With impact factor of 4 I'd caution against taking the results at face value.
Vegetable oil is chosen in situations where you don’t want to taste it at all, where it’s just used to cook the 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)
You're perfectly right though that EVOO has a strong flavor. That's the whole point.
[1] https://blog.mountainroseherbs.com/hs-fs/hubfs/CulinaryOil_S...
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.
If cooking with oil, everything cooked with safflower oil tastes better to me.
Speak for yourself there buddy
Now I have to worry about olive oil?
I wish there is reliable and rapid in-situ testing, but not lab based sample testing that is not reliable and slow (companies can always send the good samples for testing and still selling the fake versions).
My hypothesis is that hyperspectral camera imaging technology can perform the in-situ reliable and rapid testing for screening the fake expensive foods namely virgin olive oils, honey, etc.
[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2016/02/10/the...
It's incredible. If you can afford it, the subscription is always great and an excellent chance to try oil from different olives that typically don't get pressed.
Is it me or is that title extremely oddly phrased?
But I'm still scarred from the 1990s "put capers in everything" era.
Non-refined olive oils — even your rare low-acidity example — do have a low smoke point in practice. All store bought “extra virgin” olive oils in my experience also burn closer to 300-350 degrees fahrenheit.
Are you a vegetarian by chance? You said most people cook well below 405 degrees. Traditional American households do exceed that temperature on the grill and the stove.
When olive oil burns, the smoke isn’t always highly visible. Examine close up and from the side. The rising smoke can look a lot like heat distortion.
As a final point, for anyone still here, smoke points aren’t an automatic reason to avoid a cooking oil. Chemical stability is variably correlated, so maybe do some more reading.
Yes, of course. Because of the "air quotes".
I am not vegetarian. I cook everything with olive oil, including searing meats in my French oven. So does everyone I know. I think what you are talking about and what I'm talking about are entirely different substances. I suspect the information on wikipedia, and in your sources, is also far off the reality of olive oil as it's used by people in the region of the world where it's traditionally the shortening of choice. Otherwise, we'd have stopped using it long ago.
> You said most people cook well below 405 degrees.
To clarify, that wasn't me, but wikipedia. I don't personally know what temperatures most people cook with and, I suspect, neither do you. What I know is that there's a few million people in countries around the Mediterranean that cook almost exclusively with olive oil and if it was as easy to burn it as you insist, that wouldn't be the case.
I suspect that you are relying on second-hand information but do not have first-hand experience of a lifetime (and a long tradition) of cooking with olive oil. I've heard more weird things coming from the same place, of lack of first-hand experience, for example that olive oil turns bitter if you heat it, something that I heard for the first time from an American dude with a youtube foodie channel, but not of course from my many friends, family and acquaintances that cook with olive oil as a matter of course. Again, if that sort of thing were true, we wouldn't be using it.
This is really the question to ask yourself: where does your information come from? Is there any evidence to the contrary?
Edit:
> This is really the question to ask yourself: where does your information come from? Is there any evidence to the contrary?
I cooked almost exclusively with olive oil for many years. You can ask anyone in America about their experiences with it, and it will probably be the same. I can't speak about taste, but the olive oils found in our stores begin to smoke extremely easily.
Why did you continue to cook with it if it was smoking so easily?
This is based on an old study [1] and is no longer the case.
It's now FUD perpetuated by DTC brands as part of their marketing. [2]
[1] https://www.aboutoliveoil.org/uc-davis-olive-center-olive-oi...
[2] https://www.oliveoiltimes.com/briefs/brightland-drops-claims...
Better would be a similar study to the original UCDavis study, to check if quality has improved.
Here is some good quality Greek olive oil available in US, reasonably priced, that you can buy without fear of adulteration or other shadiness:
https://www.amazon.com/Terra-Creta-Kolymvari-Protective-Desi...
https://www.amazon.com/Iliada-Extra-Virgin-Olive-Liter/dp/B0...
The Greek extra virgin olive oil sold at Trader Joe's is also very good.
Avoid the - Whole Foods & 365 branded - Greek EVOO at Whole Foods: it was rancid every single time I've tried it.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-crime-food/italian-...
[2] https://www.oliveoiltimes.com/olive-oil-basics/mafia-olive-o...
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2016/02/10/the...
