Two Spanish businessmen were sentenced to two years in prison in Cordoba for selling hundreds of thousands of litres of supposedly extra virgin olive oil that was, in fact, a mixture of 70-80% sunflower oil and 20-30% olive.
In 2008, Italian police arrested over 60 people and closed more than 90 farms and processing plants across the south after uncovering substandard, non-Italian olive oil being passed off as Italian extra virgin, and chlorophyll and beta-carotene being added to sunflower and soybean oil with the same aim.
Most alarmingly, a study last year by researchers at the University of California, Davis and the Australian Oils Research Laboratory concluded that as much as 69% of imported European olive oil (and a far smaller proportion of native Californian) sold as extra virgin in the delicatessens and grocery stores on the US west coast wasn’t what it claimed to be.
Extra virgin oil is mixed with a lower grade olive oil, often not from the same country. Meanwhile, the chemical tests that should by law be performed by exporters of extra virgin oil before it can be labelled and sold as such can often fail to detect adulterated oil, particularly when it has been mixed with products such as deodorized, lower-grade olive oil in a sophisticated modern refinery.
The olive, in more than 700 varieties or cultivars, has been grown for its oil in the Mediterranean since 3000 BC. Unlike most vegetable oils, which are extracted from seeds or nuts, good olive oil is made using a basic hydraulic press, or more modern centrifuge, so it is more a fruit juice than an industrial fat.
Like any fresh product, olive oil deteriorates over time. The public are just not aware of what’s going on. There’s plenty of oil out there that’s rubbish: last year’s oil or older. Or not even olive oil.
How to buy olive oil: Find a seller who stores it in clean, temperature-controlled stainless steel containers. topped with an inert gas such as nitrogen to keep oxygen at bay, and bottles it as they sell it. Ask to taste it before buying. Favor bottles or containers that protect against light, and buy a quantity that you’ll use up quickly. Don’t worry about color. Ensure that your oil is labelled “extra virgin.” Try to buy oils only from this year’s harvest – look for bottles with a date of harvest. Failing that, look at the “best by” date which should be two years after an oil was bottled..