SL: Most consumers understand that when one container of peanut
butter cost US$2 and another cost US$5 its because the cheaper one
has fillers. Is this true for price differences of Extra Virgin Olive Oil on
supermarket shelves?
TM: Absolutely. The prices being charged in the US, and in many
other countries, for “ extra virgin olive oil” make it simply impossible
that those oils really are extra virgin unless someone along the supply
chain is taking a huge loss!
SL: What type of fillers are commonly being used to create these imposters?
TM: Illegally deodorized olive oil, made from low-grade, rotten olives,
is a common filler. Sometimes other vegetable oils are substituted:
soybean, sunflower, canola.
SL: What are some of the health implications of fake Extra Virgin Olive
Oil?
TM: You miss out of the above, plus you often get rancid, low-grade
food instead, sometimes not even from olives. Sometimes it can turn
deadly: in 1981 in northern Spain, 1200 people died and 25,000 were
hospitalized from eating something that was being sold as “olive oil”,
but was actually industrial canola oil tained with a highly toxic additive, analine. (You can google “toxic oil syndrome”.). The EU Agricultural Commission itself is clearly aware of serious questions about
the quality of EU oil, and recently published what it calls “an ‘action
plan’ for the olive oil sector,” which aims to fight fraud and improve
oil produced in the EU.
Last summer, the Italian government gave additional judicial weight
to the panel test, and recently passed a new law on olive oil quality,
widely nicknamed “The Save Italian Olive Oil Law,” which features
tighter quality standards, more extensive testing, and significantly increased penalties for oil fraud.
SL: How can consumers determine whether the Extra Virgin Olive Oil
is a blend, fake or real?
TM: The best bet is to find a brand or purveyor you trust (try my website www.truthinoliveoil.com for some stores and brands). You’re
lookng for freshness in taste, some bitterness and pungency. Color
is irrelevant.
SL: My favorites from Italy is ALTADONNA D.O.P Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
Does the colour of the bottle matter?
TM: Light, like heat and oxygen, are enemies of fresh products, including fresh extra virgin olive oil. An oil stored in transparent glass
under the UV lights of a supermarket goes off much faster.
SL: Briefly tell us about your book “Extra Virginity: The Sublime and
Scandalous World of Extra Virgin Olive Oil”?
TM: My book celebrates the great producers of first-rate oi