This is a pretty meaningless statement. It's like saying French wine is considered the best in the world. Perhaps true in some narrow sense, but the variations within a country are every bit as large as the variations between countries. Every country that produces olive oil produces some really top quality oil and some garbage oil
Personally I mostly buy Spanish olive oil these days. Not because Spanish olive oil is 'the best', but because the best oil I've found for the price I'm most often willing to pay at the store I normally shop at happens to be from Spain.
[0] Mediterranean fighting words, with no footnote for comment's boldest claim
I can highly recommend this very good Swiss magazine testing many oils throughout Italy: https://shop.merum.info/de/taschenf%C3%BChrer/taschenf%C3%BC...
Plenty of supply and it's not a relatively massive export so I'd wager the incentive to fake it just doesn't exist
use ghee for high temperature (pan frying), olive oil for salads and normal cooking (like tomato sauce) and leave coconuts on the trees.
The current life expectancy for Greece in 2022 is 82.64 years. The current life expectancy for Italy in 2022 is 83.86 years. Clearly, Italian olive oil reduces mortality for 1 year, 3 months, 25 days, 4 hours and 48 minutes longer than Greek olive oil. And since Greek civilization had at least a few hundred years longer than Italian civilization at perfecting olive oil's mortality reduction, we can assume that given the same amount of time, Italian olive oil will always reduce mortality more than Greek olive oil.
A decade ago a friend of my mother that had a small olive farm in Jordan used to send us a couple of 5 liter cans of oil and olives every year. I can say that was the best olive oil and the best olives in my life, but there is no way to prove it.
https://www.touristisrael.com/israel-olive-oil-industry/2819...
I personally like to buy Sicilian olive oil, from a local seller for only 7€ per Liter. It's so virgin that a bottle exploded that I had put a cap on. Quite the mess, but the quality speaks for itself.
Look for PDO / Agrocert stamps.
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.
I can definitely taste the diff between supermarket stuff and super-premium olive oil where I know who the importer is (in New York City, my go-to is the house brand of a restaurant called Frankie's 457 Spuntino who imports their own oil). But I'm not sure whether that reflects the quality of olives/processing, or is an indicator of "real" vs "fake" olive oil...
The most important, and well known confounding factor in observational health research is socioeconomic status - rich people live longer than poor people.
This research attempted to control for it in a limited fashion, but that's not nearly enough.
Also many arguably poor farmers will grow their own olive trees and distribute the oil yield among their wider family.
So perhaps not so case closed as you say.
Looking at this kind of research is a kind of game: statistically most such research is wrong [1], so the game is to spot the mistake as to why the research is wrong.
I think you are winning this round!
In the studies done in rats, the purpose was to determine whether a high-fat diet causes or prevents atherosclerosis.
In rats, the worst outcome was caused by a diet high in saturated fat and much better outcomes were caused by a diet enriched in oleic acid, e.g. by using high-oleic sunflower oil.
However, the extra-virgin olive oil had an additional protective effect against atherosclerosis, in comparison with the other vegetable oils with a similar fatty acid profile.
So the conclusion is that EVOO includes some unidentified substance, perhaps a phenolic compound, which is good for cardiovascular health.
This, together with the fact that the olive oil has an optimal fatty acid profile with high content of oleic acid and with enough linoleic acid, makes it a very good choice for the main source of fat in the food.
Olive oil has a pretty short shelf life. The best way to get the good stuff is to make sure you buy:
- the latest harvest (they're usually harvested in early fall)
- non-filtered
- stored in a dark bottle, somewhere cool (light oxidizes it)
- single origin (if it's not, then they're likely mixing old rancid and new oils)
- first press, cold extracted
A friend once sent me a gallon from his family's harvest. Nectar of the gods.
--
California Olive Ranch is available in (my) local groceries. They helpfully imprint the harvest date on the label. Any thing on the shelf is probably over a year old. Meh.
I've pre-ordered their harvest reserve (autumn). Two weeks from tree to mouth. Very good.
Nothing on their web site about harvest reserve 2022. Maybe it's only announced on the mailing list. https://www.californiaoliveranch.com
Caveat emptor: Ordering their non-harvest online was the same old stuff available retail. Rip off.
--
I'm sure other growers are happy to oblige. https://cooc.com https://txaoo.org
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/31/3/999.full.pdf
[Unusual Pungency from Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Is attributable to Restricted Spatial Expression of the Receptor of Oleocanthal]
Serial entrepreneur Jeff Nobbs recently launched a new product in the food oil space: Cultured Oil*
I came across his writings* on the perils of seed oils earlier this year and it radically changed the way I eat.
