Combating olive oil fraud with nuclear innovations | Hacker News Reader

Combating olive oil fraud with nuclear innovations

iaea.org

106 pointsadomasm374 comments

There's a great book about the history of olive oil which devotes a whole chapter to modern olive oil fraud, enabled in part by regulatory capture of labelling legislation by the olive oil industry.

"Extra Virginity - The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil" by Tom Mueller

This heartening to hear and needed for other oils. We bought some Chosen avocado oil in the grocery store and it smoked on a low heat skillet. Avocado oil smokes at 500 F so clearly there was hardly any avocado oil in the bottle.

The answer is company ending fines but western governments don’t have the stomach for punishing companies on behalf of consumers.

Agreed. There needs to be some way for consumers to easily have products tested and significant fines issued against retailers that are found to be selling counterfeit items.

If the consumer gets a cut of that fineabd it's greater than the cost of the product testing then there will be an economic incentive for someone to go after this problem and the people who profit off of it.

Can you please give some examples of non-western governments fining companies on behalf of customers?

That's interesting, I'd have expected the most likely oil to adulterate with would be soybean oil since it's pretty cheap, but the smoke point is still fairly high. Maybe your bottle was rancid, too?

Maybe, but the taste wasn't rancid.

How exactly is spectroscopy a nuclear innovation?

The light hits the nucleus of an atom and bounces back to the instrument.

They buried the techniques in a few places.

Laser induced breakdown spectrometry (LIBS) https://appliedspectra.com/technology/libs.html

Laser ablation molecular istopic spectroscopy (LAMIS) https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2016/ja/c5ja0...

Linked in the article is another article that elaborates

https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/new-crp-implementation-...

*Enhancing Nuclear Analytical Techniques to Meet the Needs of Forensic Science’ (F11021)*

https://www.iaea.org/projects/crp/d52040

>This project will consider applications based on hand-held and portable devices including (but not limited to) ion mobility spectrometry (IMS), near infra-red (NIR) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometers and some bench-top laboratory instruments that have become ‘field’ transportable including laser induced breakdown spectrometry (LIBS), laser ablation molecular isotopic spectrometry (LAMIS), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, mass spectrometry (MS) and multi-spectral imaging (MSI). This CRP is conducted jointly with the Nuclear Sciences Instrumentation Laboratory under CRP G42007.

*‘Field Deployable Analytical Methods to Assess the Authenticity, Safety and Quality of Food (D52040/G42007)*

https://www.iaea.org/projects/crp/f11021

>ion and neutron beam techniques for elemental and molecular analysis is well established and such services are available through a great number of laboratories in the IAEA Member States operating ion beam accelerator or research reactor centers

Isotope spectroscopy I knew of:

For carbon/water isotope determination with spectroscopy you can use cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) for gas state stable isotopes (water, CO, CO2, CH4). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavity_ring-down_spectroscopy https://www.picarro.com/environmental/support/literature/mea...

Picaro instrument is ok at precision, cleaning is not fun, and matrix effects suck. Laser lifetime leaves much to be desired.

They can't even ensure we eat the type of fish we order... Food fraud is huge

I’ve come to peace with not being sure whether the olive oil I use for cooking is really what they say it is on the bottle.

But I also buy really real oil from a nice local supplier (F. Oliver’s) to use on salads and bread.

It’s pretty obvious the difference. The latter is so good. It costs about double the supermarket stuff, but it’s for a different purpose and I use it more sparingly.

I admit it would be nice if all olive oil tasted this good…but it’s something I gave up obsessing about a couple years ago.

I think supermarket oil is fine. The fake oil is mostly sold in discount shops like tk maxx and home bargains

How do you know?

I mean, this might down vote me even further. But I am from Spain. I can taste it. I use olive oil on pretty much everything. I never ever use any oil other than extra virgin olive oil. Even for frying

In fact, I can tell you that the 5 * oil sold in luxury bottles abroad is no better than the plain extra virgin. And that is where the fraud mostly exists (besides mixed oil in tk maxx). I have never been able to buy luxury oil outside of Spain. All the luxury bottles abroad contain normal oil. But I don't really care for luxury oil anyway. Normal extra virgin fulfills all my health and taste requirements

At the end of the day, if this misunderstood awareness of "fake oil" benefits my fellow countrymen and helps them develop supply chains of verified, expensive higher grade oils (which are a waste of money in my view but nevermind) then I guess these campaigns are very good. People in Spain extremely rarely will use anything other than plain extra virgin. It's like eating caviar. And farmers really struggle to get a fair price, especially when selling bulk to foreign buyers

No, there are widespread problems with olive oil fraud.

Plenty of studies have been done by purchasing a large # of bottles from supermarkets and they've all shown half or more of olive oils are either fake or rancid.

olive oil isn't even particularly great for cooking because of its low smoke point. avocado oil or beef/duck tallow are a good choice.

