Olive oil

• 1. Introduction

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  Olive oil is the liquid fat pressed from the fruit of Olea europaea, and a Carabinieri investigator interviewed on the American program 60 Minutes once said that "olive oil fraud has gone on for the better part of four millennia." Nobody counterfeits something that nobody wants. For thousands of years, people have thought this plain golden-green liquid worth faking, taxing, trading and burning in sacred lamps. It anoints kings, fuels lamps, softens skin and dresses salads. It also sits at the center of police raids, courtroom indictments and arguments over what a single word on a bottle is allowed to mean. How did a crushed fruit become a form of wealth in the ancient world? What does the word virgin actually promise a buyer? And who pours the most of it, and who pours almost none?

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• 2. Ancient Roots

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  Archaeologists working in Galilee have found evidence that by 6000 BC people there were already turning olives into oil. A now-submerged prehistoric settlement south of Haifa shows the same practice by 4500 BC. The story reaches back even further. Neolithic people collected wild olives from Asia Minor as early as the 8th millennium BC. Where and when the tree was truly domesticated remains unclear. The modern tree may have come from ancient Persia and Mesopotamia, though some scholars argue for Egypt. Genetic studies suggest today's cultivated varieties descend from several wild populations.

  On Crete, the oldest surviving olive oil amphorae date to 3500 BC, in Early Minoan times. Production is assumed to have begun before 4000 BC. By the Late Minoan period, around 1500 BC, olive trees were certainly cultivated, and the oil became a principal product of Minoan civilization. It is thought to have represented wealth. Jugs found in a tomb on the island of Naxos, in the Aegean Sea, held traces of oil more than 4,000 years old.

  Egypt wanted that wealth. Dynastic Egyptians before 2000 BC imported oil from Crete, Syria and Canaan. Around 1960 BC, the Egyptian exile Sinuhe, living in northern Canaan, wrote of abundant olive trees there. Clay tablets from the archives of the city-state Ebla, near Aleppo, add a written record. Some dozen documents dated to 2400 BC describe the lands of the king and the queen. The tablets survived because the fire that destroyed the palace baked them hard.

  Olive oil was also a major export of Mycenaean Greece, around 1450-1150 BC. In the Iron Age, Ekron, Timnah and Gezer, near the Judaean Lowlands, became key centers of production and commerce. The Samaria Ostraca, found in the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, mention "washed oil," a term believed to mean virgin oil.

  The Phoenicians carried the tree westward. Olives reached Greece, Carthage and Libya sometime in the 28th century BC, and the oldest traces of oil in Italy date to the 3rd millennium BC. Greek colonists later introduced olive farming to places such as Spain, and it spread across the Roman Empire. By the 1st century AD, the historian Pliny the Elder judged Italy's oil excellent and reasonably priced, "the best in the Mediterranean." Then the tree crossed an ocean. In the 16th century it was planted in the Americas, in Chile, Argentina and California, where the climate resembled the Mediterranean.

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• 3. Sacred and Everyday Uses

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  Athens owes its name to an olive tree, according to Greek myth. The goddess Athena offered the tree as a gift, and it was judged more precious than the salt spring offered by her rival Poseidon. Across the ancient world the olive has been a symbol of peace between nations.

  The Spartans and other Greeks rubbed themselves with oil while exercising in the gymnasia. The cosmetic use began early in the 7th century BC and spread to every Hellenic city-state, along with athletes training in the nude. It lasted close to a thousand years despite its great expense. Aristotle, in his History of Animals, even recommended a mixture of olive oil with cedar oil, ointment of lead or ointment of frankincense as a contraceptive.

  The Minoans used the oil in religious ceremonies. In Jewish observance, pure oil from the first pressing was the only fuel allowed for the seven-branched menorah, first in the Mishkan and later in the Temple in Jerusalem. Priests prepared that oil and stored it in designated vessels. Hanukkah recalls the rededication of the Temple after the Maccabean Revolt. Tradition says one cruse of consecrated oil, enough for a single day, burned for eight. Ancient Israelite religion also used a holy anointing oil, made with olive oil, to consecrate priests, kings, prophets and sacred objects.

