Only virgin type of olive oil consumption reduces the risk of mortality: study (opens in new tab)

Yeah I would never buy anything electronic, or anything to consume or put on my body from amazon.

Perhaps, but consuming Greek olive oil comes at a grave price. The current life expectancy for Greece in 2022 is 82.64 years. The current life expectancy for Italy in 2022 is 83.86 years. Consuming Greek as opposed to Italian olive oil will reduce your life expectancy by nearly a year and 4 months. Thanks, but no thanks.

Recent studies show[1] that adding a bracketed number after a claim increases credibility, as most people don't actually check the claim[2] anyways.

Australian olive oil is world standard

Plenty of supply and it's not a relatively massive export so I'd wager the incentive to fake it just doesn't exist

Good point. Hard to know who to trust, when it comes to olive oil, with so many scams, fakes, and contamination.

Coconut oil and butter are saturated fats, whereas olive oil is monounsaturated fat. While saturated fats might not be as bad as we thought, they are still still strongly associated with cardiovascular diseases. Not really in the same league as olive oil.

olive oil has plenty of unsaturated fatty acids, butter/ghee less so, coconut oil is outright advised against.

use ghee for high temperature (pan frying), olive oil for salads and normal cooking (like tomato sauce) and leave coconuts on the trees.

Terra Creta was everywhere in Crete when I was visiting there. Maybe it doesn't ship to the mainland very much?

Holy moly, another Greek on ycombinator!!!! I am greek as well.

What do you mean it exploded?

I am a big fan of the Spanish virgin olive oil at Costco (the one in the tall green bottle), so I got excited when I saw their olive oil from Italy. I thought it would also be great, but it tasted very very strange. I don't know what 'acrid' is, but the word sounds like what that oil tasted like.

Do you make sandwiches with olive oil and lettuce? Genuinely curious.

Most EU supermarkets should have some Greek EVOO (Tesco in UK and Jumbo in Netherlands have Iliada, Sainsbury's has a selection of Greek olive oils). Alternatively, find a Greek deli/market/imports place, they are in every country I've been to in northern Europe. They typically supply restaurants and should have a good selection of foods.

Look for PDO / Agrocert stamps.

Check this: https://shop.merum.info/de/taschenf%C3%BChrer/taschenf%C3%BC...

Visit tour local Greek deli? They're not very numerous, but they're out there.

Spanish person here. Spain is the biggest olive oil producer in the world. So big that Italia, and others buys the oil and pack it with its own label. There, is where some adulteration may come from. In Spain you can buy directly from the producers called "Cooperativas agricolas".

Olive oil is very good whether Spanish/Greek/Californian.

The processing is the problem and the cultivation.

In my religious/fasting cakes I use olive oil and in my non-religious cold pressed sunflower oil instead of butter/margarine.

Interesting, from the article:

> Does the fact that an olive oil does not have your seal mean that the olive oil is not authentic?

> The answer is emphatically no. According to a study conducted by scientists from the FDA in a study published in 2015 that the risk of purchasing a bottle of adulterated EVOO is low (less than 5%). The scientists randomly sampled 88 bottles of EVOO that they purchased from supermarkets and online stores, and did not find a single instance of adulteration

I wonder where the opposite fact that I hear on the internet that most olive oil is adulterated comes from.

Is this one of those schisms like exists between USDA organic and California organic? Because your list doesn't include any olive oils I would actually eat, whereas they are all on this list: https://cooc.com/certified-oils/

I can confirm, we have a single huge olive tree in a small piece of land my grandpa bought in the 80s to have extra food and this single tree gives 3 people enough olive oil for the whole year (portuguese standards, so cooking with it plus codfish "drowning" in it on the plate). We hit the tree so they fall, then take it to a guy that presses it and you have your olive oil.

Definitely completely different from store olive oil, and definitely on a completely other league to what I had in the US.

I lived with a Greek flatmate for a while. By far the best olive oil I've had was from their family owned olive grove. Usually brought back from his trips home in reused milk jugs.

It's trickier than you let on.

