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The Adulteration of Italian Olive Oil

nytimes.com

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Re: The Adulteration of Italian Olive Oil

#61

Post by colin_mccabe »

crazygringo wrote: post #22

Unlike many counterfeit things... as far as I can tell, this really doesn't make any difference in the end, because olive oil is all about flavor, not labels. Good olive oil can taste hundreds of ways, just like wine -- there are even olive oil tastings. The flavor can't be counterfeited at all, so it doesn't really matter what's on the label, what country it comes from, etc. -- olive oil is all so different, it can…

If you want an oil without any taste, how about canola oil? Canola oil is high in omega-3 and the mafia is not adulterating it with who-knows-what.

If you want actual olive oil, Trader Joe's Kalamata oil is probably the easiest to get ahold of. I haven't tried the California Estate oils, but I hear they are also good (if fresh)

Re: The Adulteration of Italian Olive Oil

#62

Post by Stratoscope »

jsolson wrote: post #38
Stratoscope wrote: post #11

What do I see when I get to this page? An olive skull and crossbones with EXTRA VIRGIN SUICIDE. Let me scroll down so I can see more! I hit the down arrow. Nothing happens. I try the Page Down key. Nothing happens. Ah, yes, I know, the keyboard doesn't always work on every website. I'll just use the scroll bar! Hmm... No scroll bar. Wait! Over on the right, there's a box with a triangle in it, pointing up. It almost…

My experience: "Hey, there are a bunch of dots at the bottom, just like my iPhone. The left one is lit up. I'll try tapping right. Oh, neat." Honestly never even noticed the giant right arrow on the right side. My wife (who didn't see me navigating about), within ~2 seconds of looking at the page, said she'd tap the giant arrow to go to the next page. While I think they could certainly have done better, I don't think…

You're probably right, I was over-dramatizing it a bit. On a touch device I would have probably figured it out sooner too, and it didn't really take me that long to figure it out on the desktop browser.

Anyway, I figured out why I wasn't seeing a proper right arrow. It's a bug in their CSS. They're using this sprite sheet:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/01/13/food-ch...

This has the left and right arrow symbols at the bottom right. The left arrow is working correctly, but for the right arrow the specificity of their selectors is a bit messed up. The right arrow has a background-position that should select the bottom right corner of the sprite sheet, but this particular rule is getting overriden by a background: in a more specific selector that makes it use the top left corner (0 0) instead. And that top left corner happens to include the top of the fork-chicken's tail, which was looking like an up arrow to me.

I guess the moral of the story is if you're going to do this kind of fancy presentation, there are a lot of things that can go wrong!

Re: The Adulteration of Italian Olive Oil

#63

Post by Stratoscope »

CharlesW wrote: post #10
dragon1st wrote: post #3

This is an example of both very good information and also good design.

Really? I didn't personally find that the extremely simple graphics enhanced my understanding of the short and shallow paragraphs of text. It almost felt like just-pre-Idiocracy media spoon-feeding.

Well, I learned that the Carabinieri dangle from helicopters with machine guns, and charge in with flamethrowers and tanks! All with a giant bottle of olive oil in their crosshairs.

Re: The Adulteration of Italian Olive Oil

#64

Post by marios »

seivan wrote: post #26
busterarm wrote: post #7

It's good for people to be aware of this but there's so much either ignored or misrepresented as to make this almost harmful. Fake olive oil peddlers aren't hurting themselves by peddling fake oil as the scam is as old as the olive oil industry itself. It's likely never going to go away and has been a mainstay of various criminal organizations (Sicilian mafia, etc) for longer than pretty much all of us have been aliv…

We were in the Slovenian/Italy recently on a business trip, and on our way home my company decided we should buy some wine. So we went to this place that offered us prosciutto with olive oil to dip in. I was told that really good olive oil would sorta... sting you in the throat if you get a decent amount of it. And it did. It was the first time I've ever had decent/real/good olive oil. Anyway, pretty cool. Now I'm sc…

Interesting. AFAIK, it depends on the oils and from what you're telling me on the countries too. For instance, olive oil that stings in Greece is a no-no. Tell a greek that the olive oil you get in other european countries stings you in the throat and he'll most likely tell you you're getting ripped off, especially when you also take into account the price.

Re: The Adulteration of Italian Olive Oil

#66

Post by pentolaccia »

We have been producing organic olive oil for some years with my family.. And i can tell you that everybody in this industry knows about this shit

Adulteration of olive oil is one of the many shamefull thing that affect my country. Is one of those stories that politicians face "the italian way" = they don't do a heck till something really bad happens (like people dying)

We had this topic on news for years now.. News tv show Report talked about it with an investigation aired on Primetime on national broadcast tv in 2002.. (If you understand italian is worth watching) http://www.report.rai.it/dl/Report/puntata/ContentItem-17eec...

Yet after more than 10years we still know that this shit is still going on..