  Christian churches carry the practice on. The Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Anglican churches use olive oil for the oil of catechumens and the oil of the sick. Bishops consecrate olive oil mixed with a perfuming agent such as balsam as sacred chrism. It is used in confirmation, baptism, the ordination of priests and bishops, the consecration of altars and churches, and the anointing of monarchs at their coronation. Eastern Orthodox Christians keep vigil lamps in churches, home prayer corners and cemeteries. Each is a glass holding olive oil floating on a little water, with a wick on a cork float. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints uses blessed pure olive oil to anoint the sick.

  The oil also does humbler work. It lubricates kitchen machinery such as grinders and blenders, serves as a base for soaps, detergents and some cosmetics, and can stand in for machine oil. Chemists have even used it as both solvent and ligand in making cadmium selenide quantum dots. The Ranieri Filo della Torre prize, awarded yearly, honors poetry, fiction and non-fiction written about extra virgin olive oil.

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• 4. From Fruit to Oil

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  Under traditional millstones, olive paste sits for 30 to 40 minutes. Shorter grinding gives a rawer paste, less oil and a less ripe taste, while longer grinding oxidizes the paste and dulls the flavor. Modern hammer, blade and disk mills reduce olives to paste in seconds. Next comes malaxation, in which the paste is stirred for 20 to 30 minutes so that microscopic oil droplets merge into larger ones.

  The paste is then spread on fiber disks stacked in a column and pressed. That yields oil and water together. Oil is less dense than water, so it was once separated slowly by gravity. Centrifuges, with one exit for the heavier watery part and one for the oil, now do the job much faster. Leftover water matters, because it speeds degradation by microorganisms. Smaller mills do not always separate perfectly, which is why a small watery deposit sometimes collects at the bottom of a bottle.

  Ripeness shapes everything. Underripe olives usually give bitter oil, and overripe olives can bring fermentation defects. The fruit shifts from green to violet to black as it matures, and the flavor of the oil follows. Olive trees tend to produce well only every couple of years, so harvests are larger in alternate years. A drought during the flowering phase can lower quality.

  Some producers sell oil unfiltered, with a slightly cloudy look that has become trendy among buyers who want less processed food. The technical literature argues the opposite. Fine suspended particles hold water and enzymes, and they slowly settle into a deposit that risks spoilage. Filtration soon after centrifuging is recommended.

  Ancient methods were different. Mycenaean producers squeezed olives in woven mats and collected the oil in vats, a process known from the Bronze Age. Some of the earliest rotary olive mills turned up in southern Italy. The trapetum and the olive press spread through the Imperial era, and screw presses were in use from Spain to the eastern Mediterranean. Some Roman-era presses are still used today. In the ancient Levant, the finest oil came from ripe olives picked at the top of the tree and lightly pressed. Inferior oil came from olives stored until they softened or left in pits to decay. The Geoponica says salt and a little nitre were added when oil was stored. Joseph Graham's hydraulic pressing system of 1795 greatly improved productivity. Medieval Levantine cooks sometimes used anpeqinon, a sharp green oil from unripe olives, in cuisine and medicine.

  The pulp left behind is called pomace. It still holds about 5-10% of its weight as oil, which only chemical solvents can extract, in specialized plants rather than oil mills. Since Roman times, pomace has served as a fuel that burns hot, long and with less smoke than charcoal. The wastewater is a modern headache. It amounts to millions of tons a year in the European Union, is toxic to plants and cannot go through conventional water treatment. Researchers are developing a process called valorization, which aims to turn pomace into animal feed, food additives and phenolic and fatty acid extracts.

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• 5. Where It Grows and Who Drinks It

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  World production of olive oil in 2022 was 2.7 million tonnes. Spain made 24% of it, the largest share of any country. Italy, Greece and Turkey are the other large producers, with a collective share of 59% of the global market, and Tunisia also ranks among the major producers.

  Villacarrillo, in the province of Jaén in Andalucía, is a center of the trade. Andalucía accounts for 75% of Spain's olive oil, and Jaén province alone produces 70% of the Spanish total. The world's largest mill, called an almazara in Spanish, stands in Villacarrillo and can process 2,500 tonnes of olives a day.

