Slick Extra Virgin

Note: The copyright to this cartoon is solely held by the artist.

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Each year I attend the Australian National Extra Virgin Olive Oil Conference hosted by the Australian Olive Association, where Tim Smith, Marketing Manager for Australia’s largest extra virgin olive oil producer, Boundary Bend Limited (known to most by their brand, Cobram Estate), usually presents an update of the trends in the Australian olive oil market.

His informative presentations draw on a significant amount of data that either isn’t either publicly available (i.e supermarket sales data from private market research firms), or data that takes quite a bit of time compile such as imports and exports. I always look forward to hearing about how Australian producers are faring in their quest to gain greater consumer acceptance, and in wrestling a greater share of the domestic olive oil market from their powerful EU competitors.

So during his presentation given in November 2013 in Hobart, Tasmania, I scribbled down as many of the interesting factoids that I could with the view to sharing what I found particularly interesting.

The message? It IS possible for New World producers to wrest market share from the powerful EU packagers, if they efficiently produce consistently high quality extra virgin olive oil at a competitive price.

Having said that, the business of selling olive oil is a game of thrust, parry and riposte. Traditionally market share has been wrested back by undercutting the competition, which is much easier to do when your commercial operations are propped up by Governments (aka taxpayers) via payment of production and storage subsidies, and import tariffs are levied on the competition. Australia has no import duties/tarriffs on olive oil entering from the EU (or anywhere else), and, unlike the EU, Australian producers do not receive production or storage subsidies from taxpayers. These free trade policies (which I support by the way) unfortunately leave the progress made by local producers vulnerable to being wound back by those not subject to the same level playing field.

I guess time will tell, but I’m confident that quality at a competitive price will continue to put good old fashioned competitive pressure on those who thought they would never be challenged.

You can view the presentation in full screen mode at here (use the arrow keys at the bottom to navigate).

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About a year ago an American producer and friend of mine said that he had heard from someone who had attended a conference somewhere that yeasts can survive for a long time in bottled extra virgin olive oil and that their activity is detrimental to the oil quality.

I was sceptical. Once bottled, extra virgin olive oil it is thought to be one of the most microbiologically stable foods. I’m pretty sure that if you took your grandmothers olive oil out of her manky pharmaceutical studded cabinet, that was left to her by her grandmother, you could chug down the whole lot of it and not get sick. You may re-acquire a taste for fast food, but you’ll wake up the next day feeling ok.

So when I recently came across the journal article titled

Effects of some oil-born yeasts on the sensory characteristics of Italian virgin olive oil during its storage (Zullo et al. 2013) I thought, ah there is the likely source of my American mates ‘Chinese whisper’ information.

So do olive oil producers really have get yeast counts done on the bottled oil to ensure that their oil doesn’t degrade faster than usual? I have to say that have always treated research reporting potential ‘problems’ that no one has noticed before, even after making the stuff for a couple of thousand years. But with an open mind, I looked at the ins and outs of the very detailed paper closely.

The researchers swabbed some EVOO’s, and ‘plated up’ what they found into a warm lagoon of yeasty heaven which allowed them to grow up enough yeast cells to inoculate a perfectly good extra virgin olive oil to assess the effects of yeast on oil quality during 4 months of bottle storage.

But keep in mind that the number of yeasts found in olive oil is pretty low probably due to the fact that the relatively waterless environment of an olive oil isn’t their favourite hang-out. However, after culturing them up in the laboratory, they added them back at a rate of (wait for it), 25gms of yeast for every 100L of EVOO. That is about the same amount of yeast that winemakers used when they ferment grape juice into wine. In laymans terms ‘bucket loads’. To put the amount they used into an olive oil perspective, they estimated that they added around 100,000 yeast cells to every 1ml of oil. Compare that to the 1,000 odd yeast cells per ml that are naturally found in olive oil (based on a survey of 14 commercial olive oils from the Liguria and Central Italy, Zullo et al. 2010).

So what effect did adding 100x the typical number of yeast to an olive oil and leaving it for 4 months have?

Probably not surprisingly, the yeasts were shown by the researchers to produce all sorts of evocative (to a microbiologist anyway) enzymatic activity – Peroxidase, tyrosinase, phenoloxidase, and b-glucosidase, which could potentially degrade olive oil and affect its quality. But we all have ‘potential’ don’t we?