Of course, I have a variety of oils depending on what I’m cooking. I use olive oil for low and slow stuff like sauces.

Though not quite as high as avocado or safflower, I presume you're aware that refined olive oils can have pretty high smoke points. But it surprises me how often I'll be at a friend's home and they grease up their frying pan with EVOO.

I exclusively use EVOO. Never had a problem, never had a complaint. But then again I don't exactly deep fry food so maybe that's where the issue is.

yeah, for deep frying certain frozen food products, it might be better to reach temperatures above 170 °C, so the oil doesn't get too cold as you add the frozen food.

There can be two main reasons:

1. Their EVOO can reach temps ~200°C

2. They use medium temperatures on the frying pan (so they keep it at 180-200°C, or lower). This is especially true when you use pans with anti-stick coating, which literally break at high temperatures (it's even written in the instructions to avoid using the highest temperatures).

Yeah, for something like lightly frying some mushrooms, or caramelising onions (though butter is imo tastier for the latter) there's no reason not to use EVOO other than that it still won't be the cheapest option, but cooking won't get rid of all of its health benefits nor taste. I suppose maybe there's a case (I don't know if this has been studied or just people with differing anecdotes?) for cheaper than EV olive oil being as good as EV when using it for cooking over a certain temperature? I don't know.

That's not the whole story though. Often, what is more important is how stable the oil is below the smoke point. There's a pretty decent video on this by Adam Ragusea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_aFHrzSBrM

What the heck are you talking about? Olive oil is perfectly fine for cooking. Not everything needs high temp and fast searing. The smoke point of olive oil is plenty high for tons of sauteing applications.

I know that. I'm just saying, rather than buying cheap olive oil for cooking which is probably very impure and diluted with cheap vegetable oil, there are other oils which one can purchase which aren't imitated with frauds as often and which have higher smoke points.

if one is lazy and wants to buy just 1 oil for cooking, olive oil would not be it. It’s fine for a lot of cooking though.

Olive oil is great for cooking as long as you keep it below its temperature, 170 degrees celsius. I use a fancy IR thermometer because I'm a nerd.

"during frying olive oil behavior is usually equal or superior to that of refined vegetable oils" https://ift.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1541-433...

"olive oil, independently of its category label, is clearly resistant to degradation under domestic frying conditions (170 °C). Among the olive oil categories, the extra-virgin PDO olive oil was more resistant under the conditions of this study" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02786...

> I use a fancy IR thermometer

This is useless for taking absolute measurements like 170C. You have to calibrate the oil/pan's emissivity using a normal thermometer

That depends on how fancy the IR thermometer is.

A simpler thermometer may have a single IR receiver. In that case its output can be far from truth without an emissivity calibration.

Better IR thermometers have 2 or more IR receivers for different wavelengths and they compute the temperature based on the ratios between them.

In this case the measured temperature no longer depends on the value of the emissivity, but only on the deviation from the behavior of a gray body. With an increased number of IR wavelengths that are measured, it becomes less likely that a calibration could change the results, but cheap thermometers are unlikely to use such a sophisticated method.

Duck fat's smoke point is actually rather close to olive oil's. Actually, a low-acid extra virgin or virgin will have a higher smoke point. Also refined olive oil, of course, not that many people buy it.

Who cooks everything north of 400F?

I saute in butter all the time which has a smoke point of 350F or less. I adjust my cooking temperature to suit the dish.

If my pan is so hot that the olive oil is smoking, I'm probably burning the hell out of whatever I'm cooking.

> Who cooks everything north of 400F?

Depends on the cuisine. If I'm wok frying something as hot as possible is a good starting point!

Also if I'm going to throw 2lb of protein on a pan I need it as hot as I can get it so the temp doesn't drop down to nothing after the meat is added.

Won't you be using peanut or soybean oil for a wok?

And "wok hei" relies on explicitly igniting the oil to burn it, which renders the whole discussion moot.

If I'm trying to keep a pan hot in the face of 2 pounds of cold, watery protein, I either need something like a mass of cast iron, an induction system or a gallon of oil.

Extra virgin olive oil is easily denaturated under relatively low heat, which is why it is recommended to use it with salads etc.

The olive oil that is perfect for cooking, with a high smoke point, is the refined one, or a mix of refined and virgin.

Not a lot of people know the fact right, hence a lot of confusion.

Unfortunately the olive oil for cooking is much harder to find than virgin oil, thus everybody ends up using the oil that does not stand well the heat.

Saying that it is easily denatured by heat does not mean it will smoke at these temperatures, but it will get its unsaturated fats partly becoming trans fats etc, thus losing its dietary benefit.

Not everybody has the luxury of "coming to peace" with it. I have an extremely strict diet due to food insensitivies and olive oil is the only way I can get fat in my diet. Bad olive oil is cut with other oils and literally makes me sick.

