The wide-ranging health benefits of olive oil hardly even need to be mentioned. It still remains one of the healthiest oils in the world, even as coconut oil, macadamia nut oil, and other “superfood oils” continue to increase in popularity.
Olive oil is packed with beneficial nutrients, including monosaturated fatty acids (MUFAs), which serve as the perfect fuel for regulating appetite and metabolism, provide you with longer-burning, more sustainable energy, and help with weight loss.
Remember: fats are incredibly healthy for you, as long as you choose the right ones.
Here’s a list of olive oil’s other incredible benefits…
Natural anti-inflammatory. Olive oil battles inflammation on every level. Its bevy of nutrients soothe chronic inflammation, and oleocanthal modulates and balances the immune system (and thus controls the inflammation associated with autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis).
Frequent consumption of olive oil therefore reduces your risk of a vast array of inflammatory diseases, including Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and even cancer (more on that below).
Antioxidant. Olive oil contains more than thirty free-radical scavenging powerhouses called phenols (these beneficial compounds also contribute to its anti-inflammatory effect). Polyunsaturated fats, on the other hand, actually cause oxidative stress because of how easily they rancidify and break down into free radicals. What you eat should support your body, not force it to work harder just to maintain its equilibrium.
Immune boosting. Quelling systemic inflammation of minimizing oxidative stress is the perfect one-two punch that’s needed in order to optimize immune function. Thus, by bringing these two aspects of bodily function into balance, olive oil empowers the body to resist disease and aging.
Anti-cancer. Olive oil not only wards off cancer by balancing overall health in the ways mentioned above, but also fights cancer cells directly—and with astonishing efficacy. Researchers at three different prestigious institutions observed that oleocanthal, when applied to various types of cancer cells, begin to break them down within a half hour, and render them completely non-viable within twenty-four hours.[1]
Cardio-protective. Due to their ability to lower total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), oxidative stress, and all sorts of other markers of heart disease, the polyphenols in olive oil have been conclusively shown to reduce the risk of heart disease. Even the FDA admits that “eating about 2 tablespoons of olive oil daily may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease.”[2]
Best of all, olive oil is available almost everywhere, often at far lower prices than coconut oil or other healthy alternatives to “vegetable” oil, canola oil, and other polyunsaturated fats (which should be avoided at all costs).
So what’s not to love about olive oil? Just one thing…
Most olive oil is fake
That’s right: the majority of imported olive oil is either cut with cheaper, lower-quality oils, or doesn’t even contain olive oil at all.
When researchers at the University of California, Davis tested 124 samples from eight major olive oil brands, a whopping 70% of them failed.[3]
They reported what the samples really contained: pure olive oil cut with extremely low-quality olive oil (this was the best case scenario in the samples that failed), olive oil adulterated with canola or colza oils, and even sunflower and soybean oils with added chlorophyll (to give it the slightly green tint of premium olive oil).[4]
So why would olive oil producers stoop so low?
The answer is simple: doing so is highly lucrative. Making truly pure olive oil is difficult, expensive, and labor-intensive; it’s much better for business to master the art of cooking up its fake counterpart. And these manufacturers certainly are masters of their nefarious craft—most experts and connoisseurs can’t even taste the difference between real and fake olive oil (so don’t feel bad for being fooled all this time).
It’s a well-known fact that the Mafia is behind many of these operations, and that they’ve been taking their unfair share of the $1.5 billion olive oil market for quite some time.
The sinister force behind the counterfeit olive oil flooding US stores turns out to be the Mafia. Wielding an international reach, the Mob has infiltrated the olive oil industry from top to bottom.
Their scam is so massive and widespread—and thus so hard to stop—because the counterfeiting of olive oil yields the mobsters even higher profit margins than cocaine smuggling, with few of the risks.
Thanks to the health benefits and soaring popularity of the Mediterranean diet, olive oil sales are booming, and the Mob has moved in.
They package their fake olive oils in fancy bottles and cans that look perfectly authentic. And getting these fakes onto supermarket shelves across America is surprisingly easy.
It’s still very important to take precautions when it comes to buying olive oil, for the sake of your health (and for the sake of not supporting mobsters).
How to ensure you’re getting the benefits of real olive oil
If you’re curious about whether your current favorite brand of olive oil is fake, be sure to check out the UC Davis study cited in the references section. If your brand wasn’t one that they analyzed, there’s a couple ways in which you can check its purity. Just know that these methods are not fail-proof, and that it’s far preferable simply to source guaranteed-pure olive to begin with (more on that in a bit).
Put your olive oil in the fridge. If it’s pure, it should become very thick and cloudy after while (some high-wax oils will even begin to solidify). If your olive oil has been cut with polyunsaturated fats or other substances, this thickening won’t occur. This test will only reveal if there’s no olive oil in the product, though—adulterated products may still become cloudy even if they only contain a small amount of low-quality olive oil.
Light a lamp with it. Pure olive oil is actually flammable, and should be able to keep the wick of an oil lamp burning. Give it a try, but again, remember that even an adulterated product could pass this test if it contains enough olive oil.
The Easiest Way We Know to Avoid Mafia-Tainted Olive Oils
As the experts in the 60 Minutes exposé recommend, you can avoid Mafia-tainted olive oils by doing your homework online. Located around the world are quite a few good and honorable farmers who bypass the Mafia’s counterfeiting factories and instead sell their olive oils directly to consumers. Know that real olive oil will be more expensive…but it’s worth it.
But if you’d just as soon save yourself the time and hassle of researching hundreds of online olive oil producers, most of whom claim to be “the best,” allow us to make a suggestion.
Check out this link. It’s a small company called the Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club. They specialize in bringing direct to your door the best artisanal olive oils from award-winning family farms all around the world. And they do it right at harvest time, when the olive oils are at their peak of flavor and nutritional value.
Most important, every olive oil they import is independently lab certified to be 100% pure extra virgin. These are nothing less than the purest, freshest, highest-rated award-winning olive oils available in America and are out-of-this-world delicious.
Once we tried these olive oils, we fell madly in love with them, as did our entire team. They are now the only extra virgin olive oils that we trust to put in our bodies and serve our friends, relatives, and guests. We recommend them to everyone.
If you’ve been duped into consuming fake olive oil for any length of time, you’ll feel the difference almost immediately when you switch to the real stuff. When you feel the immune boost, sustainable energy, and all-around support that it provides, you’ll understand what all the hype is about.
References
[1] http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/olive-oil-compound-kills-cancer-cells-30-minutes
[2] http://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2007/9/sf_olives/Page-01
[3] http://olivecenter.ucdavis.edu/research/files/report041211finalreduced.pdf
[4] http://www.foodrenegade.com/your-extravirgin-olive-oil-fake/
