Most olive oils sold in the United States are adulterated or deceptively labeled | Hacker News Reader

Most olive oils sold in the United States are adulterated or deceptively labeled

motherjones.com

214 pointswalterbell165 comments

I live in Crete, Greece. Almost all families here own olive trees groves and produce oil - the island, and I guess this is true for most regions of Greece, is full of olive trees. We consume a lot of oil - we use oil in everything, and it’s delicious - I personally have a hard time eating anything that doesn’t have olive oil in it.

I ‘ve tasted olive oil when I had the chance to travel to other countries, except it barely resembled the olive oil I know. It tasted bad, and it didn’t even look like the real thing. This could have only been fake or otherwise diluted olive oil. I doubt any kind of olive tree produces that kind of oil anyway.

By the way, I noticed from my time in some European cities, that olive oil is sold for a very high price. I understand that imported goods are expensive, but the prices I saw at super markets were just ridiculous ( and it’s possible even that was for ‘fake’ olive oil).

> By the way, I noticed from my time in some European cities, that olive oil is sold for a very high price.

It really depends on the country the olive oil is from. I think Italian olive oil is the most expensive and Greek olive oil is one of the cheapest. In fact the cheap olive oil I buy from the discounter here is from Crete :)

Spain produces three time more olive oil than Italy, but I am yet to see any shop in London selling Spanish olive oil. Why? Because usually it's packaged in Italy and sold as Italian since that is what customers have come to expect.

Same in morocco. We have 3 olive trees in our house and we get huge amount of olive oil out of them. We use olive oil in everything. I also agree with you about the taste. It tastes insanely good compared to what I buy from supermarkets in Europe. I've heard rumors in the past that the Mafia got involved in olive oil in Italy because it's much more lucrative and safe than drugs.

The conspiring Mafia.... lobby.

Contact your senator now

> I understand that imported goods are expensive, but the prices I saw at super markets were just ridiculous ( and it’s possible even that was for ‘fake’ olive oil).

You should try comparing the price wholesalers pay to coffee plantations in tropical countries to the end price of roasted coffee beans at boutique coffee roasters in the US or Europe. It will blow your mind.

If you ever end up in Utrecht, the Netherlands, there is a Greek importer of olive oil on the weekly market. Just a tip ;)

Do you have a name or a website?

"De Olijfolie Specialist," which translates to "The Olive Oil Specialist".

https://www.facebook.com/DeOlijfolieSpecialist/home

The same in my village back in Portugal. We make our own wine and olive oil. My mother even sends me packages regularly with our olive oil!

After learning a few years ago about the large-scale fraud involved in the export olive oil industry, I started trying domestic olive oil instead (I'm in the US).

My favorite domestic oil, which is available everywhere now, is California Olive Ranch (e.g, http://amzn.com/B005CT8R90). It's delicious. Tastes nothing like the horrible oils I had been unknowingly eating for years, and there's no way I could ever go back.

There's a write up from America's test Kitchen about olive oil taste tests [0] (click 'read more'); spoiler: California Olive Ranch is their top pick.

[0] https://www.americastestkitchen.com/taste_tests/1637-superma...

Thanks for linking this! I just bought a couple of bottles, going to have my sister bring them up to me when she comes home. Always on the hunt for good olive oil.

Thanks for this. We use a lot of olive oil in our family and I've read plenty on these abuses, but the articles never call out brands. 69% of all EVOO off the shelf in the US doesn't pass muster? Tell me which 31% did! And for crying out loud, shame the shit out of the ones that failed.

In any case, gonna buy some of this now. Cheers!

They don't name names because it's probably scaremongering propaganda. Somebody wants to boost local oil consumption or other oils (other than olive) or something

If you don't name what you want people to get instead, how could this even be true?

Mother jones has great reporting in general -- they're not an outfit that is a corporate ad extension.

I'm not thinking of corporations. Local govt, etc. The study was made by -surprise- a university in the state where olive oil is produced. Btw about ads there's nothing more effective than a journalist that does it for free. There's another thread now in HN about marijuana's awesomeness. Don't people think for themselves anymore? do you all take a package of propaganda and ideology and blissfully swallow it without thinking twice?

The problem is that people should be able to trust the news, not that they don't think for themselves. I do plenty of "thinking", I just don't have any time to evaluate the authenticity of my olive oil. Think about how many decisions you need to make in a day; if you had to verify every article, product, or piece of information you ingest on a daily basis you wouldn't have time to do anything else.

We have a huge problem where you really can't trust anything you hear or see; especially news. However, what's the solution? If I want to be up to date on world politics who do I trust? How do I know I can trust them? What about a new product? The manufacturer says it's healthy; an "article"says its not. Who do I trust? Is the article genuine or paid off by a competitor to boost their own sales? Do I have to do my own research and studies to find out the truth? That's hardly scalable.

OTOH a site like HN do produce this analysis for each link, by means of comments.

It would be pretty interesting to have something like HN, perhaps a bit broader in topic selections, where the analysis was captured in a more structured manner and published for other services to reuse in various ways to aid the reader.

>Mother jones has great reporting in general -- they're not an outfit that is a corporate ad extension.

I'm sorry but are you kidding? Upon visiting this page I was presented with this ad that had no dismiss button: http://prntscr.com/c5bb9h

If you were a raging liberal, then I suppose you'd consider Mother Jones and its insistence on giving your email to the "Progressive Turnout Project" before reading their content to be "great reporting" (by the way, Mother Jones was paid for this - does that not qualify as a "corporate ad extension"?). But personally, I can't stand political propaganda sites that masquerade as journalism, and I especially can't stand any site that requires me to give my email to third parties before I can read their content. That's a nonstarter.

No such thing as a journalistic organization without a platform. You're not surprising anyone. You should instead spend time showing that they're biased instead of just announcing this. Having a stance doesn't preclude good, unbiased journalism.