The real stuff is extremely hard to find and now I stock up with a year's worth because the last place I sourced it from went out of business and took q while to find another location.

Sorry to hear that. Not sure where you’re located but check out the supplier I mentioned, it’s definitely pure.

https://folivers.com/

Thanks, good to have for emergencies although it looks like they're all flavors and don't have it plain.

They certainly do! In the ‘single varietal’ section:

https://folivers.com/product-category/single-varietal-evoo/

I usually get the Hojiblanca but seems that variety is unavailable online.

Also to be clear, I have no affiliation.

> The real stuff is extremely hard to find

I buy stuff like this

https://barianioliveoil.com/

and this

https://shop.sekahills.com/Products/Olive-Oil

These are both California olive oils, available at my local Whole Foods, and indicate clearly the harvest date. They taste far better than the mass produced brands. Are they not the real thing? Please enlighten me. If price isn't an issue which olive oil should I get if I like bold flavor?

you might also try Costco if you are in the US. Anecdotally, a friend of mine is a supplier for Costco on the food/beverage side, and told me that they did more diligence than all their other customers combined.

EDIT: you might also just try going direct to small suppliers, a lot wineries also make olive oil

https://winecountrytable.com/travel/other-activities/six-son...

It's tough to buy olive oil at Costco because they sell big containers, and good olive oil goes rancid before many people would be able to consume it all.

If its okay, may i ask what exact sensitivity do you have?

I have SIBO, so fodmaps plus more. Most things that are fodmap free still fuck me up.

Olive oil is commonly cut with other oils to the point that you have repeatedly run into health problems as a result of food fraud? I knew it was common, but that is basically at the point of routine.

It's worse then just health problems. People have died as a result of olive oil being cut with phenylamine, most notoriously in Sapin in 1981. An estimated 2100 people died. The survivors were still protesting as of a couple of years ago.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/fake-olive-oil-scandal-...

Why would anyone cut olive oil with with phenylamine? The former is dirt cheap. Wikipedia comes in clutch and reveals the root cause:

"Spanish regulations of the time allowed imports of rapeseed oil only for industrial use, and only if it has been denatured with aniline to prevent use as food"

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

The article goes on to reveal that the deaths were likely caused by something else:

"The WHO has since then tried to recreate the poisoning in laboratory animals with less-than-satisfactory results"

"when these three substances were given to laboratory animals, OOPAP was not acutely toxic, PAP was toxic only after injection, but not after oral administration, and OPAP was toxic only after injection of high doses.[3] Therefore, none of these three substances is thought to cause TOS.[3] Similar results were obtained after administration of fatty acid anilides"

If you can make it to Corning, CA, which is in the heart of California's olive country, you can stop by the Olive Pit and not only buy a variety of olive oils (many locally produced), but they also allow samples.

They do sell online as well but I haven't tried that option.

I wonder if you can side-hustle reviewing oils (or for society, if you’re wealthy).

It’d be awful getting sick on a bad batch, however.

I have a friend who moved to Portugal and acquired ~15 olive trees with the farmhouse he purchased. (And also oranges, lemons, pomegranates, plums, and grape vines). All for less than the price of a small flat in London.

It took him and his girlfriend a few days of work, but they harvested all the olives by hand (using rakes and nets), took them to a local olive mill and for around €50 (flat fee for any amount of olives up to a certain batch size) got back a 50-litre barrel filled with some of the most delicious extra virgin olive oil I've ever tasted. At least a year's supply for them.

Fast fibre internet there too despite being in the countryside. I don't think he's coming back!

The internet is good when it works. Mine has been out for a week. Motherf-ing Altice...

Oh so Altice also exists there? SFR in France is now legendary for all of its problems.

My parents paid for a fiber subscription for years before understanding that it wasn't using the fiber since it wasn't working, and when they did know, SFR sent us technicians to try to fix the problem. Each one of them came, and got to the same conclusion: "Oh, it doesn't work, I (the technician) should call someone in SFR and come back next week", and then proceeded to not come back the next week. 10 times. 10 technicians came and told me the same thing; even one of them told me that "Just switch to another provider it's not probably going to be resolved"

SFR was their first mistake, alas.

> a 50 litre barrel ... At least a year's supply for them

That's an unfathomable amount of olive oil to me! To finish off the barrel within a year between the two of them, they'd each have to be consuming 68 mL (4.6 tablespoons) of olive oil daily, providing 62 grams of fat.

That is a pretty normal quantity for a human.

For instance I control carefully the kind and the amount of fat that I eat. About 90% of my daily intake of fat comes from 50 mL of EV olive oil + 20 mL of cold-pressed sunflower oil.

