Is Your Olive Oil a Fraud?

noblehead

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Notice the article is referring to oils sold in California, suppose you will get some that are not 100% Extra Virgin Olive Oil, that said I'll still keep on buying it :)
 
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donnellysdogs

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I buy from a customer who owns an estate in Greece and has the best uncontaminated, guaranteed single estate, shaken trees etc....and very low acidity. Nothing is treated chemically. Just pure water from rain.

I don't buy from anywhere else.

Saw a programme recently involving oils that did or did not pass tests.. Found it very interesting but glad I have my own source of good extra virgin oil.

Now we are ysing so much of it, it's great to know its pure and unadulterated...
 

NoCrbs4Me

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I don't use oil anymore, except a small amount of macadamia nut oil for salads. I just don't trust that the olive oil in the local stores is pure and fresh, otherwise I'd buy it.
 

donnellysdogs

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It's the same for me which is why I'm lucky to have a guaranteed good source... After watching the programme where the tested Bertolli, Lidl (i think), and Co-op posh one a lot failed the testing. However it was being judged by Italians I believe..
 

JTL

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The food industry is one of the most corrup going and always has been.
Storys of dodgy oil has been around a long time and it will I'm sure continue.
Like buying donkeys head when you think you're getting beef and not one company or individual facing time in jail.
How can you say you didn't sell this rubbish to the public on purpose because you didn't know the donkeys head was in the burgers?You're supposed to know exactly what id=s in the stuff your flogging and label it accordingly.
Honey is another risky one.
Do a Google for the honey laundering.
I tested some clear runny honey we have and sure enough it failed the simplest of tests because the honey is cut with corn syrup.
Pushers fraudsters drug dealers are selling us cut substances.
I won't buy supllements for this very reason.
 

phoenix

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Depends what you are using oil for and where you are buying, I'm not sure it's easy to find out the truth.
Most of the references in the original article and the guardian one are from the US, not Europe. A very different market with different costs and trade barriers involved. I'm not certain that all their concerns apply in Europe where production is to a certain extent subsidised by the EU. If you do a bit of searching you soon realise that there is a trade war involved. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown...urge-congress-impose-strict-import-standards/

Most of the oil in UK supermarkets (and in France) is labelled extra virgin and cold pressed. Spain is the largest producer within the EU but you don't see vast swathes of rape (canola) for adulteration. Tunisia also supplies a lot of olives (through what seems to be a special sort of relationshio)
That doesn't mean that they don't use highly mechanised methods of extraction ie centrifusion so that the first 'pressing' is the only pressing and extracts most of the oil ,nor that they haven't imported vast amounts of olives from all over Europe and N Africa to make their product. . The big firms will buy in from wherever has the best crop that year (it was poor in most of Europe this year)

I'm not concerned about using such oils for cooking,olive oil isn't best for cooking at high temperature anyway..

On the other hand, good oil made using more traditional methods is very much more expensive but it's stronger flavoured and you wouldn't use it for cooking..
 

JTL

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Olive oil is fine for low temperature frying.
 

donnellysdogs

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Coconut for frying and the best oil for salads and dressings with me.

Can't even eat veg now unless its homegrown without wondering whether its been sprayed etc. Do people wonder whether organic veg is actually organic? I do.

Still makes me wonder why the vitamins and minerals have diminished in our veg in the last 100 years...

Thankfully I can grow my lettuce all year round and
last week started picking my own cucumbers.. So don't have to rely on shop bought foods all year round.

Wish I could grow avocado and olives!!
 

JTL

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The word organic can be very very misleading.
Ammonia is organic so is coal and dog pooh.
You wouldn't really want them in your soup though.
Same with the word natural ... seagull droppings are natural as is uranium.
 
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phoenix

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Now I wouldn't touch coconut oil for several reasons.
An awful lot of that is produced industrially in countries that don't yet have the same sort of safeguards in place as the EU . It's refined, bleached and hydrogenated.
I also think that there is a lot of hype that has gone into suddenly promoting as a 'health food' in the last few years.
Two articles to consider
One extolling it (doesn't like the wiki article which obviously changes frequently )
http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/coconut-oil-blackballed-by-wikipedia/
one a report commissioned by the New Zealand heart foundation ie trying to investigate what sort of fats are in coconut oil ,the evidence for it's effects on lipids and the evidence for various claims(particularly relating to heart diease)
https://www.heartfoundation.org.nz/uploads/Evidence_paper_coconut_August_2014.pdf


Even if some of the claims were valid and the virgin coconut oil came from an impeccable source (ie not some unknown company advertising on Amazon) the oil will have travelled half way around the world. I prefer to eat things that can be produced reasonably locally and seasonally. I can grow olive trees in my garden (well ,I've got three tiny ones that even after 12 years are still tiny and only produce about 10 olives between them each year . They really don't like the odd night at -14 in winter)
Coconuts; not a chance of growing them. I can buy olive oil produced within a hundred miles of here. Even if my oil comes from Spain , Italy or Greece it hasn't come that far.
 
