Hacker News Reader

Comment by mlrtime | Hacker News Reader

I was pretty shocked to learn that most (~80%) of the Italian extra virgin olive oil that comes into the US is neither Italian or olive oil.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-overtime-how-to-buy-...

View on HN

It is olive oil- it's just not extra virgin olive oil, produced by olive flesh (i.e. not the seeds) and only by mechanical extraction (i.e. no heat or chemical processing). The fraud is in the fact that it is advertised as extra virgin, the highest recognised quality, when it's not.

Also, it is Italian, only not purely so. It is often mixed in with oils from other places. The problem is when the mix-ins are from North Africa, e.g. from Morocco, which are considered of inferior quality than the South European oils. Nobody would really mind if Italian oils were mixed in with Spanish or Greek oils, which are considered superior.

> The problem is when the mix-ins are from North Africa, e.g. from Morocco, which are considered of inferior quality

Tunisian here. I'm curious: why is North African olive oil considered inferior?

Racism, mainly. They say the same thing about Turkish hazelnuts while failing to acknowledge that Turkey is the homeland of hazelnuts and way way older than Italian ones.

Turkey is the homeland of hazelnuts and way way older than Italian ones.

Older !== better. See also: California wine.

I'm not an expert here, but I've heard that olives are a lot like grapes. The quality and flavor varies greatly by soil, weather, and climate conditions.

I don't know. Probably traditional reasons. For example, French wine is considered superior, but I find Greek and Italian wines at least as good (although I haven't really tried all that many of any type).

I don't have a good source for this, but the way I always knew it is that, when it comes to olive oil, Spanish is considered best, followed by Greek, followed by Italian, then everyone else's comes next.

I am Greek, so of course I believe this is wildly inaccurate. Also, the bit about wines. Ours are obviously better.

Bottom line: probably not for any good reason.

As I assumed, it's purely subjective.

I would argue that almost no one can tell the difference between the highest quality olive oils from the major oil producing Mediterranean countries. So way I look at it is that Mediterranean olive oil > others.

On that we can agree. Then gagain, we're both Mediterranean :)

Hello, Southern Italian here. I've never heard any bashing against North African olives or oil. Common sense says that olive is a Mediterranean tree and no particular Mediterranean region is better than all the others. On the other side, the issue raised against non-EU olives is that they are not subject to EU quality regulations, and those regulations are considered quite strict.

Oil quality depends mostly on how it is produced; setting aside the possibility of contaminated product, olives from different places can only have a different taste.

> It is olive oil

Some of it is, some of it isn't; as the article notes, while some of the fraud is lower-grade olive oil, some of it is non-olive seed oils with additives to help it pass for olive oil.

> The problem is when the mix-ins are from North Africa, e.g. from Morocco, which are considered of inferior quality

No, the problem is that the mixins are lower-grade oil (not extra-virgin). While, yes, this oil often comes from North Africa, the origin isn't really the problem, the grade is.

You're right that non-olive oils are also mixed in, sometimes.

I'm pretty sure the provenance is a problem. I don't remember where that certitude comes from. I can try looking it up if you insist - but actually I'd rather I didn't, I'm a little on the busy side right now :0

Which is why you should purchase Extra Virgin Olive oil from Greece, directly from Greece. There is a greek food importer in almost every that has a few Greek restaurant owners where you could go and get the real stuff.

Also the irony here is that for the "premium" Italian olive oils, especially the extra virgin, most of the olives come from Greece.

> Which is why you should purchase Extra Virgin Olive oil from Greece, directly from Greece.

I think you misspelled “California”.

> Also the irony here is that for the "premium" Italian olive oils, especially the extra virgin, most of the olives come from Greece.

I thought Spain supplied more of the olives for Italian olive oil, and that was true across grades.

Everywhere in the mediterranean supplies oil for olive oil. And calling it "Italian" is virtually meaningless. Either it comes from a very specific region of Italy so you can taste its local flavor, or it's just an oil blend. The back of the bottle will tell you which countries the oil comes from.

I highly suggest buying from Greece instead of California, if only as a form of financial assistance via trade. Greek products are extremely good, but difficult to get here. There's so little money in Greece that they can't afford to build up the export infrastructure they had a century ago.

I am someone who still has all but my immediate family still over there, and I really appreciate you saying this. It really goes a long way. Greece has been at the very short end of the stick on some EU trade deals, austerity measures, increased war games from their millennial long mortal enemies, front lines of a refugee crisis, and more. For a country that has been through so much it truly is a testament to their resolve. And they still take great pride in making the best damn olives they can.

There is a greek food importer in almost every that has a few Greek restaurant owners where you could go and get the real stuff.

This might explain why I occasionally see Greek restaurants that also sell olive oil, but no other groceries.

That article certainly doesn't say that 80% isn't olive oil. Instead it argues that up to 80% doesn't meet the very stringent requirement to be classified as extra-virgin olive oil, often because it's partially mixing with lesser grades (or even simply differently sourced) of olive oil. That's a far cry from wholly substituting.

In other cases, a bottle labeled "extra-virgin olive oil" may not be olive oil at all, just a seed oil like sunflower made to look and smell like olive oil with a few drops of chlorophyll and beta-carotene.

This does not sound like a far cry that sounds like fraud.

You are still selling an inferior product, claiming that is something it is not.

In Italy or Spain, you can find "non extra-virgin" olive oil sold as well, although at a lower price.

I'm not disputing that. I'm disputing the completely unsubstantiated and simply ridiculous claim that 80% of olive oil isn't actually olive oil. That's a misreading akin to claiming that "80% of Halloween candy is pure sugar, and might even have a razor blade in it" means that 80% of Halloween candy has a razor blade in it.

Its a sad state of today's food products. Honey in particular is often fraudulent containing syrups and sugars to add to volume while still being marketed as "Pure Honey". Worst of all, it is getting harder to detect the authenticity in modern labs as "honey factories" continue to develop new ways to throw the test results.

If it's been packaged for longer than a month and is still liquid -- it's fake. Real honey crystallizes quite quickly.

Because to keep it from crystallizing, you have to filter it so hard that it is indistinguishable from fake honey laced with real honey.

> In Italy or Spain, you can find "non extra-virgin" olive oil sold as well

Also in the US, you can find both virgin olive oil and (no modifier) olive oil as well as extra-virgin (and while EVOO is a higher grade, its only better for a narrow range of applications.)

<disclaimer: did not read that>

Reading olive-oil labels is one of my hobbies. You'd find "Imported from Italy", "Packaged in Italy", "Made in Italy", and other shenanigans to imply some relation to Italy, without the burden of actually growing and pressing olives in Italy. That's the food equivalent of "Assembled in NA" labels, which vaguely implies someone tightened 4 screws in something bought elsewhere. The art of labelling!

It's spanish olive oil (and is the BEST olive oil)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com