There is a fraction of cold-pressed sunflower oil in order to provide enough linoleic acid and enough vitamin E. Eating only olive oil would require at least 100 mL daily, which would provide too many calories for a sedentary lifestyle.

So, with 70 mL of oil per day plus small amounts of fat from the rest of the food you get from fat about a third of the daily intake of energy for a sedentary lifestyle, which corresponds with most recommendations.

I consume about 67 mL of olive oil per day; I buy 6 liters of olive oil every 90 days. I'm type II diabetic, diet-controlled, which means I have to get my calories mostly from fats because I'm on a restricted carbohydrate diet.

Did they need some kind of visa to do that? or were they already EU citizens?

He's a UK citizen and his girlfriend is a Portuguese local, who he met after he moved there. I believe there are visas you can apply for if you can show you're investing a certain amount of money into Portugal (buying property, starting a business, etc).

I recently bought land with over 100 olive trees in Portugal. We use the stuff a lot but this will tie us over and with current prices, the monetary savings are relevant.

Another advantage; picking and trimming finally takes me away from the computer at least for a while. Picking takes quite a while, but it’s fun.

We have fiber for the house and Starlink for the land. 0 outings (that I know off) on either so far (knock on would).

Yeah, there's olive oil for sprinkling on a salad or sauces where you're going to smell and taste it, and then there's cooking oil. I'd happily spend a fair bit on a small quantity of the former (Extra Virgin) from a local producer since it's going to go rancid quickly anyway, and get non-EVOO for cooking.

I still use light olive oil since it's mono-unsaturated and a bit more healthy, but it also just lasts longer in a liter+ jug. I wouldn't want to have the bottle open for more than a few months, you can smell the oxidation. It doesn't seem like the counterfeiting is as bad for the moderate cost and processed version either.

That said, last I was at WholePaycheck they ONLY had EVOO and a huge shelf of it, too. Gotta go to the regular store for the light stuff.

A nice way to achieve that is to get cheap “salad oil”, which is a blend of olive oil and some other oil. GEM is a common brand where I live. Usually it’s in a bigger container.

Chances are, the light olive oil is the same thing, but 3x more.

Are you saying that most light olive oil isn't olive oil?

I guess it's possible, but there's profit without doing that too. All the research I've heard (eg 80% fake) is for EVOO. I guess it could be like the subway fake tunafish scandal (debunked?)*. You can get a lot more oil out of olives after the first press, but you don't get the flavor or smell, and it's certainly a lot cheaper to make

Seems like there's more money in suing a reputable producer for an allergic reaction than cutting $5-10/liter extra light olive oil with $3-5/liter corn/soy/peanut/canola. That's gonna kill somebody!

* https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/judge-in-subway-cas...

It’s a commodity that has been counterfeited for centuries.

I buy only California olive oil, no imports, because the regulation is a lot stronger. Costs more, but at least I know I'm getting the real thing.

Since some time I was noticing that my Olive oil for cooking was "sticky" and when frying stuff sticks more to my pans.

I switched to this: https://theflowerfarm.nl/ (oh, it's Dutch only apparently.) Anyway, it's good stuff, palm oil free, plant based, and fries very will in my metal pans, much less sticky.

I was wondering, I noticed that my Olive oil is "processed oil" now, I swear it was just pure olive oil in the past. Could this be it, fake low quality oil?

“As of 2021, the most frequent type of adulteration of olive oil is that oil of lower quality is mixed into it.[24] Adulterated oil is usually no more serious than passing off inferior, but safe, products as superior olive oil, however in 1981 almost 700 people died, it is believed, as a consequence of consuming rapeseed (canola) oil adulterated with aniline intended for use as an industrial lubricant, but sold as olive oil in Spain (see toxic oil syndrome).”

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

Spaniard here. That case was so mediatic that no one tried to sell canola oil for the consumers. And of course the controls on that skyrocketed.

(I think by "mediatic" you mean high-profile / highly controversial etc)

Yes, highly controversial and the scandal it's still infamous on every media and press.

Mediatic in my language (and almost by extension it could in English by adapting Romance roots) means something widespread in media but as highly broadcasted over and over because of being scandalous/controversial.

Mediatic isn't a word in English currently (not according to the Oxford Dictionary at least). But let's make it happen ! ;)

Neither it was "liderar" and "líder" in Spanish (líder from Eng leader, and liderar is 'to lead') about just 100 years ago, and that word almost looks like has been in Spanish forever...

Non sequitur ... ? Wrong thread?

You didn't like being corrected, so you're just giving us random etymology lessons? :D

Poisonous oil seems to have been invented as a cover-up. The geographical distribution of the suspect oil was far wider than the geographical distribution of the sickness, and some of the victims were positive they had not used the oil. Much of the evidence cited in the official investigation has been shown to have been fabricated.

Poisoning by organophosphates on tomatoes is a much better fit for the facts.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/aug/25/research.h...

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