The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil

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As usual, when doing my walk today, I had my iPod with me, loaded with great 

podcasts. One of them was an episode of WBUR-FM: On Point with Tom Ashbrook 

dealing with olive oil; author Tom Mueller was interviewed about his new book 

called "Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil". The book 

appears, according to the broadcast, to expose the mistruths peddled by 

commercial olive oil sellers in the Unites States (I would think we're in somewhat 

better place here in Australia for our fresh food and less prevalent industrial type 

food production, such as factory farms).

Here's something Tom Mueller had to say about most of the so called Extra Virgin 

Oils on supermarket shelves in the States:

"If you go to a supermarket, the chances are, that you're going to be getting an oil, that is, it's 

probably made of olives, but it's probably made of very low grade olives, sometimes picked off 

the ground after two three months of sitting in an orchard in southern Spain. It's been taken to the 

mill, washed of dirt and impurities, the oil is made, and the resulting oil is pretty awful, smelly, 

and tastes bad, so they do what they call deodorising, which is low temperature refining process, 

which is illegal, if you're going to sell it as extra virgin.

Refining, it must be remembered, is a pretty aggressive chemical and thermal process that does 

change the chemical nature of the oil, so when you say refined, it's not, like, you know, raising 

your pinkie when you're drinking tea, it's like heavy duty industrial intervention.

Anyway, so the deodorised oil then gets blended, because it's completely odourless and colourless 

and tasteless, it gets back blended with a little bit of extra virgin to sold as extra virgin, and 

needless to say when you say when you use gravity to pick your olives, it's pretty cheap - you can 

use a street sweeper to collect them, and the oil has lost, in the meantime, a lot or its health 

benefits, and obviously its taste, but if you're selling it with, you know, behind extra virgin label, 

which isn't being checked for accuracy, you can get your price way way down, and seventy 

percent according to UC Davis Olive Center study, seventy percent of supermarket oils are 

defective in some way or another, and therefore not eligible for the extra virgin label. One defect 

is enough to bump you out of extra virginity."


(http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/12/02/the-world-of-olive-oil)

I decided to test the two olive oil brands that we have in the pantry. The first one 

is the one I use for most of my cooking, a Spanish brand called Moro, from Coles 

(I think they sell it also at the Woollies, the other major supermarket chain in 

Australia). When I say I use it in most of my cooking, I mean I the exception is 

my Asian dishes, which call for milder vegetable oils, or for the occasional 

instances where butter is the way to go. The other one is the Australian Jingilli oil 

brand, which I currently treat as the 'better one' (since it comes in a small bottle, 

thus making the price higher I guess). I use it for drizzling over finished dishes, 

or in salads.

Anyway, here are the two:

And the conclusion: Frankly, they both failed to impress me.