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Comment by Jerry2 | Hacker News Reader

Another scam is extra virgin olive oil. Almost all of the ev-olive oils that you buy at supermarkets in the US are fake [0]. It's basically lower-grade olive or vegetable oil with some added green chlorophyl for color. UK supermarkets aren't faring much better [1]. It's all due to mafia control of the oil markets in Italy. 60 Minutes did a report on it recently and they even tested oils for fakes [2]. It's extremely difficult to tell if your ev-olive oil is fake without chromatography/spectroscopy equipment but some people try [3].

[0] http://time.com/money/4326354/fake-olive-oil-food-fraud/

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11988...

[2] http://www.oliveoiltimes.com/olive-oil-basics/mafia-olive-oi...

[3] http://www.foodrenegade.com/how-tell-if-your-olive-oil-fake/

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>It's difficult to tell if your ev-olive oil is fake without chromatography/spectroscopy equipment but some people try

Sorry if I'm asking something obvious, but if it's that difficult to tell, what is the downside of using a fake?

Probably the higher "extra virgin" prices?

>. It's basically lower-grade olive or vegetable oil with some added green chlorophyl for color.

could have totally different nutrition contents than you think you are getting. you could think you are getting nice healthy fats from a natural source. instead you're getting crappy vegetable oil and coloring.

Surely that would show up in chromatography tests.

Yes, but most oils are not subject to that level of testing.

> Surely that would show up in chromatography tests.

Sure, the upthread comment is that it is hard to detect short of chromatography or similar lab testing, not that it is hard to detect with chromatography.

Contrary to that article, and having had some very nice Texas and California EV olive oils that I assume are "the real thing"... I think there is a very definitive taste difference between extra virgin olive oil and straight regular olive oil (there's a fruity / grassy note that is missing from the later).

I would buy that it might be difficult to detect a product that is only somewhat cut. I also buy that perhaps some people just can't taste the difference at all. (One personal note: I can detect the difference between genuine maple syrup and the corn syrup variety... but my wife cannot.)

For some applications, I doubt that these extra notes are worth it. Sometimes you don't really need the expensive stuff. One example: Most "balsamic vinegar" is not Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale. But the later would be pretty wasteful as a salad dressing.

This is true and well documented on the website Truth in Olive Oil, run by Tom Mueller who also wrote a well respected book debunking olive oil production.

There's a great guide to buy olive oil on the site here: http://www.truthinoliveoil.com/great-oil/how-to-buy-great-ol...

Sigona's Market at Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, CA has an olive oil bar. They offer the best, pure varieties harvested from different regions around the world including California. California oils are harvested and pressed in the fall, so I think they become available in spring-summer. In the fall and winter you can get southern hemisphere oils that are fresher. Sigona's keeps the olive oil in barrels and only bottles at the last minute so it's as fresh as possible.

The Olive Press at Jacuzzi Vineyards in Sonoma is the one place I know that is pressing their own oil and you can bottle it right when it's freshest. http://www.jacuzziwines.com/theolivepress

I got these two places from the Truth in Olive Oil, so for others in US you should be able to check on the site to see what places near you have high quality olive oil.

What's the cheapest way to get guaranteed-real EV olive oil? Are there known-good brands (perhaps ones produced entirely outside of Italy?)

Or, if you cared about "authentic Italian" olive oil, perhaps for personal or restaurant use (i.e. not for resale): how much would it cost (in the US) to just buy bulk Italian olives, and then press them yourself?

I buy Greek olive oil. I didn't do any serious research, but it tastes much better than Italian or Spanish counterparts bought locally. I've been to Greece and what I tasted there, wasn't much different from what I buy back home, so I suppose it's a real deal.

EDIT: I live in Europe, so it might be different in USA.

Greece grows a lot of olives, but lacks the infrastructure to process and bottle it into oil (on a large scale)[1]. They end up selling much of it to Italy. Maybe Italy uses different techniques than Greece does? I've tried to check the bottles of Italian olive oil and have had a hard time figuring out where exactly the olives were sourced.

[1] http://www.npr.org/2015/07/16/423605233/greeces-lost-olive-o...

I know this is crazy, but you can taste it :-) Of course, most people don't know what olive oil should taste like, but it really has a wide flavour range. Buy a selection of small bottles and simply taste them (possibly with some nice bread and a little salt if you don't like drinking oil straight up).