Here are the effects that matter. The effects on the chemistry and taste ….
Table 1: The effect* of inoculating with these large amounts of yeast and then storing the oil plus yeast for 4 months.

*The researchers looked at the effects of half a dozen yeast types. I averaged their effects and presented them with changes to the same oil that had not been yeast inoculated and stored for the same length of time.
^Approximate value as the raw data was read off a figure, but it gives you an idea.

They also found that yeast inoculation modified the profile of aroma compounds, with yeasty oils having lower amounts of the grassy tasting C6 compounds. Interestingly though, many other compounds that are normally associated with poor tasting olive oil (C7, C8 and C9’s) did not increase – indeed many of them decreased in the presence of yeast.

There are a few ways of looking at these results, including that you could add yeast to your olive oil to improve its oxidative stability! Lower peroxide values and lower secondary oxidation values are good things right? Well that is what the data suggests. Others would look at the results and emphasise that polyphenols were reduced by 10%, and the oil was less fruity and some yeast produced a faint muddy aroma. But, despite the fact that the researchers appeared to try to use experimental extremes to induce an effect by all manner of yeast types, they barely dented the quality of olive oil.

Where an extra virgin olive oil is bottled immediately after extraction, and is still ‘murky’, then maybe, just maybe these results may apply. However, oils of this type are meant to be consumed immediately as they have a high moisture content and contain relatively large amounts of vegetative solids. It is arguable that they would probably go muddy even without any yeasty action, as keeping vegetable solids in a highly anaerobic (airless) environment will most likely do that anyway.

So hopefully we won’t be seeing tests for yeast cell counts any time soon. We have enough tests already.

Zullo, B.A., Cioccia, G. and Ciafardini, G. (2013) Effects of some oil-born yeasts on the sensory characteristics of Italian virgin olive oil during its storage. Food Microbiology, 36, 70-78.

Zullo, B.A., Cioccia, G. and Ciafardini, G. (2010) Distribution of dimorphic yeast species in commercial extra virgin olive oil. Food Microbiology, 27, 1035-1042.

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To many people, the characteristic smell exuded by the linseed oil that their grandfather kept in his mancave for 35 years IS the aroma of olive oil. For them olive oil is supposed to smell like that, and it is exactly how they like it. I have always considered these people ‘misguided’. Surely, they must have learned to like rancidity. Perhaps a great-aunt from Omaha or Boise led them astray in their early childhood by force feeding them stuff out of the medicine cabinet. You know, the manky stuff with the yellowed label that needed carbon dating to validate the century in which it were made. But recent research using mice (Nankano et al. 2012) suggests that unsavory bullying from an uninformed, stodgey great-aunt might not be necessary to appreciate the delights of rancidity after all.

So here is how it went..

To provide a base-line, mice were presented with two bottles of the same non-oxidised olive oil in their feeding cage for three weeks. The amount consumed from each bottle was the same showing that the mice didn’t have a favourite restaurant strip.

But then one of the feeding bottles of fresh oil was replaced with another containing oxidised olive oil (left in a hot place in an open bottle for 3 weeks). The mice given the choice, consumed 10 times more of the oxidised oil than the fresh oil. The experiment was repeated using a heated refined olive oil. Same result – the mice chose to eat a lot more rancid oil than fresh oil.

Furthermore, the more the oil was oxidised (they made up blends of fresh and oxidised), the greater the preference for it. Mice that were anosmic (had no sense of smell) didn’t prefer one oil type over another suggesting that the aroma and flavour of the olive oil was the driving factor in preference.

Does this mean that rancid oil is the default for preference, and that appreciating fresh olive oil is a learned response? But leaving this important philosophical aside what I really want answered is – how the hell did the researchers identify anosmic mice (the ones without a sense of smell) from the non-anosmic mice? Did they put them under a bed doona and record which ones tried to escape?

Source: Nakano et al. (2012) Effects of aroma components from oxidised olive oil on preference. Bioscience, Biotechnology and Biochemistry. 77, 1166-1170.