Exactly right. Mother Jones is nothing more than a bought and paid for, left-leaning (to the point of tipping over) propaganda machine. Here are some of their awesomely impartial headlines:

Donald Trump's Freefall Captured in Two Scathing Magazine Covers

Republicans Say We Should Just Laugh Off Donald Trump’s Assassination "Joke." No.

How Unpopular Is Trump? Clinton Is Courting Mormon Voters in Utah Now. (subtitle: This is what a landslide looks like.)

The Trump Files: Donald's Recurring Sex Dreams

Philadelphia Elections Official Destroys Conservative Conspiracy Theory that National Elections Are "Rigged"

It keeps going. I wonder who "Mother" wants us to vote for?

Pretty much every news publication / organization has some internal bias / lean (some more than others). That does not mean their reporting is inaccurate.

Some internal bias is one thing, if it is disclosed. Mother Jones, however, is a bastion of extreme leftist rhetoric that tries to pass itself off as a legitimate source of news. That is the part that is disturbing and very misleading to those that haven't been warned about or don't already know about the site. Maybe some sort of logo, even an arrow pointing to the left or right, or a Chrome plugin that turns the site blue or red for a few seconds when you first go to a page on it, would be good for these kinds of sites.

It could vary over time, depending on where the packagers get it from.

Exactly. I don't know much about olive oil, but in the world of bourbon, it's fairly common for bourbon-makers to win awards with recipes that they bottled years ago, and leverage those awards to sell sub-standard distillate that they've rushed out the door to keep up with demand.

This is cool, thanks for this. I've largely stopped using olive oil (safflower for cooking, walnut for salads) entirely because finding something that doesn't taste off is difficult without spending a lot or going well out of my way, but my local place has this and I think I'll give it a shot.

The most delicious olive oil I've ever had was at a random restaurant in San Diego. It had a very distinct "this came from olives" flavor, unlike all the bland stuff I'd had before, and tasted very fresh and clean. It was so good that we asked the waiter what it was. Unfortunately he didn't know the brand, but apparently it was made at a farm in Arizona. That was quite shocking. Arizona is a very hot, arid state, and yet somehow they make great olive oil. We've been on the hunt ever since and now, like you, tend to buy domestic.

Olive trees tend to thrive in hot, arid places like Italy, Greece, and Spain in the summer.

Also Israel.

Ditto, I have been buying this olive oil for the past 2 years. Its a beautiful olive oil and cooks amazingly well. It was such a relief finding this brand given the amount of choices there are for (bad) olive oil!

I used to buy large quantities of olive oil from an importer a few years back. He worked directly with the producers in Europe and N. Africa and told me about the fraud that happens in the industry. One interesting thing he told me was that the domestics simply don't have enough supply to meet year round demand. So one of the things they would do is buy his imported oil and mix it with theirs to make it last through the year and bottle it as domestic. The lesson for me was that domestic/local doesn't mean more honest...you still have to ask lots of questions to verify.

If you're buying olive oil in the US it is very unlikely to be domestic. USA consumes about 20x as much as it produces.

Same here, California Olive Ranch is great and a safe choice. It's worth pointing out that there are some genuine European brands, of course. One of them is Terra Medi, which is Greek. More expensive but very good.

Yes that stuff is good.

We are grateful to... California Olive Ranch... for their financial support of this research.

I wish "Keuringsdienst van Waarde" would put its episodes online, with subtitles. They had one specifically about olive oil.

Here is a section where they speak English with Italian producers about the difference in Extra Vierge, Vierge, Pure and Lamp olive oil:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkO1dwx2_KA&t=10m

My favourite part is when they visit the Italian oil tasters, which test for Olive Oil fraud by tasting it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkO1dwx2_KA&t=13m45s

Later on, they test oil they brought with them from the Netherlands, which is hilarous:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkO1dwx2_KA&t=16m

> (after one sniff) "This oil is very particular... It is Spanish Olive oil!"

> "But that's not a defect is it?"

> "Yes it is!"

> "Because it's Spanish? That's not a.."

> "YES! YES IT IS!"

TL;DW: Supposedly "Italian" brands with extra vierge olive oil is in reality run by a Spanish company who makes processed olive oil grown in Spain and Tunesia. Also, Italians being wondefully stereotypical food snobs.

This is a similar issue we had in the protein powder industry with amino acid spiking.[1]

TL;DR is that companies were putting cheap filler aminos like taurine and glycine into protein powders, which would pass as nitrogen on a "protein" test, but they were far cheaper and less effective than actual whey protein.

A lot of times the companies would think they were getting legit raw materials, but if they didn't test their incoming raws (illegal per cGMP), they could easily get screwed by the cheap crap coming in from China.

It's expensive to test for ($2000 for a full amino panel), but once the bad guys started getting discovered, the class action lawsuits hit hard. One multi-million dollar settlement's already been public.

Olive oil companies are wise not to get caught doing this, especially the bigger ones with deep pockets (a class-action lawyer's dream). Always test your incoming and outgoing product. If you blindly trust that overseas manufacturer's lab tests, get ready to get destroyed.

[1] https://blog.priceplow.com/protein-scam-amino-acid-spiking

$2000? UC Davis will do an amino acid analysis for 60 bucks. At that price a serious protein powder consumer could routinely send them a sample.

http://www.chem.ucla.edu/dept/Faculty/merchant/pdf/Amino%20a...

For each individual free-form amino acid as well? Also testing for the stuff not typically found in protein, like creatine, taurine, betaine, beta alanine, and anything else that may trigger a nitrogen count? Doubtful, but I'd be happy to contact them.

I had always assumed that protein powder was derived from waste products that were created during other food processing. Why would someone use protein powder when there are other good sources of protein?

