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In this section, you will find additional tips you can use to improve your health!
Today I want to share with you easy tips on how to choose the best bottle of olive oil in your supermarket. We all know that olive oil has great health benefits.
👉But not all olive oil is created equally!
So first of all, what nutrients are in olive oil that make it so healthy?
- Oleic acid (a Mono Unsaturated Fatty Acid or MUFA for short)
- A lot of polyphenols (A group of antioxidants)
- Vitamin E.
But there can be a lot of differences between the quality of the oil in different bottles. Some bottles of olive oil don’t contain any health benefits at all! So how do you choose the right bottle?
1️⃣ Read the label
Olive oil comes in different grades. The labels on the bottles can tell you a lot. If the label says
- Extra virgin olive oil: This refers to the highest quality olive oil. But still, there is a lot of difference here. The number of polyphenols can vary from 50 mg/kg to 1000 mg/kg for example. But also the percentage of MUFA can vary from 55 to 83%.
- Virgin olive oil: This type of olive oil has a few taste ‘errors’ and therefore can’t be called Extra Virgin. The Polyphenol content can vary from 0 to 500 mg/kg.
- Olive Oil: Usually when the label says just ‘Olive Oil’ it means that the Virgin grade is mixed with refined oils. The polyphenol content in refined oil varies from 0 to 5 mg/kg.
- Labels saying ‘Mild’ or ‘Pure’ olive oil: labels like this should be read as a warning sign: They almost always contain refined oils. These oils don’t contain the health benefits of olive oil that are spoken of.
2️⃣ Look on the back side of the bottle for the harvest date.
Only Extra Virgin Olive Oil will mention ‘harvest dates‘. This is different from the ‘best by date’. You want to consume your bottle within 18 months after the harvest date. After that, the health benefits of olive oil are lesser.
Some Extra Virgin Olive Oils don’t have harvest dates on them. With the bigger brands, this often means that the olive oil of this year has been mixed with older olive oils.
3️⃣ Examine the bottle
Buy your olive oil in a dark bottle made of glass. The mono-unsaturated fats in olive oil are ‘fragile’ and can react with oxygen under the influence of light. Oxidised fats don’t contain health benefits and are actually harmful to your health.
To keep the quality of olive oil high some olive oil producers put their olive oil in dark bottles. If they are sold in boxes, that is even better.
Also, the plastic of plastic bottles gets in the oil (who wants that?😱). Interesting little fact: To become Extra Virgin Olive Oil you need your oil to be chemically checked and it gets tasted by a panel. They can taste when the olive oil comes from a plastic bottle!
4️⃣ How should a good quality olive oil taste?
Taste is the best control since the labels on the bottles sometimes don’t contain the right information. The polyphenols can taste a little bitter. The more bitter or peppery the taste of olive oil is, the richer it is in polyphenols. Really high polyphenol concentrations can leave a bit of a tingling sensation on the back of your tongue.
Olive oil should not only smell like olives but also a little grassy. The grassy smell is a sign that the olives were young while harvested. The younger the olives are, the richer they are in polyphenols and MUFAs.
5️⃣ How long can you store an opened bottle?
An opened bottle should be consumed within 2-3 months since the oil is exposed to more oxygen, changing the chemical structure of the oleic acid. The oxidised oils not only don’t contain health benefits but they are also associated with negative health outcomes.
6️⃣ Bonus tips
Especially with fats, I choose organic. Fat-soluble toxins that can come from pesticides, plastic bottles or other sources are usually harder for the body to detoxify.
Unfortunately, extra virgin olive oil isn’t the cheapest oil. For 1 litre of oil, especially if you are looking for oil made from young olives you often need 3-4 kg of olives. A cheap extra virgin olive oil is also often a tell that the oil is of lesser quality
If you like olive oil for its health benefits, I hope you found this information helpful!
PS: If you are a little nerd like me and would like a deeper dive into olive oil, check out this article:
Potential Health Benefits of Olive Oil and Plant Polyphenols
Beneficial effects of natural plant polyphenols on the human body have been evaluated in a number of scientific research projects. Bioactive polyphenols are natural compounds of various chemical structures. Their sources are mostly fruits, vegetables, …
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5877547