You can read the article here: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bbb/77/6/77_120861/_article

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a)      Mechanical processing includes methods that do not use solvents or excessive heat to extract the oil.  These methods include centrifugation and (now, rarely) pressing.

b)      Pomace is the mix of skins and crushed olive seeds left over after most of the olive oil and water have been mechanically extracted from the olive paste.

c)      Usually hexane is the solvent used.

d)     Refining involves a number of steps which involve the addition of strong acids and bases, and the application of processes such as chilling, washing, centrifugation, filtration and deodorisation.

e)      Pure olive oil is no ‘purer’ than any other olive oil. ‘Light’ olive oil does not have fewer calories than any other oil. The term ‘light’ refers to its lighter colour, aroma and flavour – a result of the oil having been refined.

More information on the difference between olive oil types can be found here

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One of the most enduring myths about extra virgin olive oil is that if you heat it then it will produce more free radicals (and is therefore be more ‘toxic’  – or more appropriately ‘detrimental to your long term health’) than other edible oils.

The belief in the binary model of ‘EVOO when heated is ‘toxic’, but every other fat when heated is not’ is plainly ludicrous. Why? Because the natural chemical composition of all edible fats including EVOO overlap, and in some cases significantly. For example while EVOO contains on average around 75% of the fatty acid oleic acid, canola oil averages around 60%,  and high oleic sunflower about the same or higher than EVOO. All oils contain sterols and tocopherols, and while EVOO has significantly more polyphenols than any widely used edible fat, polyphenols are more likely to inhibit the formation of free radicals Therefore unless the oil extracted from olives is somehow able to find a way to defy the basic laws of fat chemistry, then the idea that olive oil becomes more ‘toxic’ than other oils when heated can’t be justified.

Recently a paper was published in the peer reviewed journal Food Chemistry (Tomassetti et al. 2013) which goes a long way to debunk the myth.

What they did:

• A peanut oil and extra virgin olive oil that had been stripped of its polyphenols were heated to 180C and air was bubbled through them over a period of hours in an effort to mimic extreme heating conditions

Result:

• Heating peanut oil and EVOO (even without antioxidant polyphenols) resulted in the same degree of free radical formation. (Figure 1).
• The longer you heated these edible fats the more free radicals they formed – both of them!

Tomassetti et al. (2013) PO=peanut oil, EVOO=polyphenol stripped extra virgin olive oil. If the error bars shown at the top of the bars overlap then that means that there is insufficient evidence of a difference in free radical formation between the oil types upon heating.

What they did:

• A peanut oil and an EVOO (with its natural polyphenols) were heated and compared with respect to rancidification.

Result:

• More heat energy was needed to start the oxidation of fat molecules in EVOO than peanut oil which suggests that EVOO is more resistant to rancidification when heated. The authors attributed this to the polyphenols in the EVOO. “the higher thermal stability of triglycerides contained in the whole EVOO is probably due to the high concentration of polyphenols contained in it”

Other comments:

The researchers used an EVOO stripped of polyphenols as phenolic compounds interfered with the measurement of free radical production. Given that polyphenols mop up free radicals, I would predict that the net production of free radicals in heated phenolic rich EVOO would be significantly lower compared with refined edible fats that contain few if any phenolic compounds.

The oils were heated to a reasonable cooking temperature. They were not burnt! Once an oil burns a whole different bunch of chemical reactions come into play. So is burnt EVOO any more or less healthy for you than burnt edible oil X? Probably not, but who cares.Just don’t use burnt oil of any type. It isn’t good for you. That is what the knobs on the front of the stovetop are for.

Source:

Tomassetti et al. (2013) Biosensors for monitoring the isothermal breakdown kinetics of peanut oil heated at 180 C. Comparison with results obtained for extra virgin olive oil. Food Chemistry, 140, 700-710.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2012.10.131

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So what do all those chemical analyses found in lab reports mean?

There are dozens of them. Some have been accepted as indicators of quality, others suggest how long an extra virgin olive oil will survive on the shelf, while other analyses tell a story about the taste style of the oil (and therefore how it is best used in the kitchen). However, most have been developed in an effort to identify olive oils that have been adulterated with other oils. However, as these limits are necessarily arbitrary, they only suggest rather than prove adulteration.