Many good protein sources also contain not protein.

What does that mean, out of curiosity? Do you mean vegetarian protein which is harder to absorb?

Carbohydrates, etc. Not everybody wants to live on a diet of egg whites. :)

Back in the day, they used to throw the whey out. It was the curds they wanted for cheese.

Times have definitely changed. Whey is in everywhere, even in oreos. Demand got out of control cerca 2012, which led to all the spiking.

One of the major instant shockwaves to the market was the launch of Gatorade Recovery drinks. And that was on top of the general movement towards high-protein diets (a good thing). Took the market quite a while to recover from that, pardon the pun.

Regarding your question... if you have a high-protein diet, it's a nice convenience to throw a scoop or two in. You ever try to get 225-250g protein per day without using shakes, day in and day out? Gets tiring.

Here in Norway, we've never thrown away the whey. It's been used for centuries to produce "brown cheese", a delicious sweet semi-soft "cheese". Wonderful on waffles. It's the first thing ex-pat Norwegians ask you to send them.

See also the 2008 Baby Milk Scandal[1] in China, where surplus Melamine was added, which fooled basic tests.

Even more astounding when you realise the penalties for such actions there, 2 of the people involved were executed, one received a life sentence and several more lengthy jail spells.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal

Are you saying that cGMP makes it illegal to test imported raw ingredients, or that it's illegal to not test? (sad that one has to ask this, but such seems to be the state of food regulation in the U.S.).

Here's the Davis study with the specific brand names and what specific chemical or taste tests they failed.

http://olivecenter.ucdavis.edu/research/files/oliveoilfinal0...

Glad to see the cheap WalMart generic oil I buy was one of the few that passed. Interesting to see so many of the high end brands were fakes.

Thank you!! In an earlier comment on another thread I bemoaned not publishing the brands that passed (or shaming the ones that didn't). This is what I was looking for.

There are a number of more recent reports at their site that are also interesting/useful. http://olivecenter.ucdavis.edu/research/reports

The interesting part of that report is imported extra virgin olive oil is vastly more likely to be merely virgin due to refined or oxidized olive oil present, compared to California olive oils.

But then this research is also financed by the California Olive Oil Council, and also by the company of the best testing brand. So there's a possible conflict there, or it may be that they know they have better certification and monitoring therefore a better/more consistent product, than the name/top selling brands primarily sourcing from imported olive oil, and they're investing in research to quantify this.

Anybody have a mirror of this PDF? Site is down.

Google webcache is your friend.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache://olive...

sort of off topic: but i remember the days where pretty much anything ending in .edu was what you hit because you knew that it would be up. Especially UC Davis. Those days are over. :/

and on topic: I think it's great that the "Great Value" brand that many people turn their noses up at turned out to be one of the few that passed the UC Davis tests.

I mean, the way WalMart manages their supply chain, there's no guarantee it will continue to pass. If I remember correctly, Great Value Parmesan cheese was rated the worst (highest) level of wood pulp additives when tested vs other major brands.

I always love some shredded oak and pine with my spaghetti. natural fiber, right? :)

> If I remember correctly, Great Value Parmesan cheese was rated the worst (highest) level of wood pulp additives when tested vs other major brands.

I buy that brand too and recommend it. The label clearly lists cellulose among the ingredients and it has a legitimate function as a decaking agent. At 7.8%, it did not have the highest cellulose level in that study, though it was close. I've bought grated parmesan with low levels of cellulose, and some of it's more clumpy. However, it seems the 4% brands have the right mix. WalMart's doubling that does seem to be working as a cheap filler. The cheese in it is actually parmesan though. Much more interesting in that study though was that some brands such as Market Pantry, Always Save, and Best Choice all contained absolutely no parmesan cheese at all.

Buying a brick of hard parmesan and grating it oneself is by far the best way to go, but cheap bottled stuff that isn't too bad is more convenient for kids to work with.

One thing that is not commonly mentioned is that olive oil freezes very well.

I typically buy a large 5-liter tin can of olio nuovo in the fall from a known producer and then freeze all but one liter of it in mason jars, unfreezing throughout the year as needed.

It works really well.

EDIT: It's mentioned in passing in the article but there's only one olive harvest per year (per hemisphere), so there's an advantage to buying all your oil for the year immediately after harvest if you think you can store it better than the store/wholesaler, which is the point of throwing it in the freezer.

Does it freeze solid or just become very viscous?

Related to freezing, I have a very good heuristic to detect fake oils.

Since olive oil contains quite a lot of monounsaturated fats, and these become solid with a bit of cold, putting olive oil in the fridge for 12 hours should make solid.

I imagine it yields some false positives and negatives, but my own olive oil never fails to become solid, even at room temperature during cold winter days. Nor my neighbour's, or some niche brands I trust. Whereas commercial ones tend to fail...

Indeed! And olive oil is a bit cloudy even at room temp.

Be great if it was true but seems that this freeze test is a myth. One report for instance: North American Olive Oil Association called the home test “completely false and misleading.”

You don't need to freeze it. I live in Greece where we buy olive oil in big 17 liter tins and store it for yearly consumption. If you keep it tightly sealed in a dark place it could last at least for a year.

>I typically buy a large 5-liter tin can of olio nuovo in the fall from a known producer and then freeze all but one liter of it in mason jars, unfreezing throughout the year as needed. It works really well.

As a heavy consumer of olive oil, in one of the countries who produces some of the very best (and having produced oil in my family, who owns olive trees), I can tell you that you don't have to freeze it at all.

In fact freezing it will damage it (kill several nutrients), and make the thawed oil very quick to spoil.

Keep it in the shade, preferably 60oF - 80oF but even 90oF is OK really, in a steel container, and you're done. It remains perfectly fine for 1-2 years or even more.

