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Comment by metroholografix | Hacker News Reader

Greek olive oil is considered the best in the world and doesn't suffer from Mafia infiltration which is a huge problem in Italy [1] [2] [3].

Here is some good quality Greek olive oil available in US, reasonably priced, that you can buy without fear of adulteration or other shadiness:

https://www.amazon.com/Terra-Creta-Kolymvari-Protective-Desi...

https://www.amazon.com/Iliada-Extra-Virgin-Olive-Liter/dp/B0...

The Greek extra virgin olive oil sold at Trader Joe's is also very good.

Avoid the - Whole Foods & 365 branded - Greek EVOO at Whole Foods: it was rancid every single time I've tried it.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-crime-food/italian-...

[2] https://www.oliveoiltimes.com/olive-oil-basics/mafia-olive-o...

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2016/02/10/the...

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I wasn’t aware you could buy anything from Amazon at all without fear of adulteration.

Yeah I would never buy anything electronic, or anything to consume or put on my body from amazon.

If you actually want cheap highly reproducable electronics amazon is fine. It is alibaba but twice as expensive for an order of magnitude reduction in shipping speed.

With a functional return policy!

Even if you buy it from the manufacture's official Amazon store?

Thanks to Amazon comingling inventory, you can buy something from one seller and have it fulfilled from the inventory of another. There's no protection from fakes and counterfeits. Even the reviews aren't enough to be sure.

That's not necessarily true in the context of the parent comment.

It only applies to deliveries directly from Amazon and drop shipping sellers, but Amazon is essentially a marketplace and the original sellers don't have to co-mingle.

You're completely safe from co-mingleing if you're actually buying through Amazon from the original manufacturer and the article information says something like "sold and delivered by TheOriginalManufacturer"

By the way (since I see this a lot, and I've thought the same thing before), it's commingling, not co-mingling.

Only if the original manufacturer does the shipping, which is not always true. If it says "prime" it's warehoused by Amazon, original manufacturer or not, and subject to commingling.

Yes, that's why I explicitly said that the article information has to include

> "sold and delivered by TheOriginalManufacturer"

It's commingled if it says "sold by TheOriginalManufacturer, delivered by Amazon"

It's a pretty small line next to the price.

(Prime delivery tag isn't an indicator btw, sellers can get prime certified and still handle their own shipping.)

https://sell.amazon.com/programs/seller-fulfilled-prime

This is not correct. All that means is that the inventory is stored and fulfilled from Amazon’s warehouses. Commingled is a (minority) subset of that.

Right, i was imprecise with that and should've said "commingling is only an option if the delivery is fulfilled by Amazon". The rest of my comment was entirely on point though.

Kinda a stretch to say it's a minority though. There wouldn't be such an issue with counterfeit articles from Amazon if it wasn't the norm

I do not like Amazon for many reasons (treating employees being the main). However I bought crapload of electronics there for personal use and for my business and it was fine either right from the start or was refunded / replaced without problems even when not being fulfilled by Amazon.

This works poorly when you buy something like an SD card, store something you care about on it, and then try to read it back off the card later.

Not to defend counterfeits products, but I wouldn't trust even the best SD card on earth to store something I care about.

For an SD card, “store something you care about” will very often mean photos or video. You have no choice but to trust the SD card for the time it takes you to get to your computer where you can dump the contents into something more reliable.

High end cameras usually have dual card slots to help deal with this, but even that won’t help when the failure mode is trying to write past the cards’ actual physical capacity, because the counterfeit advertise more storage than what’s actually there.

“Care about” could even just mean wanting the thing to provide at least, say, two nines of reliability. If my Raspberry Pi stops working after 2 years because the SD card failed, fine. If it stops working after 1 day because the SD card falsifies its capacity, I have zero nines and I’m not happy.

It just generally works poorly without large amounts of luck. Lots of counterfeit or garbage goods will work okay at first but wear out quickly or just be dangerous to operate due to cheap parts.

Is Amazon really that bad to work for? I had two roommates who were warehouse managers, and they didn't really seem to dislike their jobs much.