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bobrobert

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I read that if you sniff it and it smells like newly mown grass then it is OK.
 

frankman

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Well Friends, I believe in this day and age, it's very difficult to begin to avoid processed foods in any case. Also these days anything can be open to fraud and organised criminals are up to anything that earns them loads of cash. In last couple of years, the horsegate scandal has made the news, and it covered most of Europe.

My answer to that one is I try as hard as possible, to support local butchers. Olive oil? I'll keep using it regardless. If Fillipo Berio olive oil turns out to be no good - I'll just try another brand.


Frank.
 

JTL

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Now I wouldn't touch coconut oil for several reasons.
An awful lot of that is produced industrially in countries that don't yet have the same sort of safeguards in place as the EU . It's refined, bleached and hydrogenated.
I also think that there is a lot of hype that has gone into suddenly promoting as a 'health food' in the last few years.
Two articles to consider
One extolling it (doesn't like the wiki article which obviously changes frequently )
http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/coconut-oil-blackballed-by-wikipedia/
one a report commissioned by the New Zealand heart foundation ie trying to investigate what sort of fats are in coconut oil ,the evidence for it's effects on lipids and the evidence for various claims(particularly relating to heart diease)
https://www.heartfoundation.org.nz/uploads/Evidence_paper_coconut_August_2014.pdf


Even if some of the claims were valid and the virgin coconut oil came from an impeccable source (ie not some unknown company advertising on Amazon) the oil will have travelled half way around the world. I prefer to eat things that can be produced reasonably locally and seasonally. I can grow olive trees in my garden (well ,I've got three tiny ones that even after 12 years are still tiny and only produce about 10 olives between them each year . They really don't like the odd night at -14 in winter)
Coconuts; not a chance of growing them. I can buy olive oil produced within a hundred miles of here. Even if my oil comes from Spain , Italy or Greece it hasn't come that far.
Safe gaurds in place?
Yet we have food scandal after food scandal.
 

phoenix

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Safe gaurds in place?
Yet we have food scandal after food scandal.
And that's exactly what I mean; if there are lots of safeguards in the EU and we know that they don't always work , how on earth do you know that something from areas with no such regulations or testing , sold with absolutely no traceability are what they say they are?
All the more reason to buy local produce as far as possible.
 

JTL

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Cheap hydrogenated coconut oil doesn't smell or taste of coconuts where the virgin filtered kind does.
Do you only buy European goods or those from Israel and the middle east and the rest of the planet in your supermarket though?
I boycott Israeli goods for instance as far as is possible but not for health reasons ....not my health anyway.
 

phoenix

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Well I used to boycott goods from S Africa but that was many moons ago ;)
I actually don't live in the UK, I live in a very old fashioned area of France and it's much easier to eat very few manufactured or imported products.
It's undoubtedly changing but the global market hasn't totally made it's mark here in the same way as the UK. Food is probably cheaper in the UK than here but people there often seem to go for quantity over quality.
Actually, coconut oil would be hard to find, the same applies to English cheese , New Zealand lamb and Kenyan green beans .
Thinking of my regular purchases, only tea, coffee and spices come from any distance away. I actually doubt that I could find coconut oil locally (there's a guy in the market that sells chestnut oil though; that is a local thing as chestnuts used to be the local staple food)
 
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vit90

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I stumbled across Olive Oil Fraud today on the internet. Which made me share here for discussion.

I generally use Coconut Oil so personally I'm not too worried.

Olive oil fraud has been around for decades. There was a tragedy in Spain, iirc, in the 1980s when fake olive oil poisoned hundreds and there were dozens of deaths plus many permanently disabled consumers.

Like you I am using less olive oil than I used to but currently we have a bottle in the cupboard of Italian 'extra virgin' that my daughter brought home from a trip to Italy a couple of months ago. I usually buy Sainsburys own brand. I notice that extra virgin is almost green in colour rather than yellow and it has a strong peppery note if you taste it that you don't get in the lighter processed varieties. I have now switched entirely to cold pressed rapeseed oil for general cooking and use coconut oil, butter and now red palm oil for various recipes and occasionally toasted sesame oil for some Chinese/Asian cooking. The deep fat fryer is now loaded with beef dripping - it's mainly used for chips for my daughter as my wife and I are on low carb. The chips are excellent fried this way and there isn't a strong beef taste or smell at all, unlike pork lard I experimented with a few years ago for home made bird seed cake, which was rather pongy.
 
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