Try it, you'll like it. It's an incredibly easy thing to do, and it's noticeably better after 6 months or so. Also: you can't "kill" nutrients. The biggest risk to oil after light and heat, as I'm sure you know, is oxidation. The lower temperatures drastically reduce the speed of oxidation. If anything the frozen oil will have more nutrients than the room temperature version.

Same reason throwing half a bottle of wine in the fridge/freezer works too: The freezer does strip some stuff and causes things to precipitate out, but the overall effect of drastically reducing oxidation is worth the tradeoff.

Why do you freeze it? I live in one of the world top producer countries of olive oil. (My family has olive trees by the way). We keep it in jars for long periods and it's quite fine.

Because I wondered if it would be better, so I tried it, and it is. It's an easy thing to A/B test, especially with twin-packs of fresh oil at Costco, give it a shot.

Freezing it is kinda pointless. Oils store very well - they don't have water, are on the acidic side - so bacteria growth inside them is very hard. Keep it in a cool place, in non reactive container, away from sunlight and oxygen to prevent byproducts and rancidity - it should be fine for long enough. So a mason jar in a pantry is enough.

All of those things are exactly the conditions of a freezer, plus it's really cold. EVOO, and especially olio nuovo are not 100% oil, there's lots of bits of fruit in there that benefit from the lower temperatures.

We don't buy olive oil, fortunately. I live on the Mediterranean and my mother produces it.

Olive oil is about 7x more expensive than regular/industrial/cooking oil, but even on the Mediterranean, there's massive fraud. People are always looking for reliable and trusted sources to buy their olive oil. They also won't shy away from asking you to give them some if they know you have an olive grove or something. It's something I didn't understand until recently because good quality olive oil was always available and I took it for granted to just pour it (we use quite a lot of it. And no, I'm not overweight).

People who have small groves will produce for their own consumption and that of their close relatives and friends. They might sell some but it's not for the money, and they do so with reluctance buyers don't understand.

From the buyer's perspective: I'm paying you 7x what cooking oil costs!

From the seller's perspective: For the effort that goes into it? I'd rather eat it or give it for free. It's not something to make money off of.

The supplier will sell it because they're embarrassed to say no to that person and that person has refused to take it for free. So they pay and think the supplier is happy. When they come for more, they'll probably hear that the supplier has no olive oil left even if it's a lie because even at that price, in their mind they gave it for free (it's precious that way).

Olives are great. You can also use the solid byproducts of the pressing process as combustible. It makes a great fire. The process also produces a dark substance that is heavier than oil and has a divine taste with salt and bread.

> You can also use the solid byproducts of the pressing process as combustible. It makes a great fire.

I would guess it will also make terrific feed for animals.

I don't know about that. Animals have what to eat (grass, etc. Here's the place: http://bit.ly/2bf0f9p). It's as hard as a rock, comes as little pellets, and burns beautifully. I spent hours and hours as a kid just sitting next to a fire and adding those babies.

It's amazing how the combustible you use can dramatically affect your fire. I went to the desert for a friend's wedding, they used a type of local wood (it had a name that people of another place use as a generic term for "wood"). The fire looked like it was filmed in slow motion and smelled sweet. They'd then take the embers somewhere on the sand and make a discus, put a type of local bread filled with hot pepper, onions, etc. on the embers, cover the hole with another layer of embers, and then add sand and let it cook like that. You'd see the thing get bigger as it cooked.

It was one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted in my life. It opens your appetite like crazy, as does the arid climate (very dry). Arid climates are also amazing, you don't seem to get tired when you stay in those places as opposed to the North where humidity can get the best of you.

Extra Virginity by Tom Mueller is a fun and informative book on olive oil. He also runs a website called Truth in Olive Oil:

http://www.truthinoliveoil.com/

His page on supermarket olive oils has been really helpful for me - I haven't gone wrong with any of his picks. In particular I've liked the California Olive Ranch, Kirkland Signature Extra Virgin Toscano, and Trader Joe's Premium 100% Greek Kalamata.

Another Greek oil we picked up at random at Rockridge Market Hall in Oakland: Terra Creta Early Harvest (November 2015). A bit more expensive than the ones above, but very tasty!

You would think that if this is the case, that there would be a marketing opportunity for either a retail chain, or a brand that kept strong control over distribution, to market Olive Oil that was genuine, rather than faked/adulterated crud.

Kind of sad to know when I go into the store, and see twenty-thirty different brands of all sorts of quality (and prices) of Olive Oil - that most of it is fake.

But if you start marketing one brand as the real one now you introduce doubt into the other higher margin olive oils. A store could end up instead increasing the purchase of lower margin oils like canola at the expense of their current possibly fake olive oils. Remember in market economies the initial advantage goes to the faker.

Here's another article on it with a less extreme headline: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-of-us-are-blissfull...

They say that most olive oil isn't "fake", just lower quality than labelled. However in taste tests, American consumers can't distinguish the higher quality oil, and actually prefer the lower quality stuff.

>Rancidity, for example, isn’t generally a sought after quality in edible products. And yet, when it comes to olive oil in the U.S., people like it. Why? Partly, because rancid olive oil is less bitter than the good stuff. But also, likely because it’s what many of us know and grew up with. It’s what we think olive oil is supposed to taste like

Of course fraudulent labelling is wrong. But if consumers actually prefer it, then it doesn't seem so bad.

Rancidity, vomit flavour people sometimes call it, is seemingly a key flavour in USA chocolate. I wonder if there's a parallel reason or if the 'gone off' flavour of chocolate -- that was initially down to poor milk transportation -- has influenced the local palette wrt other foods.

It's not rancidity, it's butyric acid, the source of "the Hershey flavor":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7275566

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey_bar

I heard about it first at a lecture by an industrial chemist working for Cadbury. He explained it as being a hangover from milk going off during delivery. Colloquially at least off milk is said to have gone rancid. There were samples ... a memorable experience!

