stuff and they were the best I ever tasted :rolleyes: (there's a remark on the package that they won a best food award and a seperate technology prize for quality and best trade :cry:)

In the ingredients it says it contains potasium sorbate as a preservative agent, could it be that what I'm seeing?

[out of whack]

I see this (http://tpo-5420.bensurwebsolutions.com/faq/olive-faq) and this (http://www.starfinefoods.com/faq.html). But even though these harmless spores appear as white dots, all white dots are not necessarily harmless spores. The responsible thing to do is to first feed a couple of olives to your boss and to that annoying guy in accounting. If they still show up for work the next day, enjoy your olives! :devil:

[Monique]

Thank you, I just did some google research and came to the same conclusion: the spots are harmless bacteria (Lactobacillue plantarum) that appear as part of the fermentation process :biggrin: yippee

The spots apparently are called 'yeast spots', but research has shown that they actually don't contain yeast: http://aem.asm.org/cgi/reprint/1/2/82.pdf learned something new today..

[Moonbear]

I'm glad you asked this, because I've noticed white dots on olives before too, and have never been sure if it was okay to eat them or not when I see them (sometimes they show up when I put them in the fridge after opening a jar, so I wasn't even sure if it was just something precipitating when chilled). Yay! Good to know they're safe to eat now. (Of course, I always figured as long as I was soaking them in a martini, I'd kill anything that was harmful to eat. :tongue2:)