After becoming aware of the danger high linoleic acid diets pose, as well as the climate implications of other oils, Jeff’s Cultured Oil looks incredibly impressive, albeit I haven’t had the chance to try it yet as they don’t ship to New Zealand.
In summary, from their FAQ:
“Cultured Oil is cooking oil made by fermentation, resulting in high levels of healthy fats, a small environmental footprint, a clean taste, and a high smoke point!
Fermentation describes the process of microorganisms (or "cultures") consuming natural sugars and converting those sugars into entirely new foods. Just as there are sourdough and wine cultures, there are also oil cultures. An oil culture converts sugar into the healthy delicious fats that make up Cultured Oil.
Cultured Oil is primarily monounsaturated fat, the heart-healthy and heat-stable fat also found in olive and avocados.
In every serving of Cultured Oil (1 Tbsp - 14 grams), there are about 13 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0.5 grams of saturated fat, and 0.4 grams of polyunsaturated fat. Olive oils and avocado oils contain between 55-83% monounsaturated fat, and up to 21% polyunsaturated fat. Cultured Oil contains over 90% monounsaturated fat and less than 4% polyunsaturated fat
* https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/what-causes-chronic-disease
Not only that but surely nobody is surprised that the people who can afford the more expensive version of a product live longer.
Why have we not given up on this nonsense idea of miracle foods already?
The study was in Spain were both the quality of olive oil is very high and the retail cost fairly low comparatively with the rest if the world. Also many arguably poor farmers will grow their own olive trees and distribute the oil yield among their wider family.
So perhaps not so case closed as you say.
Also, I'm not sure about Spain but farmers generally have noticeably higher life expectancy than the average.
Very interesting.
it just says unheated OO is better than the heated stuff. Pretty obvious that heating food can kill the good stuff, if there is good stuff in it to start with, that it.
Here's an FDA report of 88 EVOO bottles purchased from supermarkets that were tested, three of which were identified as impure enough to possibly indicate they were adulterated: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286479191_Authentic...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_oil_regulation_and_adult...
"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."
Did they control for people opting for virgin OO having other confounding lifestyle factors that would cause the effect?
I certainly lean towards virgin OO when I’m feeling that I want to be healthy.
The most important confounding factor in observational research is socioeconomic status - rich people live longer than poor people.
This research attempted to control for it in a limited fashion, but that's not enough.
Fwiw the use case for non-virgin olive oil is different. You’d want to use non virgin in anything that involves heat as it won’t burn or break down as easily.
For anything that you’ll taste (eg dressings) you’d want an extra virgin oil that will have more of the plants’ taste. Could be worth splurging on nice oil for dressings/dipping oil but don’t waste it on anything that’ll be heated.
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 have made some remarks about olive oil production on HN in the past, but here are some remarks about olive oil quality, grading, and production:
Olive oils do degrade with time, which means triglycerols break into free fatty acids and glycerol (E → F + _ ). Of course aroma also changes with time, but this is more subjective, and decided by actually tasting samples.
So olive oil freshness comes in three gradings, defined by free fatty acid content: extra virgin (<0,5%), virgin (<2%), and lampante (>2%). These grades will generally decide the market value, but differentiation can change this (special varieties and a good aroma allow for a better price). Extra-virgin can, in principle, be sold as virgin (e.g. if aroma is not good enough for some reason) but not the other way around.
All my production is extra virgin. That is 100.00% extra virgin. I have never, nor my family has ever, produced anything but extra virgin olive oil. The worst I have seen around me was a producer getting 0,4% free acidity, which is still extra virgin.
Today, olive oil is industrially extracted by crushing the olives and separating water and fatty phases in a centrifuge, at cold temperatures.
Olives have around 20% w/w directly extractable oil, but the fatty content of the pomace contains around 40% fat. This oil can be further extracted in centrifuges, up to a point were some temperature will be needed. This fat won't be completely extracted, and that is up to the plant processing it, that usually keeps the pomace for itself. Heating does lower the quality of olive oil, and as such its price, but some data is good to put things into perspective.
Around 95% of Portugal's production was virgin/extra virgin, followed by the US (~90%), Greece (~75%), and Italy and Spain (both ~65%) the latter being the largest producer (~35% of world total). Portugal now ranks 7th in production volume, and is the first to put olive oil in the market, although the market is controlled by Spain. Future markets usually keep prices down for the starting weeks, and I hope this will change in the following years as Portuguese production increases.