The addition of butyric acid of supposed to mimic the past flavour without the use of off milk.

> ...is less bitter than the good stuff

Bitterness matters here IMHO. One old anecdote: when I was in the US about 15 years ago, I was very surprised to see an Italian brand I knew with labels like "regular", "strong", "extra strong" or so. There was no such thing in France.

And then from tasting I understood: the extra strong was the olive oil I knew, the others were distinctly less bitter. So more filtered. The irony is that olive oil, for the truly oil part, is not particularly good --- it doesn't have all what our body needs. Colza oil is a good complement BTW. What's good in the olive oil are the olive tanins (I may be doing frenglish there...), which are bitter. And compared to Europe the US has a sweet tooth, so I guess that the bitterness was not so popular. So just filter it ;) You loose what made the olive oil popular (at the time at least), but sales wise I guess it worked better. Marketing at work. Don't know if it has changed?

Right. It's more fair to say Americans buy really bad olive oil. But the standards for olive oil are usually somewhat subjective taste and visual standards.

It's fair to say Kraft makes a lousy block of cheddar. But it'd a bit over the top for research funded by the West Country Farmhouse Cheese Board to say Kraft is "adulterated."

Buy Costco's Kirkland:

http://www.lifeinitaly.com/best-olive-oil-us

Costco has several different olive oils of varying quality. The one to get, when they have it, is the excellent Kirkland Signature Toscano. (It's the one mentioned in the page you linked.)

Where is the FDA on this one? The problem should be solvable by bans. FDA does random sampling, if your product is found to be adulterated, then you are banned from importing into the US for 5 years.

Sybil attack to the rescue.

Come over to India. Forget olive oil (where motivation to fake is higher given the higher price), even cheaper oils like mustard oil are almost certainly fake.

Try Russia:

https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/warning-this-is-not-chee...

    > If you live in Russia, you may already be worried about what you’re eating.
    > If you’re not worried, maybe you should be.

    > Watchdogs say dairy producers routinely added starch, chalk and soap to their
    > milk. One-fifth of caviar brands contained bacteria linked to E. coli. Bread
    > bakers were discovered to use “fifth-grade” wheat, the sort usually intended for
    > cattle. More than half the sliced salmon on shop shelves has been judged unsafe.
    > And those are only the most recent revelations.

Oh, well. Here are some:

http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/indias-farmers-injectin... (use of Oxytocin)

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/70-of-milk-in-Delhi... (adulterated milk)

http://www.sadgurupublications.com/ContentPaper/2013/3_168_3... (adulterated fuel)

Help us document all the olive oils sold worldwide by taking photos of the packaging. It won't solve the whole problem stated by the article, but it's a good start. http://android.openfoodfacts.org or http://ios.openfoodfacts.org

http://world.openfoodfacts.org/category/olive-oils

Rather, regarding the issue of chemical quality that information doesn't help at all.

You need proper chemical testing and a proper definition of the quality of taste.

There are already a lot of tested brands so you could add a section to collect that data, although it's usually behind paywalls.

It's awesome.

Demand of olive oil probably outstrips the capacity of the world to produce it.

Does this work for other resources? Is there enough raw materials to make batteries, to replace a billion cars?

Not sure about that - there are many many acres of olive trees in Spain and in Italy where I visit many of the olives in the mountains go unpicked because it's too much effort to go and get them.

Well, think of all the stores in each city, in each country that say they have olive oil in them, but they don't.

Even if we harvest all the olives to make olive oil, would we still have a deficit of olive oil being produced?

Assume there's economic supply/demand isn't at work - is our current production of olive oil still greater than the current supply?

Production capacity (i.e. "supply") and demand are not independent variables...

Vanilla's another one. I can't find a great reference right now, but usage of imitation vanilla far outstrips actual vanilla production, especially commercially. [0] If everyone in the world who uses vanilla flavoring wanted to use the real thing, there wouldn't be nearly enough. Fortunately, it turns out it's pretty hard to tell the difference in most recipes that involve multiple flavors. [1]

[0] Havkin-Freknel, Daphna. "Vanilla Around the World: New Challenges, Old Opportunities" http://media.wix.com/ugd/a3ac9c_b0f273fc9d7a4cafa6fe477d735e...

[1] http://sweets.seriouseats.com/2013/12/taste-test-is-better-v...

A point of contention: "imitation" is too ambiguous. Let's go with "vanillin" vs. "fake vanilla".

Artificially produced Vanillin (the primary compound in natural vanilla) is a fantastic substance and perfect for anything for which the preparation would destroy the complexities of natural vanilla (natural vanilla in high heat/prolonged heat baked goods? What's the point, you're just destroying the subtleties). This is marketed as "artificial vanilla extract", which is a correct description: it is an artificially created equivalent to vanilla extract, lacking the (tens and tens of) trace compounds that make real vanilla a complex aromatic substance.

But on the other side of the "immitation" spectrum we also find crazy things: "using things that are like vanilla, and selling it as if it's vanilla", of which there are many instances. Since vanilla is so scarce, rather than going the (cheap!) artificial production way, small scale operations will try to cash in on the higher price of real vanilla by passing off extracts that are similar to vanilla as the real deal. Some of these can kill people. Notable in that category in recent history: tonka beans.

What is the temperature point for vanilla degradation? I use the real deal (pod with seeds) in custard ice cream and it is the most expensive ingredient there. And I get it to 80c/175 F

80C isn't particularly destructive, think more prolonged exposure to 180C in cakes, cheesecakes, etc. Plenty of the well over a hundred trace compounds undergo transformations at that heat on the surface, with different sourced vanilla behaving differently at higher temperatures. So unless you can control the exact sourcing of your ingredients, the stability (and of course simpliciy) of pure vanillin is perfect for reliable, repeatable high temperature recipes.