I have provided some ranges and averages that typify good to excellent extra virgin olive oil in addition to the official limits which are often set to accommodate the constraints of the big EU packers to produce quality olive oil.

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!

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Sources: All data with the exception of e- ‘fresh’ samples are from commercially produced extra virgin olive oils.

a-              2005-2010 Australian National, Royal Perth, Royal Canberra Extra Virgin Olive Oil Shows (n=2,356). Compiled by R. Gawel –unpublished.

b-             2005 data, New South Wales Department of Agriculture – unpublished (n>200).

c-             Australian Olive Oil Association National Olive Oil Survey – unpublished (n>200).

d-             Mailer (2007) (n=1800)

e-              Mailer and Ayrton (2008) (n=21 fresh, n=6 EU supermarket)

f-              Anon (2010) Oli Extravirgini di Oliva di Firenze Selezione 2010 (n=33)

g-              Gawel and Rogers (2008) (n=327)

#- Measured as caffeic acid equivalents

^- ‘unsaturated’ refers to fats that contain more than one double bond somewhere in their chemical structure. Monounsaturated fats have health benefits over saturated fats (ones with no double bonds).  However polyunsaturated fats (i.e. those with two or three double bonds) such as linoleic and linolenic acid are more prone to oxidation and therefore degrade (go rancid) more quickly.

^^ – b-sitosterol, d-5-avenasterol, d-5-23-stigmastadienol, Clerosterol, Sitostanol, d-5-24-   stigmastadienol

*- olive oil is a complex natural product. As such the amount of individual components in olive oil varies. As a result, unadulterated oils may be high in one or more components normally associated with adulteration practices. For example the varieties Barnea and Koroneiki often produce oils that contain naturally high levels of campesterol.

Disclaimer: This table should be used only as a guide. While every care was taken in the compilation of this table, the author takes no responsibility for any inaccuracies.

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“The upshot was restaurants would have to spend a small fortune buying in specially prepared bottles of tamper-proof olive oil to serve to customers, many of whom had never realised there was a problem in the first place”;The Daily Telegraph UK 26th May 2013

Recently the European Commission on Agriculture put forward plans to ban refillable containers containing olive oil on restaurant tables, insisting they be replaced with unopened labelled bottles with tamper proof seals. The ban was immediately rescinded after considerable consumer and media backlash particularly from the non olive producer nations. Presumably the ban was proposed to in an effort to eliminate the practice of restauranters diluting their extra virgin olive oil at the point of ‘sale’. I have italicised ‘sale’ because in most cases olive oil is given away by the restauranteur which is a point that the proponents of the ban seemed to have not adequately considered.

Before I begin, I declare that I am relaying some experiences from an Australian context. However, I cannot see why my arguments would not stand up in the context of European restaurants where the regulations were to apply.

I have two friends ‘M&M’ who co-own a busy café in Adelaide, Australia. When I say, busy I mean the bustling, noisy type with each table hosting 3 covers (different customers) a night. The café like many others like them, offers a diverse range of cuisines including Mediterranean and also offer complementary good genuine extra virgin olive oil for customers as an alternative to butter.

Like many local restaurateurs, they source their extra virgin olive oil from a local producer – from the McLaren Vale region, 30km from the city. They know the producer personally and have used his oils for some years. They trust him, and have no reason not to. I also know him and he is a fair bloke who is understandably proud of the EVOO’s that he produces. By selling in bulk he can profitably supply M&M with quantities of oil at good price.

I asked M the hypothetical question. “What if the Government insisted that you had to serve the extra virgin olive oil to tables in small unopened labelled bottles so that the customer could be certain that you weren’t ripping them off?”

She looked at me almost quizzically and calmly answered …. “I wouldn’t” (serve it at all)

(the rest I paraphrase, because I was just another customer and they were very busy)

R: Why wouldn’t you?

M: Hey, I give this stuff away for free. It costs me money. I don’t have to do it. I’m sure if I didn’t offer it, and put butter in its place, very few people if any would push my buttons over it.

R: But surely olive oil is an important ingredient and part of the overall culture of eating?

