by Dr. Joe W. Frazer III, MD
Specialist in geriatric and anti-aging medicine

Consultant to the Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club
February 2011

from FreshPressedOliveOil Website

Imagine how outraged you’d feel if you found out that the expensive extra virgin olive oil that you’d purchased in your local supermarket, health food store, or gourmet shop was stale... even rancid... or shamelessly adulterated with cheaper oil.

That’s what many consumers are feeling after learning the results of a recent independent study at the University of California, Davis.

Scientists at UC Davis went shopping at local supermarkets and brought back 14 of the country’s most popular imported brands to their labs for analysis. Incredibly, they found that 69% of the imported extra virgin olive oils they tested were fake, adulterated, stale, or so subpar that they failed to meet international and USDA standards for being labeled "extra virgin." 69%!

Said Dan Flynn, executive director of the Olive Center at UC Davis,

"The oil was often old… possibly adulterated… or it was poorly made. But it wasn’t extra virgin."

 

 

 

Even more outrageous, this is nothing new...
 

Olive Oil Fraud "Widespread" Warns New Yorker Magazine

For years, articles in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USAToday, the New Yorker magazine, and other publications have been warning about adulterated olive oils being shipped to America.

A National Public Radio report has called olive oil fraud "rampant."

Here’s the problem...

Because of the many scientifically documented health benefits of extra virgin olive oil, demand for it is soaring the world over. Olive trees have blossomed into money trees, and this has attracted a small army of unscrupulous operators.

In a landmark investigative report called "Slippery Business," the New Yorker magazine explains,

"Olive oil is far more valuable than most other vegetable oils, but is costly and time-consuming to produce - and surprisingly easy to doctor. Adulteration is especially common in Italy, the world’s leading importer, consumer, and exporter of olive oil."

To boost profits, for example, some producers have been caught adulterating the oil they label as "extra virgin" with much cheaper hazelnut, soy, or sunflower seed oil, among others, as well as mislabeling its country of origin.

And they keep doing it because, as one investigator explained to the New Yorker, the profits in adulterating olive oil are,

"comparable to cocaine trafficking, with none of the risks."

Often the well-known brand-name olive oil companies you're familiar with may not even realize that this trick has been pulled on them by unscrupulous suppliers halfway around the world - but you wind up with adulterated oil in your kitchen, on your food, and in your body just the same.

According to the New Yorker investigation, in recent years,

"olive oil was the most adulterated agricultural product in the European Union, prompting the E.U.’s anti-fraud office to establish an olive-oil task force."

This Is Outrageous!

This is an outrageous shame because authentic extra virgin olive oil - the real stuff - is so healthy for you. Medical science has determined that it is one of the healthiest foods you can consume.

For example:

Scientific studies have shown that authentic extra-virgin olive oil lowers "bad" cholesterol and cuts your risk of heart disease and stroke.

 

It helps protect against cancer, especially cancer of the breast, prostate, and colon. It’s a godsend for arthritis sufferers because it can cool inflammation and ease joint pain without any side effects.

It has also been shown to lower blood pressure, reduce your risk of diabetes, and may even help reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. If you want to avoid osteoporosis, it’s outstanding because it enables the calcium in your food to be better absorbed into your bones.

 

Finally, it’s loaded with some of the most powerful disease-fighting antioxidants and polyphenols known to science, which fortify your immune system and help it protect every organ of your body against disease.

Way back in the fourth century BC, Hippocrates, the father of medicine, was way ahead of his time.

He loved his Greek olive oil and considered it beneficial for over 60 therapeutic uses, hailing it as "the great therapeutic."
 

A Consumer’s Guide
How to Shop for the World’s Purest, Healthiest, and Most Flavorful Olive Oils

So what can you do if you want the purest, healthiest, and best-tasting olive oil you can find? Here are my best consumer tips. The two most important words to remember whenever you shop for extra virgin olive oil are freshness and purity.

Let’s consider freshness first...
 

Experts judge that freshness accounts for more than 80 percent of an olive oil’s flavor.