You cannot get above 100C for anything that still has water in it. The only place where vanilla(and the dough) gets at 160C is in the crust (that tasty tasty Maillard reaction).

So if you notice destruction of flavor in the body - it is probably because of the time of exposure in while you get to 90C that rich dough is usually considered done.

>Demand of olive oil probably outstrips the capacity of the world to produce it.

Only if we assume price is fixed. Because by merely raising the price (which you can, when there's demand) you get to manipulate the capacity needed.

Except that it takes at least five years from planting an olive tree to where you get any kind of harvest (and longer before you get a "commercially viable" harvest.) So there's a significant lag in there that you might want to consider - it's not like manufacturing shoes or something.

If production were at a hard cap, the price would rise until demand fell off to a point that the supply could meet it.

Prices can rise (or fall) almost instantly to reflect that though...

But I'm talking about currently - if all the olive oil is real (which is not, by a large margin), I'm not talking about if basic economics comes into play.

Remember VW with their magical Diesel engines that didn't work as advertised? This is basically the same thing. Companies are producing goods that aren't what they appear, and are advertising the benefits of them. In olive oil's case, it's supposedly healthier. In VW's, their cars are supposed to be better for the environment.

I'm just curious when this is going to be uncovered again.

But you're right: if not enough lithum (say) can be mined to produce enough electric cars to replace the internal combustion engine cars with have today - about a billion cars, electric cars are going to, in the long run, not make as big of a dent as we would have perhaps hoped.

Last time i heard something there was a huge surplus in EU, especially Spain.

Buy Arogos at Wholefood. I grew up in Sparta, Greece and my family owned several olive trees. Arogos products are exactly what I remember from our own produce.

I'm not an expert but just from taste, most supermarket extra virgin olive oils are not real or perhaps diluted or mixed.

My family produces some and consume it ourselves or give to friends/family for free. The real stuff has such a amazing taste that after trying one supermarket brand after the other, you start realizing there is no way what you are buying is the real stuff.

I have no scientific evidence...just my simple taste buds. Anyone who has consumed real olive can probably relate.

Not too far from the SF Bay Area is SLO and Paso Robles (~3hrs). There are presses there. You can buy from the farmers and local markets which sell their oils. They have Spanish and Italian varietals. Should be pretty authentic olive oil --I guess they could cut it with grape oil?

They've even got Olive oil tasting events: https://centralcoastwinecomp.com/olive-oil/

You don't have to go that far - there are groves popping up in Napa and Livermore too. The local (Livermore in my case) olive oil I've had fresh off the presses here tastes amazing, it truly woke me up to the degree that we've been mislead.

It made me wonder just how many americans have ever actually tasted real olive oil - because once you have, the fake stuff is immediately obvious.

My favorite olive oil anecdote. Last year, I was traveling from Venice to Paris on an overnight train and I'd brought along a bottle of wine to share with my cabin-mates. One of them reciprocated by bringing out a can of olive oil that had "just been extracted last week" from his farm in Tuscany. We sampled that oil with a piece of bread torn from his sandwich -- our olive oil purveyor was probably not expecting to conduct a tasting in an overnight train. Would it be politically incorrect to exclaim: mamma mia? :-)

All I can say is that you are right -- it is impossible to taste real olive oil and not know the difference between it and the supermarket stuff.

Am i naive to think we're better off in Europe?

Probably not. There's still fraud, mind you, e.g.:

http://www.laprovence.com/article/papier/4052849/des-olives-...

But we've stricter controls in place (because of Appellation-related laws) and offenders get fined or jailed.

Though that's a fraud on the origin of the olives, not on the quality of the olives or oil (quality of the oil made of olives of fraudulent origin may have in fact been higher than the usual one :-) ).

In Europe Olive oil is also one of the most faked type of food.

Citation?

Faked would be too much to say, but the German Stiftung Warentest tested 26 different olive oils recently and found that none of them were correctly labelled [½]. For the most part this concerned the alleged origin country, but there were also several with contaminants. Nothing health-endangering, but still not allowed to be labelled "Natives Olivenöl Extra" (the highest quality category of olive oil). No mention of blends with other types of oil, though.

____________

[½] https://www.test.de/Olivenoel-Jedes-zweite-im-Test-ist-mange...

Actually, I think you make it sound too nice. The test results are actually pretty bad. Overall that test wasn't really all that useful though - they tested very few products. It's a tiny sample.

One thing to note: They mention that for each 1,000 tons of olive oil only one sample has to be drawn and tested - which shows how little we really know about the quality, and low the probability is to be caught. Given that I don't believe Europeans are "better people" than Americans or anyone else I think it's safe to assume there are plenty of cases of fraud we know nothing about.

For Germany in particular I have this anecdote: An Italian friend of mine used to do whole-sale import food to Germany for Italian food producers. He told me that they export the "good stuff" to countries like Spain and France - and the bad but cheap stuff to Germany. He told me Germans and therefore German importers care about price first of all.

Well, we can buy mozzarella that's actually mozzarella, so that's something.

Was in Costco the other day and was looking at the Oils. If you look at a bottle of Bertolli and read the label, it says Olive Oil Flavor. Costco carries the Kirkland Brand that's average. They also have a brand from Tunisia I think (has a yellow label) that is pretty good.

Most Italian Olive Oil for export is from Greek Olives. The Greeks export a lot of Olives because they can't process it themselves. Most Italian Olives go for domestic consumption I would imagine.

California from what I understand has some great Olive Oil. Might be a little pricey.

Balancing cost and quality is the problem with most consumers.

California oils can be expensive but if you're intending to use it often the price for a 3L bag is dramatically lower. $40 IIRC.