At least for California, you have to look for the California Olive Oil Council seal if you want to be sure:

https://cooc.com/about-the-seal/

For example: there is a company called "California Olive Ranch." It used to have a popular olive oil sold in a lot of larger grocery stores that had the COOC seal. Then it started to source olives (oil?) from somewhere outside California and blend with the California olives[1]. That broke the rules of the COOC seal-- to have the word "California" on the label you can't blend with non-Californian olives. So the seal is no longer on that bottle, but the name "California Olive Ranch" is obviously on that label because it's the name of the company.

Thus, a shopper would be misled by your second sentence and buy an oil with olives and whatever else from imported non-Californian sources. That means the third sentence is also wrong-- looking for harvest dates and COOC seal isn't something that the shopper can do to double check their choice. Rather, that is the only thing they can do to be sure they're getting actual virgin olive oil of sufficient quality (the seal) that isn't rancid (the harvest date being within less than a year).

Edit: I don't have a link, but there was a recent COOC fiasco where a lot of the smaller farms got up in arms due to a proposed language change in the requirements for obtaining the seal. Don't remember the details, but it sure sounded like it would have made it easier for a member to blend with some amount of imported olives and still carry the seal.

Honestly, I think there's enough intrigue and drama in this topic of finding bona fide olive oil to start a substack subscription thingy if anyone is interested in that. :)

Once you heat it, the differences become negligible to nonexistent. Good-quality oils are most important in raw uses, such as dips and salad dressings.

It's a hassle to maintain a "cooking olive oil" and a "raw olive oil", so the worst you're doing is wasting a tiny bit of money for the convenience of keeping around just one bottle.

As for the particular brand you mention... yes, it's very well reputed. Being produced in the US, there are fewer opportunities for fraud that occur when importing mass-produced oils. (Imported artisan oils are often extremely good, but pricey because of the overhead.)

You probably would notice the difference if you were to compare it to other brands -- especially when the bottle is newly opened. In cooking... eh, I just use a bottle of whatever's cheap.

If one trusts Consumer Reports they do a study every so often on best tasting (one of the cheaper Trader Joe's brand came out on top with EVOO in the middle tier off the top of my head), though if you use only small amounts for cooking one may not be able to tell a big difference. Also some studies showed people preferred rancid oil! so who knows, what we grow up with probably has a heavy influence on taste preferences. You might want to try some white bread and maybe a little garlic mixed in your oil and use that as a dipping sauce to get a sense of the flavor (over just drinking it. :) ). UC Davis might have a California bent and be California ag sponsored but because it has an agricultural college there are plenty of studies originating there about olive oil. Just search UC Davis and olive oil.

> I get California Olive Branch “100% California” EVOO because I heard it was genuine. Do you know if this is true, and if not, which brands are?

Broadly speaking, get what you know and what's close.

Have a friend in Italy, Greece or Spain? Get it from them. Live in California? Get it from there. The longer the supply and trust chains for something like olive oil, the higher the chances of funny business.

the 100% california stuff is genuine, although a blend from california farms (so not single olive estate, which the best stuff is. i think they also sell single olive oils but they are very expensive). The blended stuff from south american olives is also probably real. It certainly tastes real if not as nice and peppery as the good stuff. If you're ever in northern california a lot of the wineries in sonoma / napa also grow and press olive oil, those are worth grabbing and savouring. wonderful by the spoonful.

I like that wherever I travel I can find Kirkland's EVOO. It's not the freshest but it's not fake (combined with low quality vegetable oils).

If that was true why would anyone use refined oil ?

Yeah, it's almost looks they're written by statistics professors trying to illustrate the concept of confounders.

In this field of observational epidemiology, "most" is an understatement.

> [a] How has his writing changed how you eat, and [b] have you noticed any differences in health metrics?

[a]

Well, I now avoid vegetable oils quite intensely. The higher-order effect of being more aware and intentional of what I eat & cook has lead me to much healthier eating habits over all; I now mainly consume un-processed foods.

In fact, it's nigh impossible to remove seed oil from ones diet without cutting out processed foods, as you quickly realize it's in (nearly) everything.