Having this objective measure in mind, and without disregard for other characteristics that can improve olive oil general quality, one can say that Portuguese olive oil is the best, modesty aside.
But it does seem the US know what they're doing, although in smaller quantities!
Italy is one of the largest importers of Portuguese olive oil. I have no idea what they do with it.
Do they not have to declare the other ingredients on the packaging?
[1] https://openheart.bmj.com/content/5/2/e000898
[2]. https://www.doctorkiltz.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/LA-in...
[3]. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092422442...
My main point is that I am not able to tell real virgin olive oil from scam one. From what I understand most of "virgin olive oil" on supermarket shelves is scam.
> 12,161 individuals, representative of the Spanish population ≥18 years old, were recruited between 2008 and 2010 and followed up through 2019.
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.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10955085-extra-virginity
https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_news_ticker_messages
“All Raccoons Cheat At Poker, Animal Researchers Say”
How I know that? It's from my mother, who I just visit for my holidays. I know I'm biased, but it's just the truth ;-)
I take this to mean that to some extent, either virgin olive oil and/or physical activity reduce all-cause mortality; they overlap. Am I reading this correctly?
Also, I was disappointed at the extent the discussion degenerated to a procurement hearsay scuffle. Not our usual standard of discourse.
You can get polyphenols/antioxidants from much cheaper, easier, reliable consistent sources.
This isn't 1822 or 1922 but 2022, we should use technology to have real nutrition labels for things we eat.
For example
https://www.aldi-nord.de/sortiment/nahrungsmittel/saucen-oel...
https://www.aboutoliveoil.org/64-certified-pure-and-authenti...
> 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.
The taste and appearance among good olive oil varies wildly and the super-premium ones will usually taste quite different from standard decent quality supermarket extra virgin.
Definitely completely different from store olive oil, and definitely on a completely other league to what I had in the US.
"The authenticity of 88 market samples of EVOO was evaluated ... with purity criteria specified in the United States Standards for grades of olive oil and olive-pomace oil. 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."
Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286479191_Authentic...
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. :)
I only add like 1tsp of oil to the pan when cooking so I can justify using the more expensive brands, though i don’t really taste a difference
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.
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.
That's interesting, I was thinking (in pure headline reaction) I don't think I've ever seen (in the UK) anything other (w.r.t. virginity anyway) than 'olive oil' and 'extra virgin olive oil'. Never 'virgin' or 'slightly more virgin' or 'supremely virgin'.
[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.
I don't know about that, but you may be right to be suspicious. In my experience, most research into the health effects of extra virgin olive oil is funded by Spanish, Italian or Greek institutions. For example, the affiliations of the authors of the study in the article above are mainly to Spanish institutions.
Spanish neighbor here; as far as I know they resell it as Italian olive oil, as it is better known around the world and can command higher prices.
That is changing though; I live in a small city in Japan, and even here, the local supermarkets are bringing more and more Spanish and Portuguese olive oil.
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.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2014/11/05/diet...
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.
Uh...
Common beliefs by whom? (the USA)?
Loosely in Europe all mediterranean area countries have a tradition of cooking on olive oil since forever. (and of course Portugal, northern Africa countries, the Middle East, they all use oil for cooking).
Here's the source of that table https://media.johnwiley.com.au/product_data/excerpt/06/04713...
We only use OO in our house and almost all of it from Cosco.. Refined + 15% EV for cooking and Organic cold press EV for salads and cold dishes.
On the other hand that's just what's required. If nobody's looking closely, who's to say what you're actually doing, or what has happened from your upstream suppliers with or without your knowledge?
They do but it's the same with everything else: there are definitions of what is something and sometimes they allow unexpected ingredients or mixtures that we wouldn't have expected.
I think milk or milk-based is one of those things. Same for beef burger (if it's 62% beef than it's allowed to be caled a beef burger, no matter if it tastes like cardboard).
If you want to go deep on the topic, this is a great read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10955085-extra-virginity
Also found this (from 2010): "The research team found that 69 percent of the imported oils sampled, compared with just 10 percent of the California-produced oils sampled, failed to meet internationally accepted standards for extra virgin olive oil." https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/most-imported-olive-oils-don%E2...
Also that article seems to be primarily concerned with the health benefits of linoleic acid and how to increase consumption of it.
Sourcing is important, and weird enough dietary ideas influence the trustworthiness of the chain. But more importantly the supplement-selling is a big potential conflict of interest.
