Olive Oil, The FBI & Lamp oil
You will remember I recently did some videos on Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) with Karen Cryan - there was great interest in the information Karen provided and this continues with great details below. Again it's knowing your labels, know what your eating and empower yourself with knowledge. Olive Oil is an amazing world and it's not just olive oil as we know from daily use but it extends even further to Olive Leaf Extract (that will be another story!). Read on to learn more about EVOO, the FBI of Food and Lamp Oil!
At home with Olive Oils - Karen Cryan Courtesy of the Irish Times
So what is Extra Virgin Olive Oil ?
Extra virgin olive oil is the highest category of olive oil. It is often described as the juice of a freshly squeezed (olive) fruit. Extra virgin oils don’t undergo any type of heat treatment or chemical processing.
In terms of the categorisation and quality of olive oil this is determined through both chemical analysis and sensory analysis (a panel of expert tasters). The tasters check the oil firstly for defects and then for fruitiness, bitterness and pepperiness. If any defect is found in the olive oil, it can’t be labelled as extra virgin.
The official definition of an extra virgin is ‘
the median of defects is 0 and the median of the fruity attribute is above 0
’ as opposed to the definition of ordinary olive oil is ‘
the median of the defects is above 3.5 but not more than 6
’.
Oils that are high in bitterness and pepperiness are high in polyphenols - the good stuff, the health giving properties of EVOO. Even so, there are plenty of olive oils out there labelled extra virgin which are, in reality, olive oil or even lampante, which is categorised as ‘
unfit for human consumption’
and was used for lighting lamps years ago. When Bill Whittaker of CBS Television sent samples of the three top selling brands of extra virgin olive oil in the United States to the Italian food fraud section (they have 60 specially trained tasters and are known as the FBI of food), they found that none were extra virgin and the top selling brand was lampante. The only real way to know if an oil is extra virgin is to taste it (explained below).
The tips I’ll give you for choosing olive oil and storing it will also enhance your chances of buying and maintaining a quality extra virgin.
And the many health benefits
The health benefits of EVOO are numerous.
Anti-inflammatory properties:
Particularly relevant to the modern day is that it has been shown to have powerful anti-inflammatory properties. As Judy Ridgway outlined in her book “The Olive Oil Diet’,
“
it has been estimated that 50ml of extra virgin olive oil rich in oleocanthal polyphenols may provide an equivalent anti-inflammatory effect to 200mg of ibuprofen. Similarly, the presence of this and other natural anti-inflammatories in extra virgin olive oil may contribute to lower
rates of arthritis, asthma, inflammatory bowel diseases and other chronic diseases
.”
Cholesterol :
It also lowers your bad cholesterol (LDL) and brings up your good cholesterol (HDL). The 10 year
of 40,000 Spaniards found that those who consumed as little as two spoons of extra virgin olive oil per day were 50% less likely to die from heart disease and those who used the most olive oil were 26% less likely to die from any health problem.
Other studies have shown that EVOO
can help protect against different types of cancer (including breast cancer), high blood pressure, strokes, Dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, osteoporosis, heart disease and diabetes
.
Top Tips to select the right EVOO
Choose dark bottles or tins over clear glass.
Don’t buy oils that are displayed in windows or are near intense light/heat.
Check the best before date: EVOO is at its best when new, it’s the opposite of wine. If you take 18 months off the date you will see when it was bottled. You are looking for bb dates in 2020 now (from the 2018 harvest). Some producers will put the harvest date on the bottle also.
Check that the oil is from one producer and one region – blended oils from different countries of origin are generally lower quality. The smaller producers, as opposed to the multinationals, tend to be of a higher quality.
Awards displayed on the bottle need to be current, as oil is like wine in that each harvest is different. Therefore an award won 3 years ago doesn’t mean anything for the current harvest. However, if the olive oil has a consistent record of winning awards, this is a good sign.
For an olive oil to be catergorised as extra virgin it must have an acidity level of below .8%. Some producers will put the acidity level on their bottles – the lower the acidity the better.
First cold pressing is an outdated term. Today most oils are cold extracted in mills using a centrifugal system - they are not pressed as in older days where the first cold pressing was the best and the second pressing (where they added hot water to extract further oil) was of a lesser quality.
Don’t buy the cheapest oils. It can cost the producer up to €6 euro to produce a litre of olive oil; therefore cheap olive oils are unlikely to be of a high quality. Like anything, if you want excellent quality you need to pay for it.
In the end however, the only way of knowing if an oil is of good quality is to taste it. I know this is not always feasible but when you can opt for tasting it.
Storing your EVOO at home
Heat, light and air are the enemies of EVOO. Storage is very important to your oil, how you store it will determine how stable it remains.
Heat: Store in a cool dark cupboard and not beside your stove.
Light: Buy dark bottles/tins and do not leave on windowsills.
Air: Use within a few months of opening and don’t save your ‘best’ olive oil for special occasions – once opened use it up!
How to taste your olive oil
Pour some olive oil into a small glass (or a wine glass).
Cover the top of the glass with one hand while simultaneously warming the glass with your other hand.
Lift off your hand and smell the oil (about 3 times).
A good quality oil has a grassy, green, fresh smell (or tomato/apple/banana etc.).
Take some oil into your mouth and roll it round.
Then draw air in through the sides of your mouth & breathe out through your nose.
The oil should have a clean, not greasy, feel in your mouth.
Bitterness is tasted in the mouth (like skin of nut, not lemon bitterness) and pepperiness is felt at the back of the throat. If your throat burns, this is a good sign. The more bitter and peppery the oil, the higher the polyphenol content, the healthier the oil.
Darina Allen once said that if you don’t spend money on your food you’ll end up spending it at the doctors. Besides being a fantastic condiment, extra virgin olive oil is excellent for your health. It is worth taking the time to carefully choose your extra virgin olive oil, spend money on it (after all we will spend money on a good wine which will be gone in a night!) and store it correctly.
Karen Cryan is a qualified Olive Oil Taster who has trained in London, Italy and Spain. She is the only Irish member of the Savantes International Olive Oil Organisation and has been a judge at an International Olive Oil competition in Italy. Karen teaches excellent hands on classes on olive oil tasting and can be contacted at cryankaren@yahoo.com.
You can follow Karen on Instagram: karen_cryan_olive_oil