I highly recommend trying olive oil from other countries as well. It's really an eye opener. Once you get some experience it's pretty easy to spot good olive oil. It's a bit like beer. Some people love American lite beer (and more power to them), but if you compare an all malt lager with a single variety noble hop to a light beer with 30% rice/corn and a mishmash of 8 nondescript hops (or isomerised hop extract) it doesn't require a discerning palette to detect the difference.

Interestingly, I have been wondering for about 10 years now about how ridiculously cheap balsamic vinegar has shown up in the super market. Buy a bottle of 30 year old balsamico and compare it to the cheap stuff and I suspect you will wonder (like me), "Is this really balsamic vinegar???"

Yeah it's like going to Greece and eat a ripe cucumber. Even in italy they sell watery, acidic stuff that would never comare to the real thing. I've never eaten one again anywhere else in the world.

To be fair, most contries have good cucumbers, if you buy them in season. The last part is the important part.

It isn't. It's a sugary contraption that makes your salad sweet and brownish, which is attractive to the eye.

Get a locally produced oil marked extra virgin. My family produces EVOO in small batches and the difference betwee imported and fresh is marked.

Nobody would ever need specialised equipment to tell them apart, it would be like eating butter instead of margarine.

In the U.S., Californian olive oils are your best bet. Otherwise, Costco Kirkland Signature olive oil (which is now Greek oil [1]) is another good choice.

Outside of Italy, it's difficult to find Italian olive oils that are not blended. The 2014 and 2015 harvest seasons have been terrible due a bacterial blight [2] that crippled many olive farms in Southern Italy.

[1] http://www.seattletimes.com/business/retail/costco-embraces-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylella_fastidiosa

https://www.cooc.com

Go Spanish, they are usually cheaper as they aren't as famous as the Italian, but the quality is the same or even better, as they don't have the strange shenanigans the Italians have with the Mafia. An awful lot of the Italian oil sold outside of Italy is from Spain, anyway [1].

[1]http://www.economist.com/news/business/21600996-government-f....

If you're in California, try the olive oil (I prefer the italian style) from Ranch Olivos, literally grown in Los Olivos :) Amazing, product, and if you go there yourself you can buy it from the owner, standing under a canopy on his ranch, next to the olive trees. http://www.ranchoolivos.com

Try spanish olive oil. I'm spanish, so I probably have a bias. You can have pretty decent olive oil for less than 4 euros / litre here so olive oil is the only oil I use.

If you buy oil bottled in Spain look for the "extra virgin olive oil" label: Aceite de oliva virgen extra. We are pretty serious with labeling around here, so you won't be fooled.

There are varieties like picual, hojiblanca, arbequina or cornicabra which are different in color and taste, and are named after the olives they are made from.

4 euros per liter is crazy. In the US, even the cheapest crappy olive oil is $20/liter

In Spain 20 euros buys you a liter of the best specialty extra virgin olive oil. This is why good olive oil poured over a toast covered with pureed tomatoes is such a popular breakfast.

Trader Joe's has it for $6.99-9.99, though after reading this article, I'd like to hear some confirmation on its quality.

Check out Costco. Their brand is not only cheap, but one of the few that are real. The price went up since 2010, but it is still around $10/l.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/5-things-you-should-buy-at-costc...

The articles I've read (your's included) explicitly pointed out Costco's Organic olive oil. Costco also sells a non-Organic version that's cheaper but I haven't seen anyone say either way if it's actually EVOO.

FWIW, having bought a bottle of the non-organic EVOO at Costco today, I can say it is labeled as if it is real.

Get local oil.

I know that here in New Zealand, NZ produced olive oil is actually made from olives. I could even drive up to the olive farm (plantation? orchard?) and have a look myself to make sure.

So I guess getting New Zealand oil would work in the USA as well, if you could find any. It's a bit of a cottage industry here, so I don't think much makes its way overseas.

Try Australian olive oil. There was a tax scam some years ago here which resulted in stacks of olive oil plantations, so now australian olive oil should be a good price over there I'd imagine.

Costco?

Does anyone have any idea how this situation is in the EU?

Much better. You get what you buy.

Really?

An article from 2015 (Switzerland, German)[0]: It is said that a litre of good extra vergine olive oil has to cost Fr. 20 a litre or more to have a chance to get real extra vergine. I stopped buying olive oil and switched to Swiss canola oil.

[0]: http://www.nzz.ch/nzzas/nzz-am-sonntag/ein-schmieriges-gesch...

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