I think the parent refers to news about some packaging workers being mistreated, forming unions, and then those workers and unions being ignored and sidestepped.

Stuff like that https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2021/10/25/a-hard-hit...

They employ over a million people. There’s going to be a pretty wide range of experiences.

I worked for AWS, it was one of the best jobs I’ve had and the only one in decades where I could leave the office, not think about work at all until I came back in, and not feel the slightest bit guilty or anxious about that. I know others have had a very different AWS experience.

Also anecdotally, I’d always chat to the facilities team/janitors at if they were in the kitchen while I was having lunch. All of them also worked shifts at the distribution center that opened up nearby. Their only complaint was they couldn’t get enough shifts there. It paid better than cleaning the kitchens in the corporate offices. Again, no doubt there’s a wide range of experiences.

Yeah people enjoy bashing it like second mcdonald, but simple truth is a lot of people around the world enjoy working there compared to other corporations.

Is it a dream job since your childhood? Hardly, but they are fine. I have one friend back home in eastern europe, basically full time categorizing new items added on marketplace for couple of years. Clear promotion paths (he was promoted 3x so far IIRC), perks, he wanted to switch to full WFH anywhere and he could easily, no push to return to offices after covid heights. He had tons of opportunities to change job but he is content with where he is.

The EU has a minimum level of labour laws not present in the US federation.

>"I had two roommates who were warehouse managers"

Try packaging workers instead and see what happens

Greek olive oil is considered the best in the world

This is a pretty meaningless statement. It's like saying French wine is considered the best in the world. Perhaps true in some narrow sense, but the variations within a country are every bit as large as the variations between countries. Every country that produces olive oil produces some really top quality oil and some garbage oil

Personally I mostly buy Spanish olive oil these days. Not because Spanish olive oil is 'the best', but because the best oil I've found for the price I'm most often willing to pay at the store I normally shop at happens to be from Spain.

Greek olive oil is considered the best in the world[0] and doesn't suffer from Mafia infiltration which is a huge problem in Italy [1] [2] [3]

[0] Mediterranean fighting words, with no footnote for comment's boldest claim

Recent studies show[1] that adding a bracketed number after a claim increases credibility, as most people don't actually check the claim[2] anyways.

Perhaps, but consuming Greek olive oil comes at a grave price. The current life expectancy for Greece in 2022 is 82.64 years. The current life expectancy for Italy in 2022 is 83.86 years. Consuming Greek as opposed to Italian olive oil will reduce your life expectancy by nearly a year and 4 months. Thanks, but no thanks.

There is very good olive oil in Italy available. You just need to know where to look.

I can highly recommend this very good Swiss magazine testing many oils throughout Italy: https://shop.merum.info/de/taschenf%C3%BChrer/taschenf%C3%BC...

I recently had some very good Australian olive oil, Colbram brand. I expect there's less problems with fakery in Aussie EVOO, but not certain.

Australian olive oil is world standard

Plenty of supply and it's not a relatively massive export so I'd wager the incentive to fake it just doesn't exist

Good point. Hard to know who to trust, when it comes to olive oil, with so many scams, fakes, and contamination.

It depends on where you live. If you live in California, you should not be purchasing Greek olive oil as it will oxidize by the time it gets to you. 100% Californian olive oil is the way to go for health. Or better yet just use coconut oil and butter/ghee.

olive oil has plenty of unsaturated fatty acids, butter/ghee less so, coconut oil is outright advised against.

use ghee for high temperature (pan frying), olive oil for salads and normal cooking (like tomato sauce) and leave coconuts on the trees.

Coconut oil and butter are saturated fats, whereas olive oil is monounsaturated fat. While saturated fats might not be as bad as we thought, they are still still strongly associated with cardiovascular diseases. Not really in the same league as olive oil.

I believe that the question of whether saturated fat is unhealthy is still an open question.