  In Italy, Calabria and above all Apulia are the major producing regions. Many PDO and PGI extra virgin oils come from there. Tuscany also produces extra virgin oil, in cities such as Lucca, Florence and Siena, which belong to the association of Città dell'Olio. Italy imports about 65% of Spanish olive oil exports.

  The biggest producers are not the biggest per-person users. Greece leads the world at around 24 liters per person each year. Spain uses 15 liters, Italy 13 and Syria around 3. Canada manages 1.5 liters. The United States uses about 1 liter, and it stands outside the main international body that sets the rules for the trade.

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• 6. Reading the Label

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  On a bottle of olive oil, "acidity" does not mean what a chemist would expect. It is not a pH reading but the percentage, by weight, of free oleic acid. As oil degrades and oxidizes, fatty acids break loose from their glycerides, free acidity rises and hydrolytic rancidity sets in. A second test, the peroxide value, tracks oxidation by free radicals.

  Those measures sort oil into grades. Extra virgin oil, the top grade, comes from cold mechanical extraction with no solvents or refining. It has no more than 0.8% free acidity, some fruitiness and no defined sensory defects. In many producing countries it makes up less than 10% of the oil. Virgin oil allows up to 2.0% acidity and may have some defects. Lampante virgin oil takes its name from the Italian word for lamp, because it is not fit to eat without refining. Refined oil, with free acidity of no more than 0.3%, is virgin oil stripped of color, odor and flavor. Bottles labeled pure olive oil or simply olive oil are mostly refined oil with a little virgin oil added for taste. Olive pomace oil may not be called simply olive oil.

  The International Olive Council, an intergovernmental organization of producing states, officially governs 95% of international production. The European Union regulates protected designation of origin labels. The United States is not a member, but on the 25th of October 2010 the Department of Agriculture adopted voluntary grades that closely parallel the council's. Certification costs a fee. California went further in 2014 with mandatory standards for producers making more than 5,000 gallons from California-grown olives. The oleologist Nicholas Coleman considers the California Olive Oil Council's certification the most stringent of the voluntary American schemes.

  Marketing words add confusion. Pure, Classic, Light and Extra-Light were introduced by manufacturers in countries that do not traditionally use much olive oil. They describe taste strength, and they do not mean fewer calories than extra virgin oil. Cold pressed has a regulated meaning in Europe, where centrifuged oil must be labeled cold extracted. In practice, no reliable international definition exists, and the usual limit is a temperature of about 27 degrees Celsius. First cold pressed says only that the oil came from a press, because no second press of virgin oil exists. Tuscany and Liguria harvest in November, when olives are so cold that producers warm the paste to extract oil efficiently.

  Origin is the trickiest line. A label may say an oil was bottled in a certain country, which does not mean it was produced there. Most major American brands print "imported from Italy" in large letters on the front and list other origins in tiny print on the back.

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• 7. Fraud and Crime

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  In Italy and Spain, critics have long alleged that regulation is lax and sometimes corrupt. One claim holds that only about 40% of the oil sold as extra virgin in Italy truly meets the specification. Colza oil, from rapeseed, with added color and flavor, has been sold as olive oil. In 2007 the Italian government passed a labeling law requiring each bottle of Italian oil to name its farm and press and give a breakdown of blended oils. In February 2008, EU officials objected that such labeling should be voluntary. Under EU rules, oil can be sold as Italian even if it contains only a small amount of Italian oil.

  In March 2008, 400 Italian police officers carried out Operation Golden Oil. They arrested 23 people and confiscated 85 farms, after an inquiry revealed a scheme to relabel oils from other Mediterranean nations as Italian. In April 2008, another operation impounded seven plants and arrested 40 people across nine provinces. The suspects had added chlorophyll to sunflower and soya bean oil and sold it as extra virgin. Authorities seized 25,000 liters of the fake oil before it could be exported.

  The case reached a famous name on the 15th of March 2011. Prosecutors in Florence indicted two managers and an officer of Carapelli, a brand of the Spanish company Grupo SOS, which later became Deoleo, over falsified documents and food fraud. A Carapelli lawyer, Neri Pinucci, said the company was not worried and called the case an irregularity in the documents. In February 2012, Spanish authorities investigated Operation Lucerna. Palm, avocado, sunflower and other cheaper oils had been blended in an industrial biodiesel plant and passed off as Italian olive oil. The Guardia Civil said the oils were not toxic. Nineteen people were arrested after a year-long investigation.

