Is Your Extra Virgin Olive Oil Good for You?

By Simeon Margolis, MD Phd

We've all been concerned by the wide variety of dangerous products coming to this country from China. It turns out, however, that we've got
worries from other locales as well.

Probably like many of you, I was unaware of the problems with olive oil until I came across an article in the August 12 issue of the New Yorker magazine.

Olive oil contains large quantities of oleic acid, the monounsaturated fatty acid that can promote cardiovascular health by lowering plaque-forming LDL cholesterol and raising protective HDL levels. Growing awareness of these benefits of monounsaturated fats has led to substantial increases in the use of olive oil in the U.S.

Originally produced by family-owned farms where the oil was squeezed from the olives in stone presses, most olive oil is now factory-manufactured in ways that often destroy the best qualities of the extra virgin olive oil that's made with such loving care on family farms. Factory-processed olive oils, however, may still be labeled as "extra virgin olive oil," but the label provides no guarantee of quality.

Perhaps even worse is the discovery that olive oils have at times been diluted with hazelnut oil or other oils. Does this matter? Well, adding other oils reduces the amount of the desirable monounsaturated fatty acids found in pure olive oil.

And the shelf life of lower-grade olive oils may be only a few months compared to as long as several years for extra virgin olive oil stored in an airtight container at a cool temperature and shielded from light.

Although olive oil is more stable than other vegetable oils, which contain fatty acids even more unsaturated (and thus more subject to oxidation), olive oil can also become rancid by the oxidation of its fatty acids.

I found a bottle of suspicious "extra virgin olive oil" on a shelf in our kitchen — suspicious because the label states it "may contain olive oil from Italy, Spain, Tunisia, and Turkey." In addition, we hadn't been careful in the way we stored the oil - and who knows how long it had been sitting on our shelf?

It would be helpful if the Food and Drug Administration could protect us from these falsely labeled products, but that is unlikely to happen. According to the New Yorker article, lower grades of olive oil can only be detected with certainty by a panel of trained taste-testers, much like the taste testing of wine.

But here are some shopping tips from Nancy Loseke, the editor of an email newsletter called The First Press on how to increase your chances of getting hold of some genuine (and fresh) extra virgin olive oil:

    * Shop at a market that has a brisk turnover.
    * Patronize stores that encourage customers to taste the oils before purchasing.
    * Avoid purchasing oil that is displayed in direct sunshine.
    * Look for harvest dates and/or "use by" dates on the label.