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Only virgin type of olive oil consumption reduces the risk of mortality: study

nature.com

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Re: Only virgin type of olive oil consumption reduces the risk of mortality: study

#111

Post by leephillips »

npongratz wrote: post #87
stevenwoo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one trusts Consumer Reports they do a study every so often on best tasting (one of the cheaper Trader Joe's brand came out on top with EVOO in the middle tier off the top of my head), though if you use only small amounts for cooking one may not be able to tell a big difference. Also some studies showed people preferred rancid oil! so who knows, what we grow up with probably has a heavy influence on taste preferenc…

> Also some studies showed people preferred rancid oil! I was once in a casual, blind taste test at an Anheuser-Busch facility where at least half of the dozen testers preferred the beer whose kegs had been sitting out in the hot sun for two weeks, instead of the kegs of the same vintage that had been sitting in the refrigerated warehouse during that time. As they say, "there's no accounting for taste."

People living in industrialized societies, especially the US, are accustomed to the taste of old food, and fresh food tastes wrong to them. Testing packaging that reduces the rate of oxidation exposed this taste preference: in tests many US people preferred slightly oxidized milk, etc., although objectively this is a form of spoilage. Similarly, some people prefer the distorted sound of LPs to accurately reproduced music. People prefer what they’re used to.

Re: Only virgin type of olive oil consumption reduces the risk of mortality: study

#112

Post by senand »

You simply won't be able to find world-class olive oil in supermarkets or on amazon. I can wholeheartedly recommend https://villahumbourg.it/en-index.html, 100% oil from one farm in Tuscany, for sure no Mafia infiltration and the new oil is just being harvested these days.

How I know that? It's from my mother, who I just visit for my holidays. I know I'm biased, but it's just the truth ;-)

Re: Only virgin type of olive oil consumption reduces the risk of mortality: study

#113

Post by leloup_legarou »

klodolph wrote: post #14
danjoredd wrote: post #2

Good thing I put that in practically all my food anyway. I always thought extra virgin olive oil tastes better than vegetable oil

Virgin olive oil has a strong flavor and very low smoke point, which makes it unsuitable for most types of food. You may like the taste of olive oil better than vegetable oil, but it’s kind of weird to taste olive oil in most foods. Kind of like how you wouldn’t but blue cheese on everything, or truffles on everything, or bacon on everything, even if you like the taste of those things—they taste a bit weird when comb…

> Virgin olive oil has a strong flavor and very low smoke point, which makes it unsuitable for most types of food.

Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) doesn't have a "very low smoke point". This table on wikipedia gives the smoke point of "Extra virgin, low acidity, high quality" EVOO at 207°C/405 °F:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point#Temperature

The same page gives standard home cooking temperatures as follows:

  Pan frying (sauté) on stove top heat: 120 °C (248 °F)
  Deep frying: 160–180 °C (320–356 °F)
  Oven baking: Average of 180 °C (356 °F)
So premium-quality EVOO has a smoke point comfortably above the temperatures where most people will cook with it. I suspect the idea that EVOO has a low smoke point comes from confusion between extra virgion olive oil and "extra virgin" olive oil (i.e. between the real deal and the stuff sold in its place). Anyway anecdotally, me, both my grandmothers, my mother, and everyone else I know has been cooking with EVOO for ages and I've never heard of anyone actually managing to make it burn (though I've certainly burned the food cooking in it). And we cook most, or rather, all, types of food in it.

You're perfectly right though that EVOO has a strong flavor. That's the whole point.

Re: Only virgin type of olive oil consumption reduces the risk of mortality: study

#114

Post by gtirloni »

red_trumpet wrote: post #23
gtirloni wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it says "Extra Virgin" it's supposed to be olive oil, cold extraction, probably first press (leaving alone frauds). If it doesn't (just says "olive oil"), it's probably olive oil mixed with all sorts of other vegetable oils.

> If it doesn't (just says "olive oil"), it's probably olive oil mixed with all sorts of other vegetable oils. Do they not have to declare the other ingredients on the packaging?

> Do they not have to declare the other ingredients on the packaging?

They do but it's the same with everything else: there are definitions of what is something and sometimes they allow unexpected ingredients or mixtures that we wouldn't have expected.

I think milk or milk-based is one of those things. Same for beef burger (if it's 62% beef than it's allowed to be caled a beef burger, no matter if it tastes like cardboard).

Re: Only virgin type of olive oil consumption reduces the risk of mortality: study

#115

Post by nikita2206 »

senand wrote: post #112

You simply won't be able to find world-class olive oil in supermarkets or on amazon. I can wholeheartedly recommend https://villahumbourg.it/en-index.html , 100% oil from one farm in Tuscany, for sure no Mafia infiltration and the new oil is just being harvested these days. How I know that? It's from my mother, who I just visit for my holidays. I know I'm biased, but it's just the truth ;-)

Didn’t you just bring down her website?

Re: Only virgin type of olive oil consumption reduces the risk of mortality: study

#116

Post by flanbiscuit »

senand wrote: post #112

You simply won't be able to find world-class olive oil in supermarkets or on amazon. I can wholeheartedly recommend https://villahumbourg.it/en-index.html , 100% oil from one farm in Tuscany, for sure no Mafia infiltration and the new oil is just being harvested these days. How I know that? It's from my mother, who I just visit for my holidays. I know I'm biased, but it's just the truth ;-)

I did a wine tour in Tuscany a few years ago and most of the small vineyards also grew olives and made olive oil and it was the best olive oil I ever had. I wish I had bought more. Thanks for the link, I might be ordering some soon. grazie!

Re: Only virgin type of olive oil consumption reduces the risk of mortality: study

#117

Post by oldgradstudent »

arcticfox wrote: post #3

I’m kind of bad at parsing these studies so maybe someone can help: Did they control for people opting for virgin OO having other confounding lifestyle factors that would cause the effect? I certainly lean towards virgin OO when I’m feeling that I want to be healthy.

Virgin olive oil is more expensive.

The most important confounding factor in observational research is socioeconomic status - rich people live longer than poor people.

This research attempted to control for it in a limited fashion, but that's not enough.

Re: Only virgin type of olive oil consumption reduces the risk of mortality: study

#118

Post by oldgradstudent »

Virgin olive oil is more expensive.

The most important, and well known confounding factor in observational health research is socioeconomic status - rich people live longer than poor people.

This research attempted to control for it in a limited fashion, but that's not nearly enough.

Re: Only virgin type of olive oil consumption reduces the risk of mortality: study

#120

Post by yrral »

_moof wrote: post #72
bgribble wrote: post #20

On urban US supermarket shelves virtually every bottle of olive oil advertises itself as "virgin" or the "even better" varieties ("extra virgin", "first cold pressed" etc). I have read that many of these labels are hogwash, and that the contents of your typical supermarket "extra virgin olive oil" bottle pretty often include adulterants like palm, canola, or sunflower oil. I can definitely taste the diff between supe…

The North American Olive Oil Association maintains a list of genuine olive oils. They send people into grocery stores to randomly buy a bottle of one of the listed brands/varieties and test it in their lab. https://www.aboutoliveoil.org/64-certified-pure-and-authenti...

Interesting, from the article:

> Does the fact that an olive oil does not have your seal mean that the olive oil is not authentic?

> The answer is emphatically no. According to a study conducted by scientists from the FDA in a study published in 2015 that the risk of purchasing a bottle of adulterated EVOO is low (less than 5%). The scientists randomly sampled 88 bottles of EVOO that they purchased from supermarkets and online stores, and did not find a single instance of adulteration

I wonder where the opposite fact that I hear on the internet that most olive oil is adulterated comes from.

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