Olive Oil - Fake, Adulterated, Unregulated - So What Do We Do ?

[DMF]

It seems that you simply CAN'T get olive oil that is at best "adequate" for consumption let alone health.
Can you actually go to a mill and "fresh-squeeze" it yourself with your own jug? I suppose in California or Texas
but I'm in Chicago and thoroughly fed up with these rotten bottlers/distributors and their crap they have to sell.
I ordered online a bottle of "1st Cold Pressed, Extra Virgin, Unfiltered" oil from a place in California and it was sub-par.

 

[DMF]

I Mean Adulterated
The edit doesn't cover titles

 

[Forsythia]

This issue with olive oil came to light many years ago. I haven't touched olive oil since. You can eat well without using any liquid oil. Use coconut oil and butter. Nothing else is needed.

 

[Queequeg]

I use trader joe's as it did well on some olive oil purity test a while ago. Things could have changed though and I am also curious if anyone has a good suggestion. Also be wary of restaurant olive oil as its often cut with vegetable oil.

 

[Peata]

I have California Olive Ranch brand. But I rarely use olive oil, mostly just coconut oil and butter when I use any oil at all.

 

[TubZy]

I quit EVOO once I found out how shady and faked it was all the time. I switched to refined coconut oil, like it way better too. Every once and a while I'll use a little olive oil.

 

[michael94]

How are you so sure all of them are aldulterated and not just lower quality olives? It's true that not all olive oil has the strong peppery taste that high quality olive oil does... but I don't think 90% of olive oil on the store shelves is cut with something like some articles have claimed.

 

[Queequeg]

California apparently now regulates olive oil. Here is a list of CA approved
https://www.cooc.com/seal-certified-oils/

 

[Queequeg]

How are you so sure all of them are aldulterated and not just lower quality olives? It's true that not all olive oil has the strong peppery taste that high quality olive oil does... but I don't think 90% of olive oil on the store shelves is cut with something like some articles have claimed.

60 minutes did a show on how the mafia controls Italian olive oil and how they typically blend in cheaper oils

 

[michael94]

60 minutes did a show on how the mafia controls Italian olive oil and how they typically blend in cheaper oils

that is interesting. maybe dmf can try a california brand?

 

[Westside PUFAs]

Olive oil is still an unsaturated fat and should be used sparingly. Olive oil is fattening.

"Olive oil, though it is somewhat fattening, is less fattening than corn or soy oil, and contains an antioxidant which makes it protective against heart disease and cancer.” - RP

The only brand I trust is Bariani. Organic, cold pressed and high quality. They put the harvesting date and the bottling date on every bottle. I only use it maybe once a month or once every two months. I just dip some fresh sourdough in it to get any of the purported benefits and the antioxidant that Peat mentioned. It's not a calorie source.

Bariani Olive Oil

.

 

[yurt]

Tom Mueller wrote a book about this titled "Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil".

 

[PhilParma]

Tom Mueller wrote a book about olive oil industry corruption. According to him, much of the EVOO imported from Europe is rancid, cut with seed oils, or both. California has better oversight and so the EVOO that comes from there is at least likely to be actual olive oil. I buy the California Olive Ranch brand that is easily found in supermarkets. It stings my throat and tastes like actual olive oil, but I'm no connoisseur.

Here is a buyer's guide on his website, although it may be outdated--I haven't looked at it in awhile.

In general I don't trust olive oil because it rancidifies relatively easily, like the fish oils do. EVOO is probably great if you can get it at the source, or receive it in a container that can dispense the oil without exposing the contents to oxygen, like via a box with a nozzle rather than a bottle with a cap. Once you open the cap, it's countdown to shitty olive oil, if it wasn't already shitty to begin with.

That said, I still take in olive oil weekly because I need to gain weight and EVOO doesn't interfere with my carbosis as much as the saturated fat levels in coconut oil/butter tend to.

 

[squanch]

No idea about the US, but I could give you a few good producers in europe. There's a small store that only sells olive oil and nothing else were I live. The owner personally visits the different producers every year, pretty much all of the oils have also won awards before.

The taste difference between high quality olive oils and supermarket garbage "extra virgin" olive oils is insane. Good oils will burn in your throat and have this really rich, grassy taste.

