Another page at http://pcjagg.dbs.aber.ac.uk/about.html

Analysis of Olive Oils at Aberystwyth

There are many reasons why olive oils are important.
There are many health benefits reported (lowers the "bad" LDL
cholesterol whilst having little or no effect on the "good" HDL
cholesterol)
The so-called Mediterranean diet, of which olive oil is a fundamental
part, is gaining in popularity as people strive for a healthier
lifestyle
It has been reported (BBC Radio 4 The Food Programme, May 1994) that
around 40% of olive oil on British supermarket shelves is adulterated;
similar figures have been claimed for the USA. Whatever the true
figure, adulteration undoubtedly takes place far too often
Italian Olive Oil is the most highly valued (thus other oils are
sometimes labelled as Italian), although the reason for this is
probably just good marketing and snobbery! It is probably not
coincidence that Italy is the biggest importer of olive oil in the
world, whilst being the second biggest exporter (just behind Spain). It
is widely believed that oil emerging from certain countries has in fact
been imported to the country from abroad, and is being sold on at a
premium as if it came from that country, so depressing the price of
olive oil. The honest producers not just in the country concerned but
worldwide are therefore losing out. We have seen no hard evidence to
support such rumours
Tuscany is traditionally the most favoured region for olive oil. More
olive oil is labelled as Tuscan olive oil than could possibly be
produced in Tuscany. If your bottle of olive oil is labelled Bottled in
Tuscany then it almost certainly was produced from olives from
elsewhere - maybe not even in Italy. The oil, or maybe the olives, were
then transported to Tuscany for (oil extraction and) bottling
In Aberystwyth, we have an ongoing collaboration with a group in
Pescara (Istituto Sperimentale per la Elaiotecnica) who have been
providing us with NMR data, assisting us in obtaining PyMS data and
supplying samples for use in our Raman spectrometer


This data is multivariate and we use statistical methods and neural
networks in conjunction with variable selection to process it. The
processing of such data in this way is known as chemometrics.

We have found that we can distinguish olive oils by their variety, with
a good degree of accuracy (typically over 90%, and up to 100% with some
varieties) using NMR data, and by region to a lesser accuracy.
Distinguishing between Italian and Israel olive oils was very easy. For
further information on our work, see our olive oil references.

See also my page on olive oil production.

The Vegetarian Society has a very informative page on olive oil.

See here for a page on Greek olive oil, and Spanish olive oil (but
despite what this page says, a good olive oil does lose its flavour if
used in frying - the volatiles are lost!)

If you're interested in cooking with olive oil and pasta, here's how to
make your own pasta sauce - it's simple!

Regards
http://www.multimania.com/syrie