We buy that Tunisian olive oil too, it's definitely pretty good.

Someone above recommended a California brand that I'm going to try.

Personally, I'd like to have two types of olive oil in my house:

1) Cooking olive oil. Usually use "cheap" EVOO for this, but technically, it doesn't have to be that high-grade since it's being heated. 2) Good quality EVOO for salads, or eating on its own. That way, you actually maintain the flavour and health benefits.

> Costco carries the Kirkland Brand that's average

Kirkland's olive oil brand is not only one of the few imported brands that consistently passes tests as authentic 100% virgin olive oil but is also one of the most affordable

One of the Kirkland olive oils is excellent: The Kirkland Signature Toscano. Always fresh and the real deal. Only problem is they tend to sell out by mid-year and you have to wait until the next harvest arrives.

I'm surprised they didn't mention making your own olive oil as a way to be sure it's authentic. I assume if you have access to fresh olives it shouldn't be too hard?

It takes a press and ~10-15 lb of olives to make a liter of olive oil. If your buying them retail that could easily run 100$. I don't know if you consider that reasonable, but unless you have olive trees I would just pay a premium and buy local from somewhere you trust.

However, if your going to do this kind of thing making grape juice is a similar process and much easier. It also produces something that's almost completely different than what you buy in the store.

This kind of answer is why I love the HN community. Do you have any idea how much 100% pure olive oil would cost? If it costs say $80, then making it on your own and being assured of the quality really isn't that much more.

Your already paying the market cost of 100% pure olive oil at ~10$, the problem is fraud not manufacturing costs.

Basically, this is what happens when the FDA is not actually doing their job.

Here's a blog entry on doing that: http://ohhshop.com/blog/greenies/our-own-olive-oil-and-the-c...

As far as I can tell, they valued their labor at zero, and they don't get a break-even point until they produce at least 50 quarts from free olives.

Even commercial producers barely break even so this is hardly a surprise. According to UC Davis whitepapers olive oil production is the surest way to lose money as a grower in California.

That might not be the case if it weren't for all the fakes dragging prices down.

That just means there is an untapped marketing opportunity here. An artisanal brand of high quality olive oil could do very well in the Bay Area.

Or just make a nice label, buy some cheap oil and add green and yellow colour and some flavor packs, and you can make the same amount of money without all the hard work.

Oh wait, was that idea already taken :-)

It is hard. We have an olive grove so we have access to authentic olive oil, but it's hard. So hard that if you hire people to do it, they won't accept money as payment but will take part of your olive oil. Even the press people will not take money but olive oil.

The reason is simple: "olive oil" is way more valuable than what it's priced at, and it's priced the way it is because fraud caused its inflation. People in the know are aware that the price of a liter won't buy you a liter of authentic olive oil, so they'd much rather get the real stuff.

(That's like those who prefer getting paid in cocaine at the source where they know it's pure, because they know that even with money, you can't buy really pure cocaine elsewhere or it'll be way too expensive).

In Greece many people do it this way. Usually the story goes like this, someone has inherited a field with olive trees from his parents and once every two years, between September to November depending on the variety, they spend 3-4 days harvesting it. Harvesting is quite a demanding job and it requires a lot of hands if you do it the traditional way where they try to shake the branches with wooden sticks and it’s the only way if you have a small production because using machines is too expensive. Then you take the olives to an oil mill and they poor it into big 17 liter tins. Oil production per tree varies from 3 up to 10 liters. The good thing about olive trees especially the wild varieties is that they don’t need a lot of care. If you start from scratch planting new trees it could take at least seven years till you get the first harvest.

There have been a few stories about fake olive oil over the years. Here are some that got comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6162401

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7128495

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12190996

If you're looking for a starting point to try real olive oil, someone suggested "Iliada Extra Virgin Olive Oil 1 Litre". I can recommend it, though I'm certainly not a connaisseur. You can get it on Amazon.

Some peeps at UC Davis published a report on olive oil quality of various brands back in 2010:

http://olivecenter.ucdavis.edu/research/files/oliveoilfinal0...

More here: http://olivecenter.ucdavis.edu/research/reports

This reminds me of Orange juice and something called "flavor packs".

http://civileats.com/2009/05/06/freshly-squeezed-the-truth-a...

This will ruin OJ for you, unless you see it squeezed in front of you

I buy extra virgin olive oil in Greece. No need for freezing or anything. Just keep it sealed in the dark. But I get it that people all over the world have to buy olive oil from supermarkets, so maybe then it's different story. :shrug:

Incorporating old rancid stock is obviously bad. But besides that -- how bad is this if people don't actually care? The danger of saturated fats is being increasingly questioned[1] and evidence for the health benefits of antioxidants is scarce[2]. If it's just a matter of taste and people like the taste just fine then how bad is this really compared to other cost-cutting measures companies use?

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-co...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioxidant#Relation_to_diet

Any time you have food being labeled as something it is not, I think that's a very serious problem, regardless of any health benefits or taste. Is fraud OK if people don't know (almost everyone) and/or don't care (probably some) they're being deceived?

Part of me feels this is less objectionable than other fraud.

If customers pay a premium for olive oil, even though they don't know enough to tell the difference, I feel like the joke's on them. This is hard to justify, maybe I'm just a bad person.

As a corollary, if someone told me I had been duped in some similar way (eg. my bourbon is not actually from Kentucky) I'd question/blame my own judgement. Why do I pay for something when I can't even tell there's a difference?

Allergies are a separate matter, and I bet relevant labeling laws apply equally much, whatever you call the oil.

Many of us are a bit dumb when we start trying to be discriminating in the food and drink we consume. We won't get far in our culinary education if we're duped like this.

