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<pre>Found at http://www.living-foods.com/index.shtml , the following
article .
I didn't post it until somebody else opened the subject and I suspect
that Turkish suppliers were also abused by some dishonest Italian
producers.
I continue to trust traditional small producers (specially in Syria).
Best regards
Souhair
http://www.multimania.com/syrie
PS Sorry for the length of this post but I don't like to quote excerpts
and I feel some people don't access Internet sites.

The Olive Oil Scandal
By Raymond Francis

Reprinted from Beyond Health Copyright 1998

For more than a decade I have advised people to substitute olive oil
for the regular oils available in the supermarket. Good advice. But
here's the problem: trying to find real olive oil is like looking for a
needle in a haystack. Olive oil has been part of the human diet for
more than 5000 years. These millennia of human experience plus modem
research indicate that olive oil is beneficial to health and that we
can safely include it in our diet. In fact, olive oil has been singled
out as contributing to the health of Greek centenarians. But, to get
the same health effects as the Greek centenarians, the oil has to be
made the way they made it. The problem is most of the olive oil on the
market does not duplicate what our ancestors were eating, and people
are not getting what they think they are buying. Almost all olive oil
is processed in ways that result in the loss of nutrients which are
essential to health.

Olive oil is almost unique among oils in that it can be consumed in the
crude form without refining. This has the effect of conserving all its
vitamins, essential fatty acids, and other nutrients. Because it
contains all these nutrients, including powerful antioxidants, real
extra virgin olive oil is beneficial to health and protects us from
damage by free radical oxidation. Cell membranes contain fatty acids
that are highly susceptible to free radical damage. This damage
produces lipid peroxides that can kill the cell. Real olive oil
contains polyphenols, vitamin E, and other natural antioxidants that
prevent this damage.

Numerous studies show that olive oil reduces cholesterol, lowers blood
pressure, inhibits platelet aggregation, and lowers the incidence of
breast cancer. Because it is so rich in antioxidants, olive oil appears
to dramatically reduce the oxidation of LDL cholesterol, thereby
preventing heart disease. These same antioxidants also add to the
stability, shelf life, and flavor of the oil.

Historically, high quality olive oil, rich in antioxidants, was easy to
obtain, but not any more. Today, high quality oil is available only in
relatively small quantities, usually from family owned farms, where the
oils are produced in ways similar to how the Greeks and Romans made
theirs. On these farms, olives are picked by hand so as not to damage
the skin or pulp. They are transported in well aerated containers and
milled within 48 hours of harvesting. Before milling, leaves and twigs
are removed, the olives washed and dried, and then stone pressed the
same way as it was done in antiquity. The resulting olive paste was
then pressed in a hydraulic press without the use of heat, hot water,
or solvents. The oil is left unfiltered as filtering removes many
nutrients. The first pressing produces the best "extra virgin" oil.

The problem with most of today's olive oil is that it is rarely
produced in the old way, which is more time consuming and expensive.
Due to the increasing demand for olive oil, the trend has been to
reduce production costs by moving toward more automation and
concentration of production in ever larger installations. These modem
factories extract more oil more cheaply, but their processing methods
substantially reduce the nutritional quality of the oil.

To reduce costs, olives are machine harvested along with leaves and
twigs. Olives that have dropped on the ground, which can be said to
contain bad oil, are often mixed with the good ones. They are shipped
in all kinds of containers, many of which are poorly ventilated, and
heaped in large piles where the olives are stored for too long and
often become moldy. The oil is then extracted in a continuous
centrifuge where hot water is used to help separate out the oil.

Antioxidant polyphenols are soluble in water and are washed away in
this process, thereby lowering the shelf life and the nutritional
quality of the oil. Italy alone produces 800,000 cubic meters of waste
water per year from this process. Because substantial amounts of
antioxidants are washed away, factory produced olive oils have a short
shelf life of only months, whereas real olive oil lasts for two to
three years. Factory produced olive oil is filtered and looks clear.
Real olive oil is not filtered and looks cloudy.

Most people think that by purchasing "extra virgin" olive oil they are
getting a high quality oil.

Unfortunately, in most cases, this is not true. It's more complex than
that. A label reading extra virgin is no guarantee of quality. For one
thing, nowhere does it say that extra virgin olive oil has to be made
100% from olives. An major criterion for grading olive oil is its level
of acidity. Extra virgin oil should have a free oleic acid acidity of
no more than one percent, whereas ordinary virgin olive oil can have an
acidity of up to 3.3 percent.

