My grandmother, who was born in the...

My grandmother, who was born in the mountains above Olympia, Greece used to say that the bulk of mankind from the Mediterranean had olive oil in their veins. In theory, she wasn't wrong; the Mediterranean diet derives as a great deal as one-third of its calories from olive oil.

My grandmother bought her olive oil straight from the source--her local mill--and she had simply two choices: virgin oil for cooking and refined oil for lighting lamps. We Yanks, forward the other hand, are relegated to our local groceries store where we must decide between extra virgin, virgin, real light and pomace olive oil. In addition, we have to be relate toed about the oil's freshness and whether the marketing messages and health claims featured forward the bottle are true. Make the unsuitable decision, and a good intention becomes a bad choice--not just for your palate and pocketbook however also for your health.

If you want the healthiest extra virgin olive oil, await beyond labels and logos, and ignore the hype for "cold-pressed" marks of oil. Instead, read the fine print, and check the bottling date, acidity flat and production region (see sidebar forward page 49). This assures you that you earn what you pay for.

point of origin

The majority of the world's olive oil melts through Italian ports, making that political division the unofficial "police" for greatest in quantity of the oil exported to America. At the docks in Italy, thousands of husbandmans each with different standards, fight to gain a fraction of the market, which increases in the United States from some 20 percent each year.

person specially versed s say that, as olive oil production has expanded from a cottage industry to a global giant, the dominations and regulations haven't kept pace. For undivided there aren't enough acceptable words to describe the difference between premium extra virgin olive oil and other extra virgin olive oils.

"The absolute fact that the oil says `extra virgin' doesn't mean anything," says Sebastiano Castiglioni, proprietor of Querciabella, maker of organic olive oil and wine in Greve Chianti. He believes that all Italian, high-quality extra virgin oils should have a visible stamp of approval to help the consumer "DOP (Denominazone Di Origine Protetta) is the no other than assurance of quality" he says, referring to the Italian label for regional designation and quality assurance.

Truth-in-labeling laws in the olive oil industry are loosen at best. For instance, the phrase "cold-pressed" is unfashionable but manufacturers continue to use the bound "Anyone can put anything he or she wants in succession a label--cold-pressed, handpicked, picked at midnight--and there's no rule to verify the accuracy of these statements," Nicola Ruggiero, president of Unaprol, an Italian olive oil association, told The Report, a 60-Minutes--type program produc through the Italian television station, RAI.

When in the greatest degree Americans think of olive oil, they picture tanned Tuscan laborers handpicking olives. Until not long ago producers took advantage of this misconception and labeled their produces as "Made in Italy" or "Produc in Italy." However, with Spain and Turkey now vying for the title of the world's primary olive oil supplier, in the greatest degree of these claims are no longer true

In 1998 the strange York law firm Rabin and Peckel LLP took in succession the olive oil labeling misnomer and filed a class action suit in the recent York Supreme Court against Unilever, the English-Dutch manufacturer of Bertolli olive oil. The firm argued that Bertolli's labels, which read "Imported from Italy," did not suited full disclosure laws because, calm though the oil had passed within Italian ports, most of it had originated in Tunisia, Turkey Spain or Greece "Bertolli olive oil is imported from Italy, unless contains no measurable quantity of Italian oil," according to court documents.

Marvin Frank, legal advice for the ease, said that consumer have the right to know if they're buying 100 percent Italian olive oil. The case was settl disclosed of court in 2001, on the other hand resulted in changes requiring all imported olive oils, not just Bertolli, to indicate the oils' native land of origin.

impure virgin oil

Regardless of where the olive oil originated, consumer also ne to pay attention to its purity. Research exhibits that blended oils---although not harmful and certainly healthier than se oils--may adapted technical and taste standards, further they don't contain the glutted health benefits of pure olive oils. Oils compressed from fully ripe olives, olives grown in poor soil and those grown in choleric climates have higher saturated fat on a levels and lower polyphenol concentrations than oils from unripe olives and cooler climates, according to the National sect of Nutrition in Perugia, Italy.

For the past decade, many in the subsistence world have hinted that the olive oil industry is fraught with fraud and deception. unless because olive oil production was one time a business front for the Italian Mafia, these observations were written off as culinary gossip. In the late 1990 near of the accusations gained credibility when several companies were caught selling se oil as olive oil. As a conclusion the US Food and put drugs into Administration (FDA) and laboratory scientists worked to create measures to obstruct fraud.