Absolutely. Yet in some cases perhaps we're so easily duped only because what we're learning to distinguish is not such a strong signal; it could be an education in overfitting.

https://xkcd.com/915/

Olive oil cut with soybean oil can have serious effects for people with allergies to soy.

http://www.paleohacks.com/oil/reason-for-adverse-reaction-to...

Likewise people with allergies to nut oils can have extreme adverse reactions and die. It's not just fraud, it's dangerous for the people eating it.

I thought that was the reason for the "May contain traces of X" warnings on many foods.

i would agree allergies are the biggest concern

But for anyone else..

i cook 95% of my meals, and evoo, extra virgin olive oil, is in all of them

i tried lots of different brands and styles and just sort organically went with the one with that left my body feeling and functioning in a way i preferred

anecdotally, i would say when i've cooked with other oils some had a sort of unsettlingly inert quality to them in regard to my body

i tried cooking with some nut oils for a while and they seemed to pass through my body unabsorbed

the same effect when i did try some other evoos

i thought little of it and was just happy with the brand i eventually settled on

when this study came out a while ago, i was surprised this shit is allowed, but unsurprised by the offending labels

my 'absorbtion theory' lacks any significant scientific rigor, but one annoying counterexample: the inconsistent evoo results; could be explained by the frustrating results of this investigation

Mislabeling - other than the obvious false advertising aspects - could be a problem for people with strict diets due to allergies or other health issues.

In a sense, it doesn't matter. So long as folks are liking the taste of what they are buying (or lack of strong taste, depending), it doesn't matter if it is real olive oil or not.

On the other hand, I find it detestable that they are getting swindled. I'd much rather the person know they are buying an oil mix and be able to choose between mixes, and know that accounts for the flavor of their premium oil. I know folks are going to buy "premium" products that really aren't anyway, but the contents should at least be honest.

In addition, if this practice carries over to other products, it could cause issues with food allergies and intolerances.

I don't think 2 ways different plant oils might not differ much in their health properties suffices to conclude that the only difference between oils is taste. PUFA content and resistance to heat degradation (conferred by the antioxidants in genuine EVOO) come to mind. Neither of those is supported by an incontrovertible mound of evidence either, but it seems to me that there is enough of a possibility that this food choice can impact health that the consumer should be provided enough information to make their own decision -- or at least not lied to about what they're eating.

The title is way too strong, but yes, most olive oil in non-producing countries is diluted.

In my country (Uruguay) we had this problem as an exporting country, many shady vendors dilute. They also did the same with honey (and got the country banned from Europe).

As the article says: "(1) diluting real extra-virgin olive oil with less expensive oils, like soybean or sunflower oil; (2) diluting high-quality olive oil with low-quality olive oil; or (3) making low-quality extra-virgin olive oil, "typically incorporating older—and often rancid—stocks of oil held over from bumper crops of previous seasons,"

I wonder how many other products and goods are adulterated or deceptively labeled. Probably many more than we'd be comfortable with.

Just the other day I cooked up some ground beef from Trader Joe's that was obviously adulterated. It cooked up with an odd texture and filled the house with a cheese-like smell that wouldn't go away for days. Beef should not smell like cheese.

We still tried the resulting patties and did not suffer any ill effects, but they weren't very appetizing, as you might guess. In the end we tossed the leftovers.

Just the other day I cooked up some ground beef from Trader Joe's that was obviously adulterated

About 40 years ago when I was a kid the local butcher would literally grind the beef in front of you while you waited. A lot harder to adulterate something when it's prepared on the spot.

I don't see that done any more, but maybe I'm just not shopping in the right stores. I live in suburbia; it's probably easier to find an authentic butcher shop in a real city.

Edit: I don't know the source of Trader Joe's particular ground beef. But I once saw a show on TV about how hamburger patties are made: There have a giant tray (hundreds of pounds) of relatively lean beef, and next to it a giant tray of trimmings (mostly fat). They grind and mix these in proportion to the desired leanness of the final product. Hamburger meat can be purchased in various grades which differ in fat content.

Unfortunately, none of that could explain what happened to you, unless maybe some of the fat mixed in to your hamburger meat was rancid?

Any recommendations on where/how to buy real olive oil in Canada? Many of the brands people talk about here do not ship to Canada.

This just reinforces what northern europeans think of southern europeans. Basically fraudsters.

What this means to me is that my olive oil will be three times more expensive.

Olive oil was never a health food to begin with. It's about as healthy as sugar water.

http://www.forksoverknives.com/nutrition-questions/#why-shou...

Taking a good look at the peer-reviewed literature relating to the medical effects of consumption of olive oil along with the quoted studies in your link, one might be reminded of the writer Bernard Shaw who appeared on stage after the performance of one of his plays. Cheering was unanimous and prolonged until finally it paused and someone suddenly shouted "Boo!" from the gallery to which Shaw immediately responded:

"You and I, Sir, are of the same opinion - but what are we against so many?"

The five-year PREDIMED trial found that daily consumption of olive oil reduced by 30 percent the risk of stroke or heart attack.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1200303#t=abstrac...

Who has recommendations about olive oil producers in Brazil?

Ok, just for the record, no one really does "crush the fruit and press the oil himself" anymore, that would be extremely inefficient (and hard work). You pay the local refineries to extract the oil. In Istria (Croatia) where I live farmers take their olives to the refinery and get back the first run of cold-pressed oil (here it's still pressed in hydraulic presses, not centrifuges). It's what we call Extra Virgine and it's the highest quality you can get. Refinery keeps the olives and further processes them to get the lower quality oils (at least 2 more runs) and in the end for bio diesel. I presume that's where the most of the oil in shops comes from. The price individual producer can get is ridiculously low compared to the final price you pay in the supermarket, so most farmers prefer to sell it directly when they can. Therefore extra virgin oil of the highest quality never really gets to the supermarkets in the large quantities, it's being sold to the restaurants and hotels directly.

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