M: Both I and my chefs love extra virgin olive oil and the flavours that the oils brings, but the restaurant biz is difficult. Margins are tight. We look carefully at every menu item, and every input – costing it out carefully. Is it necessary? Are there less expensive alternatives? What impact does it have on the bottom line? Because ultimately, unless you can make a living out of the business you just shut your doors. And one thing for sure, I don’t owe olive oil producers or any other ingredient supplier a living.

Now I’m pretty sure that when the European Parliament who immediately asked the European Commission to go back to the drawing board and consult with consumer groups and restaurant owners, that the above conversation is the sort they had in mind.

So what effect would a policy of having to use labelled unopened bottles rather than dispensing oil into bowls or cruets?

For the small producer, selling in bulk is often the only way in which they can make a decent return. Having to bottle, tamper-proof seal and label adds a significant cost, and as every producer knows, the relative cost of package to its contents increases as the package volume decreases. These additional costs will eventually have to be passed onto the restaurant either in part or in full. Given that most restaurants do not charge for the olive oil they serve, clearly having to pay more would be rather unpalatable and could potentially lead to EVOO being replaced.

To M&M the idea of having small bottles around the café also makes no sense. There is the issue of storage and increased waste handling and costs associated with disposal. “We’ve got enough sh*t to get rid of each night, why would I want any more”.

So what about the argument that having a branded bottle in front of the restaurant customer will promote the producers brand and lead to additional sales. I think it would be naïve to think that many restaurant customers would care enough to take much notice. Furthermore, most small producers have limited or no retail outlets outside their farm gate or local market, so even if a restaurant customer cared to notice the brand of the oil, I would presume that the chances of them chasing down a bottle the day after is very unlikely. But yes, it is possible that it could lead to sales, but the costs of compliance would probably outweigh the small marketing advantages gained.

So why was the regulation proposed in the first place?

The official line is that it was introduced in an attempt to eliminate fraud in the restaurant trade.

However the measure does not address the biggest cause of fraud. That is the adulteration, or misrepresentation of the EVOO BEFORE it was packaged and supplied to the restaurant. While supporters of the proposed regulation will argue that having a bottle identified by a label will discourage this,  I would argue that such measures have not stopped adulteration or passing off poor quality oil at the supermarket retail level where similar labelling requirements exist. So why would the measure work at the restaurant level? Unless policing occurs via chemical testing then the problem will persist.

I would also argue that the regulation implies that the major cause of adulteration in the food services industry is the restaurateur. Such beliefs only serve to deflect scrutiny from up-stream sections of the distribution chain.

Also being somewhat of a cynic, I noted that things of this magnitude don’t happen in the olive world very often, and nothing happens on a broad institutional level unless the big olive oil marketing conglomerates support it.

Who would most likely profit from such a policy change? In short, packagers- and specifically those with the technical capability of bottling to the stringent specifications that were being called for. And who are the big packagers? Answer: The vertically integrated companies that buy oil in bulk before blending, bottling and marketing them under the well known supermarket brand names. I also wonder what share of the restaurant market they currently have? My guess is less than they would like.

And where would this stop? What about opened bottles of wine served by the glass? I’ve been to plenty of eating establishments where the wine tasted like it had been opened for a while. I’ve politely brought the issue to the attention of the server, and they have replaced the glass of wine with that from a freshly opened bottle. No problems. Will opened bottles of wine be banned next? Unlabelled pepper?

I’m all for cleaning up the EVOO industry of fraudulent practices, but realistically was this the right way of going about it? I think not. The idea reeked of an industry looking inwardly, rather than to the needs of its customers. It really was pretty dumb.

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Here is something a little different.

Do you think you know about olive oil and extra virgin olive oil?

Well this online cross word will test you.

It’s easy to use. Open the link and the crossword will appear. Click on an word box and the question will appear. Type in the answer. Move onto the next word until you finish. If you type in a word is too long or short it will tell you.

Click the solve box if you want to cheat. Hopefully even if you don’t get all the answers, you will learn something along the way.

Here’s what it looks like….
Click here to start

Good luck!

Incidentally, the software used to create this crossword is free, intuitive, easy to use, and works seamlessly. You can use it to create both online and paper based crosswords. The crossword contains a link to the creators.

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