It's such a shame cos not only exporting fake olive oil damages the whole industry but also because you spread a Twisted culture on olive oil.

Like many says.. It s like wine. I ve been drinking high quality olive oil for all my life and when i get to taste some industrial "so called" extravirgin olive oil i feel like i have to throw up.

But if you think about it, olive oil adulteration it's even more important than wine, since health factors are much more at stake. We hear nutritionist say "use olive oil cos is good for your health " and they are right.. It's damn good. Some study says it's like a natural antibiotic... So you go and buy it.. But guess what If you stumble upon adulterated olive oil you get no nutritional benefits and instead you swallow far more dangerous stuff hidden in It like chems.

That's a subtle deception.. And "hell yea" is made in Italy :-(.

So my advice is be selective when you buy extra virgin olive oil from our country (but also spain, greece and france).

Re: The Adulteration of Italian Olive Oil

#67

Post by sir_terenced »

crazygringo wrote: post #34
rosser wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as far as I can tell, this really doesn't make any difference in the end Unfortunately, that's not the case. When olive oil is adulterated with oils that have lower smoke points, and that adulterated oil is then used under heat, for cooking, the adulterant oils can break down and yield toxic compounds (e.g., aldehydes and hydroperoxids). [1] EDIT: Also, as noted by a sibling comment, the Ω3:Ω6 ratios for some of the…

EVOO already has a low smoke point as far as oils are concerned, processed soy/canola/corn/etc. oil all have significantly higher smoke points. I can't imagine a scenario where a manufacturer would be adulterating EVOO with another oil that has a lower smoke point -- there just aren't any that would be make economic sense, as far as I know.

The real issue, IMO, is the Ω3:Ω6 ratios. As someone who is trying to lower the amount of Ω6 in his diet, I can no longer trust olive oil

Re: The Adulteration of Italian Olive Oil

#68

Post by dsrguru »

maxerickson wrote: post #40
dsrguru wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extra virgin olive oil has a pretty great monounsaturated to polyunsaturated fat ratio and good flavor for salad dressing, eggs, sauces, meat dishes, etc. The only real downsides are low smoke point (some sources say that that means trans fat and other scary stuff can show up at the high temperatures used in stir-frying and deep-frying) and that good flavor != neutral flavor, which is sometimes preferable. Some press…

I cook eggs in butter. Eggs in olive oil isn't something I enjoy. And people really are looking for neutral flavors (how else is 'extra light olive oil' a thing?). I'm not really aware of any reason to prefer monounsaturated fats vs polyunsaturated fats (and other oils beat olive oil on unsaturated vs saturated).

Consuming monounsaturated fat is good for you. Consuming polyunsaturated fat, with the exception of omega-3, is not.

My understanding is that the polyunsaturated fat in virtually all vegetable oils are omega-6 fatty acids, which we consume way too much of relative to omega-3 fatty acids (which are also technically polyunsaturated but which are not present in any significant quantity in such cooking oils), and the huge quantities of omega-6 that almost everyone consumes is believed to increase our risk of numerous diseases, including cancer. Monounsaturated fat, the primary beneficial constituent of so-called Mediterranean diets, and especially the specific monounsaturated fat called oleic acid, is protective against cancer, reduces LDL (bad cholesterol), and possibly raises HDL (good cholesterol).

Re: The Adulteration of Italian Olive Oil

#69

Post by rahimnathwani »

crazygringo wrote: post #39
hsitz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" The flavor can't be counterfeited at all, so it doesn't really matter what's on the label . . . . You might have 5 different olive oils in your cupboard depending on what you're using them for, but you didn't buy any of them based on their label!" Huh? What world are you living in? I mean, maybe you have five different olive oils in your cupboard and maybe their labels had nothing to do with the ones you chose. But…

I don't think you get it -- that's my point. If your "average purchaser in the US" can't tell the difference, then it won't matter to them anyways, right? And if they can tell the difference, then they're already buying by flavor. EVOO isn't Coca-Cola. There's no standard flavor. It's the same as complaining about counterfeit wine -- if it tastes good for the price, does it ultimately matter if it's "counterfeit" or…

Would the same apply to selling fake multi-vitamin tablets?

Re: The Adulteration of Italian Olive Oil

#70

Post by SonicSoul »

ericabiz wrote: post #59
pg wrote: post #48

Why doesn't the article name the brands that cheat? Or at least list some that don't?

There have been several articles about this previously, and even a book (I'm probably more aware of this than many HN readers since I follow several food blogs.) Here are some lists of what to buy and not buy: http://lifehacker.com/the-most-and-least-fake-extra-virgin-o... http://articles.courant.com/2012-09-10/business/hc-ls-consum... Trader Joe's and Costco were two that consistently came out on top. (For what it's…

what are some food blogs you can recommend?

also, is lifehacker becoming the next about.com? seems like anyone and everyone can write for it, and i found their content to be pretty cheap these days

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