Supposedly, even 70% of olive oil in the USA markets is fake, cut with cheap bad oils like sunflower and canola. This item is supposed to be healthy, but this is now corrupted. It was found that even 7 of the biggest olive oil makers in USA, mix their items with cheap oils to get more profits. This is like the 2008 practice in Italy when 400 police officers were involved in the breakdown known as operation Golden Oil. This meant seizure for 85 oil farms that mixed some percentage chlorophyll with sunflower and canola to the olive oil. The oil was mixed, colored, perfumed and flavored too, and these things made the Australian government investigate their own oils. The results were awful. After that, not one brand named extra virgin olive oil got the 2012 certificate of approval.
This scam made the California University study 124 imported oils and found that over 70% of samples failed the tests.
These failed:
Mezzetta
Carapelli
Pompeian
Primadonna
Mazola
Sasso
Colavita
Star
Antica Badia
Whole Foods
Safeway
Felippo Berio
Coricelli
Bertolli
These brands passed:
Corto olive
Lucero
McEvoy Ranch Organic
Omaggio
California Olive Branch
Bariani Olive oil
Lucini
Ottavio
Olea Estates
Cobram Estate
Kirkland Organic
Also, test the olive oil yourself at home. Put the bottle out when cold, or in the fridge for 30 min. if it gets solid, it is pure and has monounsaturated fats.
The lies!!!!
*throws out all the bertolli*
IM SO PRESSED/SHOOK RN
this is a real scandal
Ain’t that a bitch
They selling fake olive oil.
they been selling fake olive oil from the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/08/13/slippery-business This is a cool article on how they do it now and what they tend to substitute it with.
In 1997 and 1998, 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. (“Profits were comparable to cocaine trafficking, with none of the risks,” one investigator told me.) The E.U. also began phasing out subsidies for olive-oil producers and bottlers, in an effort to reduce crime, and after a few years it disbanded the task force. Yet fraud remains a major international problem: olive oil is far more valuable than most other vegetable oils, but it 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. (For the past ten years, Spain has produced more oil than Italy, but much of it is shipped to Italy for packaging and is sold, legally, as Italian oil.) “The vast majority of frauds uncovered in the food-and-beverage sector involve this product,” Colonel Leopoldo Maria De Filippi, the commander for the northern half of Italy of the N.A.S. Carabinieri, an anti-adulteration group run under the auspices of the Ministry of Health, told me.
In Puglia, which produces about forty per cent of Italy’s olives, growers have been in a near-constant state of crisis for more than a decade. “Thousands of olive-oil producers are victims of this ‘drugged’ market,” Antonio Barile, the president of the Puglia chapter of a major farmers’ union, told me, referring to illegal importations of seed oils and cheap olive oil from outside the E.U., which undercut local farmers. Instead of supporting small growers who make distinctive, premium oils, the Italian government has consistently encouraged quan-tity over quality, to the benefit of large companies that sell bulk oil. It has not implemented a national plan for oil production, has employed a byzantine system for distributing agricultural subsidies, and has often failed to enforce Italian laws and E.U. regulations intended to prevent fraud. The government has been so lax in pursuing some oil crimes that it can seem complicit. In 2000, the European Court of Auditors reported that Italy was responsible for eighty-seven per cent of misappropriated E.U. subsidies to olive-oil bottlers in the preceding fifteen years, and that the government had recovered only a fraction of the money.
I’ve been reading Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil by Tom Mueller, and wow, the things that get sold as ‘extra virgin’ olive oil are kind of scary, especially if you have any allergies. Or if you’re trying to use olive oil for health reasons – you’re likely paying a premium for something with none of the benefits you’re looking for.
Also, you could write at least 8 different genre novels about skullduggery in the olive oil trade, starting with a murder mystery and working your way out, because there’s just so much to unpack.
Well, that explains the rash of migraines/respiratory issues I had last month. I was cooking everything in whole foods oil and couldn’t figure it out. If it was cut with canola oil then there’s my answer. Son of a bitch.
(“Profits were comparable to cocaine trafficking, with none of the risks,” one investigator told me.)
