With all the talk these days about oil, I thought now would be as good a time as any to add my two cents. The main difference, though, is that the oil to which I refer can't power a car (yet), but it certainly can help power your body. Olive oil, a staple of the Mediterranean diet for millenia, and quickly becoming a regular part of the American diet. It's high concentration of good saturated fat makes it a very healthy alternative to vegetable oil and cooking spray. Oh yeah, and did I forget to mention that it may be able to help prevent you from having bypass surgery, too?

A study conducted at the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at Thomas Jefferson University uncovered a new use for the slippery, lubricating properties of olive oil. When used in a mixture with egg yolk, glycerin, sodium hydroxide and water, this emulsion can be used as a lubricant for surgical stents. Because there are a small percentage of people with arteries that cannot be stented (due to their having oddly shaped, winding, or tightly blocked arteries), the use of this olive oil lube may be the medical breakthrough they needed.

This mixture, composed of olive oil and the other named ingredients, allowed doctors at the lab to successfully place stents in 85 percent of patients who had previously been deemed unsuccessful candidates for stent insertion (by the way, just in case you don't know, stents are metal mesh tubes that are placed in an artery to assist in keeping it open. Sorry I didn't mention that earlier). Moreover, of these patients that had the stents inserted with the help of the primarily olive oil-based lubricant, none have reported any problems with their stents, months after their surgery.