Your Olive Oil is Quite Likely Crapola

You're probably not getting what you paid for with your expensive EVOO.

For a long time, I was messing up with the type of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) I was buying. I should have known better but like countless other people, I purchase food from Piggly Wiggly or Amazon and I sometimes don't think about what it took to get to those places, or, more accurately, what it was subjected to on its way to the store or warehouse.

Specifically, I forgot that oils, particularly EVOO, oxidize really easily and, as such, need specific handling. Otherwise, you end up with something that isn't EVOO olive oil and has only a scintilla of its previous health benefits.

Gone potentially are increased insulin sensitivity and heart health. Down the grease trap are its ability to fight cancer, osteoporosis, and premature aging of the skin. Say sayonara to the effects its polyphenols have on nearly 100 human genes that control cell signaling and various metabolic processes.

Why, you might as well feed most brands of EVOO to your cat to cut down on hairballs or use them to unstick zippers, get gum out of your hair, or as an emergency lube if you don’t mind your partner smelling like a caprese salad.

There are, however, strategies we can adopt to ensure that we're getting – and continuing to get – the good stuff.

What's Attacking Your EVOO?

The biggest producers of olive oil are Spain, Italy, Greece, Tunisia, Turkey, Morocco, and Portugal. Unless my 10th grade geography teacher was wrong, none of those countries are within walking distance of Hoboken, or for that matter, any other city in the North or South American continent.

That of course means that the olive oil those countries produce has to spend long periods being transported as liquid or general cargo (bottled oil) by ship, truck, plane, train, or automobile, with or without the accompaniment of Steve Martin or the corpse of John Candy.

I don’t know if you've ever been a refugee from Asia sneaking into the U.S. in a 40-foot container on a cargo ship, but I've heard it gets wicked hot in there. The same thing applies to the backs of box trucks or railway cars on a freight train.

Most don't control for temperature. Neither do they control for light exposure or plain old mechanical agitation. The cargo, in this case EVOO, is exposed to these challenges for much longer times than what would be considered safe for the product, especially now that some supply chains are still somewhat bottlenecked due to a plethora of misfortunes (conflicts, downed bridges, post-Covid inertia, etc.).

Back in 2006, the Italian EVOO producer Monini S.p.A. did a little experiment and monitored the temperatures in their transport trucks during summertime. When the outside temp was 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit), the inside temperature of the truck stood at 55 degrees Celsius (131 degrees Fahrenheit).

Similar experiments have been done on trucks that transport wine, which are often parked in aprons where the temp can exceed 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit).

Clearly, manufacturers didn’t intend for their products to be slow cooked in mobile Crock Pots, as might often be the case.

What happens is that these extreme temperatures, combined with occasional lengthy exposure to light or oxygen, cause lipid oxidation in the EVOO.  That means it's one or more steps closer to becoming rancid. While it doesn't necessarily wipe out all the desired characteristics of the olive oil, it does downgrade it. What was once EVOO becomes ordinary virgin olive oil (VOO), or even what I call COO or crappy olive oil.

Why is this a big deal? Well, by definition, EVOO is the least processed of olive oils. As such, it has more polyphenols than regular olive oil. It also has more nutrients and tastes better, but oxidized olive oil has been stripped of much of that good stuff.

All of this means that there's a very good chance that the EVOO you're using every day isn't as healthful as you/I thought it was.

Okay, So I'll Just Buy Olive Oil in the Wintertime

Fire isn't the only thing that causes this chemical transformation; ice will suffice, too.

Italian researchers (Breschi, et al., 2022) took samples of 15 different EVOO products and exposed them to varying degrees of heat and varying degrees of cold for a week, after which they were stored for 23 weeks in ideal conditions (in a temperature controlled, dark room).

While the heat exposed EVOO did indeed show signs of degradation (rancidity) and loss of nutrients, so did the EVOO that was exposed to varying cool temperatues (fluctuating from about 41 degrees Fahrenheit to room temperature) for a week.

This might surprise you, but you have to spelunk down into the molecular world to understand what was happening. As the researchers theorized, sure, the cold slows down reaction kinetics, which should preserve EVOO qualities. However, oxygen solubility increases in the cold and the improved oxygen concentration increases the rate of oil oxidation kinetics.

Additionally, according to olive oil researcher Carlotta Breschi, cold makes "polyunsaturated fatty acids and triacylglycerols more mobile than saturated fatty acids and, consequently, more likely to undergo an oxidation reaction."

In short, the conditions optimal for lipid oxidation become ripe, so later, when the temp got warmer, the energy requirements for these reactions get fulfilled, increasing the reaction rate.

If only that were the only problem with EVOOs.

Scoundrel Alert!

There’s a scarcity of olive oil, or at least legit olive oil. It seems that even those Americans whose sole exposure to health and nutrition news is Dr. freakin’ Oz know that olive oil is, on some level, good for you and so they buy it reflexively. As such, the U.S. is the third largest consumer of olive oil, only there isn't enough to go around.