This is because olive oil, unlike wine, does not improve with age. It’s at its healthiest and most flavorful the day it is pressed. Fresh-pressed extra virgin olive oil, squeezed from olives at exactly the right moment at harvest time, is insanely bright-tasting and flavorful. You can taste the difference immediately.

If you’ve ever traveled the picturesque countryside of Italy, Greece, or Spain and stopped at a local, family-owned farm to sample fresh, authentic extra virgin olive oil, you know why connoisseurs hail it as one of Mother Nature’s culinary marvels.

This is why, throughout Mediterranean countries, the locals go crazy for fresh-pressed extra virgin olive oil at harvest time, throwing parties to celebrate its arrival.
 

Important Health Tip

Consume Your Olive Oil within Three Months after It’s Pressed

Freshness is critical for another reason - all those wonderful health benefits!

As reported in Bottom Line, a study conducted at Italy’s University of Foggia on several varieties of Italian extra virgin olive oil, found that its precious polyphenols are stable for only three months after pressing, but then decrease by about 40 percent after six months of storage.

In other words, if you want to enjoy the marvelous health benefits of extra virgin olive oil, you should secure and consume your oil within the three-month window after it’s pressed.

The big problem for us in America is that only a tiny trickle of fresh-pressed extra virgin olive oil ever makes it to our shores. Olive oil is a heavy item to ship. To save on shipping costs, virtually all imported oils are sent here by slow cargo boats and are already more than six months old before you can even buy them, often resulting in dull-tasting, substandard oil.

This is why almost all bottles on store shelves do not have a production or harvest date stamped on their labels. Some give you a "best used by" date, but not the harvest date because they don’t want you to know how old the oil is.

Yet without that harvest date, you have no way of knowing if you’re paying good money for a substandard, stale oil that’s beyond the critical three-month window of maximum flavor and nutrition.

What can you do? How can you secure oil that is independently certified to be both fresh and 100 percent pure and authentic extra virgin?

Frankly, it’s been difficult if not impossible for American shoppers to get a satisfactory answer to these questions until now.
 

A New "Secret Source"

...of Outrageously Flavorful, Harvest-Fresh Oil Independently Certified to Be 100% Pure Extra Virgin

A new company called the Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club has emerged to overcome these widespread problems with store-bought extra virgin olive oil.

My wife, a registered dietitian, recently introduced me to these extraordinary oils. The first time I tasted them, they blew me away. Their taste is sublime - so green and fresh, it’s as if I’d never tasted true olive oil before.

And they are certified by independent lab analysis to be 100% pure and authentic extra virgin.

The club’s founder, T.J. Robinson, travels the globe to secure the most flavorful and healthful extra virgin olive oils on earth, buying them from exclusive family estates and artisanal producers who would never dream of damaging their time-honored reputations by adulterating their oils to make a fast euro.

But to be absolutely certain, he has each oil analyzed and verified by independent lab analysis to certify it as 100% pure extra virgin.

He also employs a bevy of hands-on quality controls during every phase of production and delivery, plus a panel of professional olive oil tasters. Yes, there really are such people - highly trained and certified olive oil tasters whose taste buds have been honed by years of study and can detect adulterations in even a sip of extra virgin olive oil.

The result is extra virgin olive oils like none you’ve ever tasted - remarkably bright, flavorful, fresh, and brimming with off-the-charts nutritional value. Often they are the top award-winners in their native lands and are seldom if ever available in the U.S.

After selecting these treasures, T.J. bypasses the slow cargo boats that are the industry’s normal shipping method. Instead he races his just-squeezed prize oils here by jet.

The club’s stated goal is "from tree to table in thirty days or less," which means you get to experience these best-of-the-best oils at the peak of their freshness, flavor, and health benefits.

At our house, a bottle of extra virgin olive oil lasts about a month. So a single bottle of fresh-pressed oil goes a long way, adding value and bringing out delicious layers of flavor in a month’s worth of recipes, crisp salads, wholesome veggies, crusty breads, grilled meats and fish, etc.

This club is the only way I know to assure yourself of getting the maximum flavor and nutritional payoff when buying extra-virgin olive oil.