[b]

I track a bunch of health metrics via an Oura ring and Apple Watch, but it's hard to parse what improvements have come from the reduction in seed oils vs. the myriad of other positive changes I've made over roughly the same time period (daily weight lifting, running, improved sleep hygiene etc.).

I can say that my resting heart rate has decreased, my sleep quality has improved & my VO₂ max is better than it's been since I began recording it (about a year) etc. etc.

I recently had my bloods, testosterone, cholesterol & liver functions tested and everything came back healthy.

—

Overall, I've gone from being frequently fatigued, rundown and mentally overwhelmed (frequent anxious & depressive thoughts) earlier in the year to the other end of the spectrum as of writing. I can't recommend making the jump to cut-out seed oils enough.

On a side note, as a 20-something year old, this experience has been a real eye opener. I've always held a healthy skepticism of conventional healthcare/medical wisdom as my father was a doctor and his insider views on things were very revealing. Now that I've gone through a dietary/health metamorphosis of sorts, I feel enlightened to the fact that you simply cannot rely on populist knowledge & guidelines to ensure you're being healthy, or for much else for that matter.

Whether it be a consequence of the monolithic & slow moving nature of health science, or something more nefarious [lobbying, misaligned financial invectives, greed over health & welfare], the fact that seed oils were (and still are) praised & pushed as being a healthy alternative to olive oil, butter etc. is nigh insanity.

A few months ago I finally stumbled down the PFAS chemicals rabbit hole, and my dull sense of terror & disappointment increased further still. It's a strange world we live in. The phrase 'boring dystopia' springs to mind.

Hey, no worries! Enjoy. I'll get around to having some shipped to NZ someway-somehow sooner or later, I can't wait to try the stuff myself.

Sorry, I meant it in reference to my comment as opposed to the research you posted

Noted, thank you!

That's a fair point, although I would argue that if good quality olive oil is very cheap, then perhaps it's the other way round. Only the very poorest are forced to consume non extra virgin olive oil.

Also, I'm not sure about Spain but farmers generally have noticeably higher life expectancy than the average.

It does, but at some point a bigger study will come along that accounts for more factors, and that will find there's no effect.

Where does it say that?

That's what "adulteration" means. From the study I referenced:

"Three of the 88 samples labeled as EVOO failed to meet purity criteria, indicating possible adulteration with commodity oil and/or solvent-extracted olive oil."

you talk about cholesterol? My grandma got it.

Though the price difference is quite a lot less pronounced in Spain, where the study was done.

Some of this is contrary to what I've read and my personal experience:

Subjecting EVOO to an electric blender results in a distinctly bitter taste. For salad dressings that involve a blender, I stick with non-EV olive oils.

I don't cook enough to justify multiple bottles of OO. For cooking, I generally use butter with a splash of OO: the OO seems to stop the butter scorching.

I feel like you always want virgin olive oil. Just don’t hear it too high. If you have uses that require high heat then use a completely different oil like coconut.

Yes, many people do say that about Italian olive oil, but I have no first hand confirmation. I have also heard some professional testimonies that suggest mediocre practices at several points of the value chain that simply are not compatible with the final perceived quality. Which is weird, to say the least.

It's really nice that our olive oil is reaching small cities in Japan! And it shows that Spanish and Portuguese producers are making an effort to build brands abroad and to get known.

> If it doesn't (just says "olive oil"), it's probably olive oil mixed with all sorts of other vegetable oils.

Do they not have to declare the other ingredients on the packaging?

Like for most nutrients, both too much and too little are bad.

The olive oil and the other vegetable oils with high content of oleic acid, e.g. high oleic sunflower oil, avocado oil and others, also include adequate amounts of linoleic acid, which is an essential nutrient (e.g. when the daily intake is too small, various skin problems appear).

The cheaper vegetable oils, e.g. classic sunflower oil, corn oil, soy oil and others, contain far too much linoleic acid (which can cause liver problems). The use of such vegetable oils in human food has begun very recently, only in the 19th century, after their industrial production has been developed.