I've never considered using a blender to make a dressing. I was thinking "drizzle oil over leaves with some vinegar" type of dressing. Something like that is where you'd be able to taste the flavors of the oil. But I'm one of those weird people who goes to oil tasting rooms to find the ones I like so maybe its not a universal advice.
If you live there (or if the research was done there), there would be no point buying oil in the supermarket and you always have the best oil on tap for next to nothing. Hence everyone there uses it for everything.
I had a friend from Canada who returned Home a while ago and he went to the supermarket to buy oil to put on his salad. He saw the price of EVOO and came back with a bottle of sunflower oil, scoffing about the "scam" of EVOO. A couple of weeks later he told me "well, it's really better though isn't it?" and he started buying EVOO after that. I don't know what changed his mind.
Anyway I get it that EVOO sounds like a class marker and I've no doubt it is, in some parts of the world. Another poster was talking about virtue signalling. But in the neck of the woods I'm from (the Mediterranean) it's just not considered posh, or hip, to buy good olive oil, nor do you ever hear anyone bragging about it. It's just how people eat, and they prefer the best quality stuff than the lower quality stuff. Of course, the low quality stuff also sells just because some people can't afford the good quality stuff, and I guess there's also people who are not used to it, even if they're born in one of the places that are famous for it.
There's just a completely different mentality about EVOO (and some other foodstuffs: bread, wine, cheese maybe) in some parts of the Old World. It's about culture and (gulp) identity rather than fashion and those preferences will not change when EVOO (etc) goes out of fashion.
I think it might come from conflating two different issues. Most EVOO in the US is "legit" - it actually is EVOO, although there are exceptions. On the other hand, a whole bunch of EVOO is "low quality", or more precisely, rancid. I've even heard that it's so common that Americans have come to prefer the taste of rancid olive oil over fresh.
Here's an article on FiveThirtyEight that explains the connection between the two problems:
> You may have heard by now that the olive oil in your kitchen cupboard may be an impostor. After a 2010 report found that 69 percent of imported olive oil in the U.S. failed to meet international standards, thousands of news stories were published, often incorrectly describing the presence of “fake” olive oils in grocery stores. ... The hysteria recently led Congress to assign a new job to the the Food and Drug Administration: sampling imported olive oil to see whether it’s adulterated or fraudulently labeled. ... But there’s something that not even the mighty FDA can fix: most of us don’t know the difference between a high- and low-quality olive oil.
> Though there’s a long history of scandal in the olive oil world, the problem in the U.S. for consumers is less about oil that isn’t made from olives, and more about olive oil that doesn’t meet the quality standards declared on its label. But since most people in the U.S. can’t tell fusty and musty from pungent and fruity, low-quality olive oil masquerading as extra virgin is a hard problem to fix. ... “We call the U.S. the world’s dumping ground for rancid and defective olive oil. We don’t know the difference,” said Sue Langstaff ... Studies have shown that even frequent olive oil consumers in the U.S. don’t know what the extra virgin or cold pressed designations mean, let alone have the ability to taste the difference. And in blind taste tests, consumers often prefer lower-quality olive oils.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-of-us-are-blissful...
If someone on the internet is telling you something is bad, they probably got their information from someone else on the internet. The number of people willing to guess based on their gut feelings is too damn high. People don’t know what they’re talking about and letting everybody know how bad for you something is is a toxic infectious idea disease.
Where does it come from? I’m guessing in this case the trend of making a product like salad dressing that advertises its evoo content and neglects to mention it also contains a majority of cheaper oils unless you actually look at the ingredients.
> “In 2010, the UC Davis Olive Center, an organization created to promote the sale of California olive oil, published a report funded by California olive oil producers and companies. The purpose of the report was to make news that would discredit their competition – imported olive oils.”
https://www.aboutoliveoil.org/olive-oil-fraud
So it seems like these two organizations are at odds with each other. But the California study was based on subjective “taste tests” to identify fake olive oils… Big red flag there.
I find the price difference(between supermarket extra virgin olive oil, and actually delicious stuff) is pretty significant (4x-5x). Well worth keeping around to bottles.
Is there a ranking of olive oil certifying organizations? I ask b/c I when I googled for olive oil testing, I came across the Olive Oil Commission of California, which apparently both does testing and requires members to also do testing, and California Olive Ranch is still a member in good standing of that one. http://www.oliveoilcommission.org/trusted/
Does this mean that even if they sourced olives from outside of California, it still meets some lab tests for pure extra virgin olive oil? If I care more about the "is actually extra virgin olive oil" question than where the olives were grown, I should be satisfied?