> Greek olive oil is considered the best in the world and doesn't suffer from Mafia infiltration which is a huge problem in Italy

The current life expectancy for Greece in 2022 is 82.64 years. The current life expectancy for Italy in 2022 is 83.86 years. Clearly, Italian olive oil reduces mortality for 1 year, 3 months, 25 days, 4 hours and 48 minutes longer than Greek olive oil. And since Greek civilization had at least a few hundred years longer than Italian civilization at perfecting olive oil's mortality reduction, we can assume that given the same amount of time, Italian olive oil will always reduce mortality more than Greek olive oil.

Greek here, never heard of Terra Creta or Iliada, but the PDO stamps look legit (they are from famous oil-producing areas).

Terra Creta was everywhere in Crete when I was visiting there. Maybe it doesn't ship to the mainland very much?

Hm yeah, probably. I also don't notice oil brands very much, but these aren't some of the big ones (Altis, Elais, etc).

Holy moly, another Greek on ycombinator!!!! I am greek as well.

California olive oil is pretty good too.

I would also recommend Croatian oil.

Maybe greek olive oil is the most famous, but not the best; I don't think there is an official competition or comparison.

A decade ago a friend of my mother that had a small olive farm in Jordan used to send us a couple of 5 liter cans of oil and olives every year. I can say that was the best olive oil and the best olives in my life, but there is no way to prove it.

I like Grecian olive oils, but I also like Israeli olive oil. Very high quality. If you live in an area in the US where it's available (NY, and LA mostly) it's worth trying:

https://www.touristisrael.com/israel-olive-oil-industry/2819...

I will top that with Croatian olive oil is the best in the world, earned many prices, but is not available to buy internationally.

I personally like to buy Sicilian olive oil, from a local seller for only 7€ per Liter. It's so virgin that a bottle exploded that I had put a cap on. Quite the mess, but the quality speaks for itself.

What do you mean it exploded?

I am only speaking about taste but various italian olive oils I have tested are too... acrid in my opinion. In comparison, all greek olive oils I have had access to ranged from good to amazingly good. Speaking from the pov of someone whose main fodder is bread, olive oil and lettuce.

I am a big fan of the Spanish virgin olive oil at Costco (the one in the tall green bottle), so I got excited when I saw their olive oil from Italy. I thought it would also be great, but it tasted very very strange. I don't know what 'acrid' is, but the word sounds like what that oil tasted like.

Costco sells a few different Italian olive oils. The best flavor is the Toscano or Val di Mazara. (Which one they have varies from year to year.) They only have these for a while from late spring until they runs out, and it is the most recent October/November harvest. They are in tall square green bottles, perhaps similar to the Spanish you mention.

Yes, I should have been more specific. Out of the two italian olive oils in tall bottles, the one with the purple colors tasted bad to me. I think it says Italy on it in big letters. The green label bottle, also from Italy but which says Toscano, tasted just fine (though I still prefer the Spanish bottle).

Do you make sandwiches with olive oil and lettuce? Genuinely curious.

I'm not that commenter, but dipping toasted bread in olive oil is delicious. And with the lettuce, you can mix olive oil and balsamic with a bit of seasoning to make a simple vinaigrette for a dressing.

I am that commenter and exactly this (lemon is great too) The best there's some kind of cheese or fish around

Nice. How would one go about finding such suggestion for consumption in Europe?

Visit tour local Greek deli? They're not very numerous, but they're out there.

Most EU supermarkets should have some Greek EVOO (Tesco in UK and Jumbo in Netherlands have Iliada, Sainsbury's has a selection of Greek olive oils). Alternatively, find a Greek deli/market/imports place, they are in every country I've been to in northern Europe. They typically supply restaurants and should have a good selection of foods.

Look for PDO / Agrocert stamps.

Check this: https://shop.merum.info/de/taschenf%C3%BChrer/taschenf%C3%BC...

Thank you! The prices aren't even that bad.

What about Spanish olive oil?

Olive oil is very good whether Spanish/Greek/Californian.

The processing is the problem and the cultivation.

In my religious/fasting cakes I use olive oil and in my non-religious cold pressed sunflower oil instead of butter/margarine.

Spanish person here. Spain is the biggest olive oil producer in the world. So big that Italia, and others buys the oil and pack it with its own label. There, is where some adulteration may come from. In Spain you can buy directly from the producers called "Cooperativas agricolas".

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