'Olive Oil's Dark Side'

[ralis]

I was having lunch with a good friend and he educated me on the fraudulent labeling practices in the olive oil industry. I happen to love olive oil for many reasons including it's purported health benefits. Apparently olive oil is not pure and is adulterated with other low quality oils. Labels on the bottles never include the additional oils.

 

http://www.extravirginity.com/

 

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/02/the-exchange-tom-mueller.html

[ralis]

Further discussion on how to tell if olive oil is 100% genuine.

 

 

http://www.cheeseslave.com/take-the-olive-oil-challenge/

[Apech]

I'm lucky enough to get olive oil from the local producer in the next village ... 100% genuine cold pressed with genuine stone press. It is a totally different thing to what I used to buy in the supermarkets in England. Watch out for anything that says 'pure' or 'light' ... its adulterated.

[Apech]

Lucky cat!

 

I am - and some of the oil is from my own olives ... but I don't wish to gloat

[GrandmasterP]

There was a docu on UK TV back in the summer about this.

Even some of the big supermarket chains were being gulled into buying sub standard olive oil.

Tesco has upped their source labelling since.

[Apech]

U.S. Olive Oil Makers Say Imports Aren't Always So 'Extra Virgin'

Dec. 6,2012 @ npr.org

 

Listen to/read the story.

 

As an olive grower myself (3 trees) I have to say that article is the most misinformed I have ever read. i suspect that its just part of some commercial battle going on in the US over olive oil production. Extra vigin olive oil is determined by acidity (0 - 0.8 %) and not taste or age. Olive oil keeps quality for about 2 years if properly bottled and declines after that.

 

90% of olive oil is produced from cold press processes. This usually means a centrifuge and almost all US olive oil is produced this way. the traditional process is cold stone presses.

 

Oil produced by heat or addititives cannot be labelled virgin or extra virgin ... so watch out for anything labelled 'pure' or other term ... its not. Stay away from the stuff in super markets cos looking at it and having seen the real stuff its not good stuff. For instance it should go almost solid at low temperatures. the colour only reflects whether the olives were green or black when picked and does not affect the quality.

 

Also there's a world glut at the moment so you should be able to get it cheap.

[Apech]

Last year

Many thanks for your additional information, Apech. Where do you get your info? Any sources we can read for even more info on the www?

 

Last year I helped the local oil mill (lagar) owner with English and went with him to food fair in Lisbon ... so I got all my info from him and visits to the mill. The Italian's seem to have the oil market sown up but the oil from round here has won many gold medals for taste and so on ... but I am biased Basically you need to distinguish between the natural stuff and the mass produced supermarket stuff ... it probably doesn't matter which country it comes from as they all use similar varieties of olive trees.

 

because there is a glut there is a huge war raging between Europe and Us/Australia so a lot of the info given out is really an attempt to influence people's buying habits ... e.g. thinking Italian must be the best and so on. Having said that different oils have slightly different tastes so just try a few and see what you like. It should be golden/green, reasonably viscous, and as I say if it has solids in the bottom when cold that's good not bad. Buy extra-virgin and look for the date anything over 18 months avoid ... it could be ok but depends on storage ... also a dark bottle is better cos sun light degrades the oil.

[Wells]

'Olive Oil's Dark Side'

 

 

...she's having a pervert s/m love affair with Bluto?!

 

(Excuse me, but that was the first thing that jumped into my head when I was reading the title of the thread! )

[GrandmasterP]

Am I alone in still finding Popeye cartoons scary?

[thelerner]

Seems like everyone lies about sex.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even olive oil