  The journalist Tom Mueller wrote the article "Slippery Business" for the New Yorker and then the 2011 book Extra Virginity. On the 3rd of January 2016, Bill Whitaker presented a CBS News program with Mueller and Italian authorities. It reported that 5,000 tons of adulterated oil had been sold in Italy the month before, with organized crime heavily involved, a pattern called Agrimafia. Mueller said the profit margin on fake oil was three times that of cocaine. He estimated that over 50% of the oil sold in Italy was adulterated, along with 75-80% of the oil sold in the United States. Whitaker's team bought three samples labeled extra virgin in an American supermarket. Two failed testing, and one from a top-selling brand was exceptionally poor.

  In early February 2017, the Carabinieri arrested 33 suspects in the Piromalli 'ndrina, part of the Calabrian mafia. They were allegedly exporting cheap pomace oil to the United States, falsely labeled extra virgin. Less than a year earlier, 60 Minutes had described "Agromafia" as a 16 billion dollar yearly enterprise. Weeks after the arrests, Forbes reported that 80% of Italian oil on the American market was fraudulent. The problem has not faded. In July 2024, the European Commission's annual food fraud report found that olive oil remained among the most frequently adulterated foods, with incidents at a record high.

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• 8. Chemistry and Health

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  Oleic acid makes up 55 to 83% of olive oil, and it is the reason the oil counts as largely monounsaturated. Linoleic acid contributes 3.5 to 21%, palmitic acid 7.5 to 20%, stearic acid 0.5 to 5% and alpha-linolenic acid up to 1.5%. Squalene appears at up to 0.7%, and sterols at about 0.2%. The mix shifts with the cultivar, region, altitude, harvest time and extraction method.

  The bitterness comes from polyphenols, which make up about 0.5% of the oil. They include esters of tyrosol, hydroxytyrosol, oleocanthal and oleuropein, plus vitamin E in the form of alpha-tocopherol. A peppery or bitter taste signals a higher polyphenol count. Heat destroys these compounds. Cold-pressed oil should be extracted below 25 degrees Celsius, with 27 as the permitted maximum. Processing within hours of harvest, picking early, mixing briefly and limiting oxygen all help, though some of these steps cut the yield. Storage matters too. Dark glass at or below 15 degrees Celsius is better, and refrigeration is better still. Cooking drops polyphenol levels significantly at 150 degrees Celsius.

  Cooking has its own myth. Heating extra virgin oil above 210-216 degrees Celsius burns its unrefined particles and spoils the taste. The smoke point of extra virgin oil runs around 180-215 degrees, higher for better oils, while refined light olive oil reaches up to 230. Olive oil can therefore be used for deep frying, contrary to a common belief that no olive oil matches the smoke points of other vegetable oils.

  The nutrition numbers are simple. Olive oil is 100% fat, with no carbohydrates, fiber, protein or water. A 100 gram portion supplies 884 kilocalories, 96% of the Daily Value for vitamin E and 50% for vitamin K. One tablespoon of 13.5 grams gives 119 calories, including 9.9 grams of monounsaturated fat, 1.4 of polyunsaturated and 1.9 of saturated.

  The health claims are cautious. The United States Food and Drug Administration allows a qualified claim that limited and not conclusive evidence suggests about 2 tablespoons, or 23 grams, daily may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, if the oil replaces saturated fat without raising total calories. In 2011 the European Food Safety Authority approved claims for polyphenols protecting blood lipids from oxidation and for keeping normal LDL cholesterol when oleic acid replaces saturated fat. It found no adequately established cause and effect for triglycerides, HDL cholesterol or blood glucose. A 2014 meta-analysis linked higher olive oil intake with lower risk of death from all causes, cardiovascular events and stroke. A 2018 meta-analysis found high-polyphenol oil improved several cholesterol measures compared with low-polyphenol oil. Its authors still called for longer studies and more research on populations outside the Mediterranean.

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