Extra virgin olive oil has many benefits – but only if it’s genuine
The health benefits about olive oil just keep on coming in.
We now know it can lower the risk of heart disease, stroke, dementia, and even breast cancer.
And a recent study found that just four tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil a day could send your chances of developing type 2 diabetes plummeting.
That was the good news.
The bad news is that bottle of “extra virgin” olive oil in your kitchen could very well be a fake.
It could be diluted, made from low quality oil, rancid — it might not even be from olives!
So before that next pasta dinner or trip to the supermarket, here are four tips to help you make sure the olive oil you’re buying is the real deal.
“Bad olive oil isn’t just a deception, it’s a crime against public health,” is what an Italian trade association executive said about this kind of food fraud.
And he’s right. Because for something as amazingly healthy as olive oil is to be tainted isn’t just breaking the law, it’s a sin.
Olive oil fraud isn’t anything new — it’s been going on since ancient times. Only now imports are bringing in so much money that one European Union investigator said the profits in adulterated olive oil were “comparable to cocaine trafficking, with none of the risks.”
In the U.S. alone we spend over $720 million every year buying olive oil — and what are we getting in return?
The answer is, not what we think.
Six years ago the University of California-Davis Olive Center (yes, in California they take their olives seriously!) found that almost 70 percent of imported olive oil called “extra virgin” wasn’t.
And that’s important because real extra virgin is said to be “a cocktail of 200 plus highly beneficial ingredients.”
Low-grade oil, on the other hand, is just the opposite. It’s made from inferior olives and contains free radicals and numerous impurities that aren’t just unhealthy, but can actually be bad for you.
But the worst findings of all from the California study was the discovery of bottles labeled as being from olives that were actually diluted with soy and canola oil!
So here are four tips to make sure you’re getting the best this fruit has to offer. (That’s right, olives are stone fruits the same as cherries, you can think of it as a kind of fruit juice!):
Tip #1: Good ones can range from green to gold. And make sure to buy your olive oil in dark-shaded glass, not plastic.
Tip #2: Don’t buy “light” or “extra light” varieties. Good, healthy olive oil should have a “vibrant and lively” taste, sometimes bitter but never rancid.
Tip #3: Don’t think you have to buy an oil imported from Italy. One expert said that Chile and Australia received the highest grades for extra virgin quality in a U.S. Trade Commission report. And I’ll add California. That state has its own council and “certified” label on certain brands that will guarantee you real extra virgin olive oil.
Tip #4: Check the date! Avoid olive oil that doesn’t list a “harvest date” on the label, and buy the one that was bottled most recently. The usual “best buy” date is two years from bottling, but you still want to look for the freshest harvest.
And once you get it home, be sure to keep that bottle in a dark location. Olive oil degrades very quickly in light, especially once it’s been opened.
Sources:
“Your olive oil is almost certainly fake” Maddie Oatman, August 12, 2016, Mother Jones, motherjones.com