For example, I choose carefully the sources of fat in my food and in a typical day the fat comes from 54 g (60 mL) of olive oil + 33 g of almonds + 9 g (10 mL) of cod liver oil. (That started after being diagnosed with some incipient heart problems, which seem to have been corrected after a year of more careful food choices.)

Both olive oil and almonds contain fat where oleic acid is the most abundant fatty acid. Their quantities are computed so that they also provide adequate daily intakes of linoleic acid and vitamin E. The fish oil adds an adequate amount of omega-3 fatty acids.

less[1]. this video[2] is not the best reference but a very good summary on the industrialized oils and they alternatives

[1] https://openheart.bmj.com/content/5/2/e000898

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQmqVVmMB3k

"Instead of using butter, cream, lard, and other animal fat as the primary source of culinary fat, one should use liquid vegetable oils like soybean, corn, olive, and canola oils for cooking, on salad and at the table."

Uh...

"Smoke point" concerns are usually overblown, it's really just the flavor that goes away making it pointless (and more expensive) too cook with EVO. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_aFHrzSBrM

True, anything above 190 Cº (375 Fº) and it's going to start smoking

The dietary preferences of the owner of the site does not alter the validity of the information. The image is just a reference.

Here's the source of that table https://media.johnwiley.com.au/product_data/excerpt/06/04713...

When buying in the US, I assume that you mean.

Do you have evidence to support that?

> Where nobody can prepare food without olive oil. It's the law.

Like everywhere else, Spain is a place where virgin olive oil is more expensive than the defiled version.

> Virgin olive oil has a strong flavor and very low smoke point, which makes it unsuitable for most types of food.

Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) doesn't have a "very low smoke point". This table on wikipedia gives the smoke point of "Extra virgin, low acidity, high quality" EVOO at 207°C/405 °F:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point#Temperature

The same page gives standard home cooking temperatures as follows:

  Pan frying (sauté) on stove top heat: 120 °C (248 °F)
  Deep frying: 160–180 °C (320–356 °F)
  Oven baking: Average of 180 °C (356 °F)

So premium-quality EVOO has a smoke point comfortably above the temperatures where most people will cook with it. I suspect the idea that EVOO has a low smoke point comes from confusion between extra virgion olive oil and "extra virgin" olive oil (i.e. between the real deal and the stuff sold in its place). Anyway anecdotally, me, both my grandmothers, my mother, and everyone else I know has been cooking with EVOO for ages and I've never heard of anyone actually managing to make it burn (though I've certainly burned the food cooking in it). And we cook most, or rather, all, types of food in it.

You're perfectly right though that EVOO has a strong flavor. That's the whole point.

Vegetable oil smokes at a very similar point than olive oil [1]. The only reason people uses vegetable oils is 1. it's cheap. 2. does not add extra flavors.

[1] https://blog.mountainroseherbs.com/hs-fs/hubfs/CulinaryOil_S...

I agree. My partner's family in Spain have some land with olive trees (400 old ones plus 300 they planted recently) and sometimes we go there to help them pick the olives from the trees/ground, for us it's more like some festive days with the family than work.

The thing is, every year they give us more cold pressed olive oil than we can consume, and they don't do it in exchange for our "work", they also get more than they can consume, and no, they don't sell it (not worthy considering the legal/health paperwork and fees that would involve). We love it, its taste is amazing, and we know where it comes from and how it has been processed.

Yet... we still have to buy and use sunflower oil for a lot food! The taste is just too hard for some stuff and is less than ideal for deep frying. Olive oil for a stew? Some cooked rice or pasta? A salad? Toasted bread with garlic or tomato? Sure! But it we are frying anything, from fries to churros, we do it with vegetable oil.

I use avocado or safflower oil. Avocado has the highest smoke point at 520 degrees F.

If cooking with oil, everything cooked with safflower oil tastes better to me.

https://homecookworld.com/cooking-oils-smoke-points/

Maybe it's not a bad idea to remove all the foods that need unhealthy vegetable oils.

> or truffles on everything, or bacon on everything,

Speak for yourself there buddy

IDK man. Maybe its because I mostly just eat fish and veggies, but I find that it works well for the types of dishes I cook.