That scarcity has led to proliferation of olive oil scoundrels, many in Italy, who "cut" their product with cheaper oils from North Africa. Other manufacturers put almost no olive oil in their bottles and instead fill them with some sort of seed oil and add chlorophyll and beta carotene for color and odor.

The worst of them deodorize rancid olive oils with chemicals and heat so that it may pass as the real stuff, but without the health properties of the real stuff.

They figure they can send it to America without any blowback because the average housewife in Iowa, while corn-savvy, is olive-oil stupid and doesn't have a sufficiently refined palate to distinguish between the real stuff and grass clippings. And so far, the scoundrels have been right.

As evidence, the University of California Davis analyzed 186 EVOO samples taken randomly from California shelves and found that 73% of both the local and imported varieties failed to meet standards of purity established by the International Olive Council and the USDA, and the extent by which they failed ranged from 56% to 94%.

Unfortunately, the FDA considers olive oil counterfeiting to be a rare problem, but they did manage to nab 61,000 liters of supposedly extra virgin olive oil and 26,000 liters of lower-grade olive oil from a New Jersey warehouse in 2006.

So, What the Hell Should I Do?

In the past, I recommended Kirkland's olive oil. I trusted it to be the real deal (not counterfeit) and chemical analyses by third-party labs confirmed it. It's two-liter bottles were also economical, and the flavor was mild.

However, Kirkland's EVOO is a blend of oils from Italy, Portugal, and Spain, with the manufacturing facility apparently located in Italy. That's like, far away from my local Costco.

Therefore, it's likely that the chain of command in its transport isn't as environmentally secure as I'd like it to be. Likewise, there's no way of telling how long the shipment that contained the bottle I have in my cupboard sat under the hot sun in the loading dock, waiting for Arlo to finish his $1.99 slice of Costco pizza and trash-barrel sized Mountain Dew before the oil got forklifted into the warehouse.

Shy of moving next to an olive orchard and keeping a bevy of barefoot olive stompers on payroll, I know of no absolute way of ensuring my EVOO integrity. However, I can, at least, start to buy smaller bottles of EVOO from a U.S. orchard like California Olive Ranch EVOO.

I'm gambling that it’s spent less time in shipping containers than an olive oil shipped from Southern Europe, thereby assuring a true EVOO. Lastly, it's also one of the few manufacturers that list an expiration date.

But there is a way to tell if your EVOO is legit. It’s certainly not foolproof but try taking a slow sip of your product and wait for a sudden telltale tingling at the back of the throat. Generally, if you get that "bite," you're swigging an EVOO rich in polyphenols.

As far as whether your oil has gone rancid, your nose knows all. Gone will be the fruity, floral, grassy, or buttery flavor. Instead, you'll smell or taste old peanuts, peanuts that have been on the floor of the bleacher seats at the Mets game since last April.

Your EVOO Marching Orders

To reiterate, here's my EVOO potency strategy:

1.Buy small(er) bottles of EVOO that are, hopefully, locally or somewhat locally produced and that ideally come with expiration dates. Even under the best conditions, EVOO has an ideal shelf life of about a year, provided you don’t open the damn bottle. Fat chance of that happening. No, every time you open the bottle to use a little bit of it, a rude gush of oxygen enters the bottle.

Ideally, you should use up the bottle within 2 months of opening it. However, that isn't always possible, especially with the 2-liter Kirkland bottles I was using.

Think about it: If it were wine, and you were any kind of respectable oenophile, you certainly wouldn't stretch a bottle out over two months, drinking a tiny amount every day. All that oxidation would soon make it taste like the urine of the Devil…after he had a side dish of steamed asparagus.

2. I’m currently using California Olive Ranch EVOO, but other choices that appear legit are Katz Farms Chef's Pick Organic EVOO, the Olive Press Mission Extra Virgin Olive Oil, and Texas Hill Country Co. Stella Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

3. Consider storing small(er) amounts of the EVOO in a ceramic cruet to minimize the number of times you open the store-bought bottle.

Is All This Trouble Worth It?

You may be wondering if this all constitutes yet more dietary minutiae; worrying about little things that don't amount to much if any differences in our health.

Maybe, but I can't help wondering about one thing: Multiple scientific papers theorize that certain oils, fish oil and EVOO among them, are supposed to confer all kinds of health benefits to the people who use them regularly. However, with unsettling frequency, actual studies on these oils often refute the theories and we're all left scratching our heads.

One wonders if the reason the hoped-for benefits of EVOO and even fish oil didn't come to fruition is because of oxidation problems -- that Americans who adopt the Mediterranean diet haven't equaled the health benefits realized by their southern European brethren simply because of supply chain issues, poor product handling, or corrupt practices.

That's my thinking, anyway.

References:

Carlotta Breschi, et al., "Simulation of Transport Under Different Temperature Conditions: Effects on Extra Virgin Olive Oil Quality," European Journal of Lipid Science and Technology, 2022.