Olive oil should not be refined or filtered but settled and kept in a dark area

Olive oil should not be confused with other cooking oils from canola, sunflower, corn, nut, peanut and palm which are invading the world market. These oils are not natural since they might be processed according to the solvent extraction and refining process. All these oils are processed and they cannot be free of chemical preservatives, as well as other chemical changes such as the trans double bound induced by heating during processing. The marketing propaganda had changed everything about the vegetal oils, and the consumer is now considering that cooking oil is better for his health since it may not contain cholesterol. All these sayings are misleading the consumer, and cholesterol is a strict animal material it could not be found in vegetal materials. Manufacturing propaganda is telling lies about the vegetal cooking oils. The only one natural oil is olive oil and argan oil. Olive oil is obtained by a physical process, olive oil is not extracted with solvent such as hexane, and it might not be refined or filtered.

The food standards had precised the quality criteria for olive oils. These are based on the free oleic acidity which may not exceed 0.1 %  for an extra virgin olive oil, and 3.3% for an ordinary virgin olive oil. These standards do not make sense, since they do not show the difference between olive oil and the other oils. If considered as a food product then these criteria are right, but if considered as a healing material, then these criteria are false. Food standards should mention at least pesticide free, non refined and may also set a minimum for the polyphenol content. All the scientific reports on olive oil are misleading and do not give any precision in the description of what olive oil should be used for.    

The non lipidic fraction in olive oil is the most interesting component. Olive oil  should not be refined nor filtered but just settled, so it might retain non lipidic compounds such as unsaponifiable and coloring materials including polyphenols and other compounds. The criteria defined in food standards for olive oil are false, since they do not include the medicinal compounds which are more ineteresting than the nutritonal part. Olive oil should conntain polyphenols, carotens and non lipidic compounds.

Olive oil is the only healthy oil for the body. According to scientists, olive oil can help prevent cancer (even breast cancer), heart disease, rhumatoid arthritis, blood clotting (after eating a fatty meal) and help lower high blood pressure. Naturally grown or organically grown, cold pressed, extra-virgin olive oil is the best.

When you buy olive oil in the store, you have to be careful because the majority of the olive oil in the store is not pure (they do not contain all the nutritional value that olive oil is supposed to have); trying to find real olive oil is like looking for a needle in a haystack. In order to find real olive oil, it must meet the following specifications: Extra virgin olive oil should have a free oleic acid acidity of no more than 1%. Olive oil is supposed to be cold pressed, unfiltered and looks cloudy. Most olive oil that you find in the store is factory-produced olive oil that looks clear. If it is clear, then it has been refined, which further remove the antioxidant compounds which are the most important compounds in the olive oil.

The olive oil should be packaged in dark materials to protect it from the damaging effects of light. Avoid buying oil that is stored in plastic containers because the oil can absorb some of the compounds used in the plastic, such as PVC’s (polyvinyl chlorides) which cause cancer.

When you buy your Extra Virgin Olive Oil, it should be stored in a cool area away from sunlight and heat. You may refrigerate the olive oil, though this will make it more cloudy. The cloudiness will disappear when the oil returns to room temperature.

Naturally grown without pesticides, cold pressed, extra-virgin olive oil is the best. People should be aware about information given by the media about industrial olive oil, it is marketing. The industrial olive oil is usually supplied with other vegetal oils (sunflower, corn, soya etc..) in order to increase the tocopherol content. It is now an old fashion to supply olive oil with other oils. There was a stupid mistake to add other oils to olive oil, some searchers suggested in the 70s that olive oil does not contain tocopherol and they thought to mix it with other oils to improve its tocopherol content. But they could not realize that olive oil contain another antioxidant more active than tocopherol called oleuropein, a polyphenol which on splitting in the body may release the elenoleic acid, the most precious compound in olive oil for preventing coronary and heart diseases as well as cancers and ageing.