I think looking for smaller producers who regularly attend olive oil competitions / awards and have won a few prizes is a good first step.
Avoid any mass produced supermarket oils like the plague.

My personal favorite this year is "Oro Bailen Reserva Familiar Picual". You can actually get it on amazon in the US if you want to try it. Somewhat expensive though, I pay a lot less here in germany:
Amazon.com : Oro Bailen Extra Virgin Olive Oil (Spain) 500ml : Oro Bailen Reserva Familiar Picual : Grocery & Gourmet Food

edit: I would not recommend buying unfiltered olive oil. It has to be consumed within 1-2 months after harvest because it goes rancid very quickly.

 

[sele]

But I rarely use olive oil, mostly just coconut oil and butter when I use any oil at all.

 

[milk_lover]

I have done olive oil in the past but sadly it made me accumulate a lot of fat in my body! Maybe I didn't use the real pure one.

 

[yerrag]

After I realized lettuce isn't so good, since it's a raw leaf, my olive oil hasn't been used for a while. I'm not going to miss olive oil since I don't use EVOO to cook either, since I use refined coconut oil for frying.

I think about my past usage of EVOO and I wonder how much of the olive oil I took is just soya oil colored with chlorophyll. To think that I would shun the pre-made salad dressings that are 99% soya oil and 1% olive oil, and then thought with satisfaction that the salad dressing makers don't get to fool me, I am made to look pretty silly being such a humbug.

Since the Mafia (or whatever) is too much embedded into the olive oil industry, it won't make sense for the producers to self-police themselves. It seems to me you have to be buying special vintage olive oil like you are buying wine, and that makes olive oil a delicacy, beyond being a daily staple.

 

[ReSTART]

We have some of the best olive oil in the world in Australia and it's pretty cheap too.
I don't eat much anyways though.

 

[shepherdgirl]

I did the "refrigerator test" and put a bottle of my reputed supermarket's olive oil into the fridge, and after two days there was absolutely no cloudiness or solidification. With a label that indicated it had on the order of 10% PUFA, I would certainly expect it to at least cloud up and partially solidify. But nothing. So now I no longer hold my supermarket above any of the others.
Then I bought a bottle of California Olive Ranch and stuck it in the fridge. After a couple days it turned into a solid block.
I know that this test is not an indicator of quality, and that perhaps it is possible to add waxes or something to cheat this test, but when an oil stays clear and liquid after two days, isn't that a pretty good indication that it is high in PUFA? As far as I know MCT is the only saturated fat that does not solidify at room temperature.

 

[squanch]

I did the "refrigerator test" and put a bottle of my reputed supermarket's olive oil into the fridge, and after two days there was absolutely no cloudiness or solidification. With a label that indicated it had on the order of 10% PUFA, I would certainly expect it to at least cloud up and partially solidify. But nothing. So now I no longer hold my supermarket above any of the others.
Then I bought a bottle of California Olive Ranch and stuck it in the fridge. After a couple days it turned into a solid block.
I know that this test is not an indicator of quality, and that perhaps it is possible to add waxes or something to cheat this test, but when an oil stays clear and liquid after two days, isn't that a pretty good indication that it is high in PUFA? As far as I know MCT is the only saturated fat that does not solidify at room temperature.

Honestly, just don't buy any olive oil that isn't sold directly by smaller producers who plant, harvest and press only their own olives.
Those large supermarket brands like Bertolli buy their oil from sometimes hundreds of different producers all over the world and just mix it all together. You have absolutely no idea what you are actually getting and they don't either most of the time.
Even seemingly reputable brands of expensive organic olive oils who are buying their oil from different farmers are risky. Just one farmer with shady practices and the whole batch is ruined. They just don't have the means to actually control it all effectively if they don't have their own olive trees and make the oil from those exclusively.

I can't really give any recommendations for oils produced in the USA, but it seems like there are a few smaller producers in California. I would go to an olive oil specialty store or look through some of the recent olive oil awards / competitions. I think if you want a really high quality olive oil you have to treat it almost like a good wine.

Also on a side note, there are olive varieties that produce an oil with less than 10 % PUFA (I think it somewhat depends on the area they are grown in too). I currently use a spanish olive oil made from picual olives that only has around 5 % PUFA.