Also, I'm annoyed that even if multiple parties are doing tests, we don't really see published that "Brand X isn't pure olive oil, according to independent lab", or even "Brands X, Y, Z were tested, and Brands Y, Z are real olive oil". I'm assuming this is for legal reasons?
Even skimming, the COOC guidelines look to be more rigorous.
In addition to lab tests (by one of three labs approved by COOC), there's a blind sensory test by olive oil experts, a requirement to print the harvest date on the vessel, and a requirement to print a "best by" date as well.
I understand your desire to find out the quality regardless of the provenance of the olives. But given the rampant fraud in the industry, I just can't see a persuasive argument for speculating about an oil that doesn't pass both certifications in California. Especially when the company in question has the word "California" in its name, more especially when its oil was previously certified by COOC. By the time you figure out the answers to all your questions, we'll be on to the next harvest and the bottle of olive oil you wanted to buy will have gone bad.
If Spain is anything like Croatia you are not really poor if you own olive trees - you're probably middle class. Poor people sell that kind of inheritance very fast, and also buy cheap supermarket olive oil.
If you are poor and want to live here you are better of putting a caravan on your land than selling it for peanuts and not being able to do much of anything with that money (maybe 1-2 months rent). At least working the land will pay you something and you can trade olives for other goods (many of my neighbours live like that).
Most land / ruins won’t get sold at all; people move away to the cities for jobs and just forget about it, or, family feud and they cannot agree; the result is the same. Usually the neighbour just uses it as their own ‘until they come back’ (which often is never).
Zingerman's Mail Order does a phenomenal job of sourcing olive oils like this but also of specifically calling out the tasting notes and the differences in their options.
Two that they have that specifically hit this spiciness you're looking for:
https://www.zingermans.com/Product/petraia-olive-oil/O-PET https://www.zingermans.com/Product/la-spineta-olive-oil/O-SP...
But in my experience, their live chat or phone service is absolutely amazing at guiding you to a great option, too.
I don't know what is going on with Italian olive oil these days, and maybe I've just had a bad couple batches in a row, but it will take a long time for me to trust it again. It almost always tastes diluted with other oils to my pallet.
I was once in a casual, blind taste test at an Anheuser-Busch facility where at least half of the dozen testers preferred the beer whose kegs had been sitting out in the hot sun for two weeks, instead of the kegs of the same vintage that had been sitting in the refrigerated warehouse during that time.
As they say, "there's no accounting for taste."
I worked for AWS, it was one of the best jobs I’ve had and the only one in decades where I could leave the office, not think about work at all until I came back in, and not feel the slightest bit guilty or anxious about that. I know others have had a very different AWS experience.
Also anecdotally, I’d always chat to the facilities team/janitors at if they were in the kitchen while I was having lunch. All of them also worked shifts at the distribution center that opened up nearby. Their only complaint was they couldn’t get enough shifts there. It paid better than cleaning the kitchens in the corporate offices. Again, no doubt there’s a wide range of experiences.
Stuff like that https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2021/10/25/a-hard-hit...
Try packaging workers instead and see what happens
It only applies to deliveries directly from Amazon and drop shipping sellers, but Amazon is essentially a marketplace and the original sellers don't have to co-mingle.
You're completely safe from co-mingleing if you're actually buying through Amazon from the original manufacturer and the article information says something like "sold and delivered by TheOriginalManufacturer"
Is it a dream job since your childhood? Hardly, but they are fine. I have one friend back home in eastern europe, basically full time categorizing new items added on marketplace for couple of years. Clear promotion paths (he was promoted 3x so far IIRC), perks, he wanted to switch to full WFH anywhere and he could easily, no push to return to offices after covid heights. He had tons of opportunities to change job but he is content with where he is.
High end cameras usually have dual card slots to help deal with this, but even that won’t help when the failure mode is trying to write past the cards’ actual physical capacity, because the counterfeit advertise more storage than what’s actually there.
> "sold and delivered by TheOriginalManufacturer"
It's commingled if it says "sold by TheOriginalManufacturer, delivered by Amazon"
It's a pretty small line next to the price.
(Prime delivery tag isn't an indicator btw, sellers can get prime certified and still handle their own shipping.)
Kinda a stretch to say it's a minority though. There wouldn't be such an issue with counterfeit articles from Amazon if it wasn't the norm