Lower quality oils can be refined to bring the acidity down so they can
be labeled as extra virgin. But now the oil has been refined, and
that's not what you want. That's why being labeled extra virgin is no
guarantee of getting high quality oil, which has not been processed in
ways that reduce its nutritional value. To complicate matters even
more, the term "extra virgin" has no official meaning in the United
States. The U.S. is not a member of the International Olive Oil
Council. So, olive oil sold here can be labeled extra virgin without
meeting the accepted international standards.

Another reason why you can't trust extra virgin olive oil is
exemplified by a problem that manifested last year, and may turn out to
be the biggest food fraud of the 20th Century. Despite the fact that
details of this scandal have been published in Merum, a Swiss-German
magazine, and in Italian journals such as Agra Trade, and the newspaper
Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, this information has been successfully
suppressed and is known to only a handful. Investigators are gathering
evidence indicating that the biggest olive oil brands in Italy,
Bertolli, Sasso, and Cirio, have for years beer systematically diluting
their extra virgin olive oil with cheap, highly-refined hazelnut oil
imported from Turkey. International arrest warrants have been issued
and so far documents indicate that at least ten thousand tons of
hazelnut oil are involved. As much as 20% hazelnut oil can be added to
olive oil and still be undetectable to the consumer. In fact olive oil
labeled "Italian" often comes from Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, Spain, and
Greece. Considering what has happened in Europe, where there are strict
regulations, imagine what can happen in California where there are no
regulations. Apparently, more oil is "produced" in California than
there are olives available. The truth is, most of the extra virgin
olive oil on the market does not supply all the nutritional value and
health giving properties that we have a right to expect from olive oil.

This is scary stuff when you consider how extremely important oil is to
human health. Our modem chronic disease problems are the result of
radically changing, in a short period of time, the fundamental
parameters of human existence, namely: diet, environment, and behavior.
One of the most fundamental changes in our diet has been the kind and
the amount of fats and oils that we consume. For example, the
consumption of hydrogenated oils has proved to be a disaster for human
health. Hydrogenated oils have been implicated in both our cancer and
heart disease epidemics. In fact, all modem processed oils are
injurious to human health. To reverse our pandemic of chronic disease,
we have to return to eating a more traditional diet, and high quality
olive oil can safely be included in that diet. It's not so much that
olive oil should be added to the diet as much as healthy, real olive
oil should be used to replace the unhealthy, processed oils now being
consumed.

How does one ensure that they are eating the most healthful oil? Find
an extra virgin olive oil that is cold pressed, unfiltered, and looks
cloudy. The oil should be packaged in dark glass bottles to protect it
from the damaging effects of light. Real olive oil is still made in
small estate bottled settings. The challenge is to find one that does
it! all right.

After selecting the oil, it has to be stored properly. When properly
stored, real extra virgin olive oil can last two to three years.
Because of processing, most of the extra virgin oil on the market has a
shelf life of only a few months. A good rule of thumb is to purchase
oil in small bottles and consume it within a year of purchase; this
will also ensure getting the best flavor. Store the oil away from both
heat and light.

Storing in a dark place is important because exposure to light will
start a chain reaction that will destroy the oil a thousand times
faster than oxygen. During storage, olive oil oxidizes and undergoes a
slow, continuous, and irreversible deterioration until it becomes
inedible.

The bottom line is that modem, factory- produced olive oil has been
stripped of its health enhancing nutrients, and the task of selecting a
high quality oil has been made very difficult. That's why Beyond Health
has made the selection process easier for you. We have searched for a
high quality, estate bottled oil that meets our standards and we have
found one. The brand name is Bariani. It's produced by the Bariani
family on a small farm in the central valley of California. Their
olives are grown without pesticides.

They are hand picked from the trees, carefully washed and dried, and
milled with a stone wheel within 48 hours of harvesting. It is pressed
in a hydraulic press, collected in stainless steel vats, decanted, and
bottled.

This first cold pressed oil is the real stuff and retains all the
natural flavor and goodness. Bariani is used by chefs in a number of
fine restaurants. It is available at selected specialty food stores in
California, and from Beyond Health.

Raymond Francis is an M. L T.-trained scientist and an internationally
recognized leader in the emerging field of optimal health maintenance.


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