A Special Message from Michael Cutler, M.D.,
Editor, Easy Health Options®
Do You Make These 3 Mistakes When You Buy Olive Oil?
Best tips I've ever learned...plus my favorite olive oils for flavor, freshness, and nutrition
At EasyHealthOptions.com, we’ve posted quite a few articles on why extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) is one of Mother Nature’s most powerful superfoods. Today’s article is about how to buy and store it correctly to experience its mighty health benefits.
Why EVOO Is Such a Potent, All-Natural Superfood
Scientific studies have confirmed that extra virgin olive oil lowers bad cholesterol and cuts your risk of heart disease and stroke. It may help protect you against cancer, especially cancer of the breast, prostate, and colon. It can be a godsend for arthritis sufferers because it can reduce inflammation and ease joint pain without side effects.
According to the New York Times best-selling book Genius Foods, extra virgin olive oil “has been shown in large, long-term trials to protect the brain against decline and even improve cognitive function.” As reported in USA Today, “Temple University research shows extra virgin olive oil protects against memory loss, preserves the ability to learn, and reduces conditions associated with Alzheimer’s disease.”
Extra virgin olive oil also lowers blood pressure and reduces your risk of diabetes. If you want to avoid osteoporosis, olive oil is outstanding because it enables the calcium in your food to be better absorbed into your bones. Extra virgin olive oil is also loaded with antioxidants and polyphenols that help regulate your immune system, protect your body against disease, give you more energy, balance your hormones, improve your skin, and lower inflammation throughout your body.
As if all this weren’t enough, a delightful “side effect” of EVOO is that it makes your food taste delicious. As any great chef will tell you, fat is where the flavor is, and that’s why you always want a bottle of delectable harvest-fresh EVOO in your pantry.
Mistakes to Avoid When You Buy EVOO
Mistake #1: Buying stale olive oil “off the shelf.” If you want to enjoy olive oil at its peak flavor and nutritional potency, remember these four words: The fresher, the better.
Olive oil, unlike wine, does not get better with age. Just the opposite. Olives, after all, are a fruit. Just like orange juice, olive oil tastes so much better fresh-squeezed.
The problem is, harvest-fresh olive oil is almost impossible to find in supermarkets. Most olive oil is shipped to the U.S. on slow-moving cargo ships. Then it languishes in warehouses and on store shelves for many months. As a result, olive oils in stores are often technically within their “best used by” date, but months beyond their window of peak freshness, flavor, and nutritional potency.
Because of these and other factors that cause staleness, a study from the University of California, Davis, found that 69% of imported olive oil labeled “extra virgin” sold in stores was substandard and did not even qualify to be labeled “extra virgin,” the highest grade.
My recommendation: I avoid buying olive oil in stores, where the oils can sit on the shelf for months, growing stale, musty, and eventually rancid. That’s definitely not healthy. I much prefer buying online, where you can secure outrageously delicious olive oils fresh from the latest harvest. That’s when olive oil is bursting with just-plucked-from-the-tree flavor and goodness. Try just one bottle of such fresh-pressed olive oil from a good online source, and you’ll likely never go back to store-bought.
Below I name my favorite online source of harvest-fresh olive oil. To introduce their fresh-pressed olive oil, they’ll even send you a bottle of their finest artisanal olive oil (normally $39)—direct from the new harvest—for just $1. It’s quite a generous offer. If you’re interested, click on the link at the end of this article.
Mistake #2: Unwittingly buying olive oil made by the Mafia. As you’ve probably heard, fake, Mafia-made olive oils have been flooding U.S. supermarkets. If you’ve missed this frightening story, here are just a few of the articles you can check out online.
NBC News has reported that “fake olive oil is rampant.” The Wall Street Journal adds, “American grocery stores are awash in cheap, fake ‘extra virgins.’” In an explosive exposé, 60 Minutes has cautioned that you face a “sea of fakes” when you shop for olive oil in stores.
Why Is This Happening?
Thanks to the many health benefits of authentic olive oil, demand is soaring worldwide. But pure extra virgin olive oil is quite expensive. Just as notorious crime families pocket fortunes by creating cheap knockoffs of designer clothing and handbags, they palm off fake olive oil as extra virgin. The New Yorker magazine has reported that the profits in counterfeiting olive oil are “comparable to cocaine trafficking, with none of the risks.”
Cancer-Causing Agents?
In his New York Times best-selling book, Extra Virginity, journalist and olive oil expert Tom Mueller warns of contaminants and even cancer-causing agents in fake olive oils, saying:
"Italian investigators have found hydrocarbon residues, pesticides, and other contaminants in fake oils, and pomace oil, a common adulterant, sometimes contains mineral oil as well as PAHs, proven carcinogens that can also damage DNA and the immune system. Then there’s the 1981 case of toxic oil syndrome in Spain, when rapeseed oil adulterated with an industrial additive, sold as olive oil, killed eight hundred people and seriously injured thousands more.”
This is why you never want to feed your family counterfeit olive oils cooked up by criminals who couldn’t care less about your family’s health.
My recommendation: I strongly advise that you buy from a supplier whose oils are independently lab certified to be 100% pure extra virgin. This gives you protection against all the fakes. The source I recommend below is one such conscientious provider.
Mistake #3: Thinking that all olive oils taste alike. If you’ve always bought your olive oil in a supermarket, odds are you’ve never experienced the extraordinary diversity of flavors that await you among the finest artisanal oils.
You see, ordinary mass-market olive oils sell in such huge volume, they must combine inferior olives from many farms and different growing regions, with little regard for flavor compatibility. This typically results in a dull, lifeless flavor profile.
In contrast, award-winning artisans create their oils from olives grown on small, boutique farms. These dedicated masters are free to strive for flavor perfection from each different type of olive. This makes their award-winning creations as rich, complex, and distinctive as the finest wines.
For example, some olive varietals naturally possess a bright, spicy flavor. These oils are audaciously bold and pair magnificently with a hearty charred steak or grilled lamb. In contrast, other artisanal olive oils are pressed from olives that yield softer, more delicate nuances. These will perfectly complement—without overpowering—your delicate baked halibut. Still other olives naturally yield a greener, more herbaceous oil that will crown your salad greens and veggies with breathtaking farm-fresh flavor.
Discovering and enjoying these amazing differences in fine artisanal olive oils is not only fun, but as any master chef will tell you, it’s one of the great secrets of elevating your favorite dishes to new heights of flavor and satisfaction.
My recommendation: The moment you twist the cap off one of these outstanding just-pressed oils and inhale its harvest-fresh bouquet, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. In fact, now you can do it with one of the most divine artisanal olive oils I’ve ever tasted. It’s from the source I recommend below. It’s normally $39 a bottle, but you can try it as part of a special promotion for just $1 to help cover shipping. And you’re under no obligation to buy anything else.
So Who Is My Favorite Source of the World’s Best Olive Oils?
Meet My Personal “Olive Oil Hunter,” T. J. Robinson
A one-time chef and gourmet food writer/editor, T.J. Robinson came up with the idea of hunting for the world’s best, freshest artisanal extra virgin olive oils—and flying them straight from the new harvest at their peak of flavor directly to the kitchens of America’s top gourmet chefs, passionate foodies, and lovers of natural, healthy foods.
Robinson does this through his Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club, which is strictly limited to just 20,000 members. He must limit the number of members in the club because his olive oils are sourced from the world’s most exclusive award-winning small family farms, and quantities are always limited.
Joining the Club gives you direct access to the purest, freshest, and most flavorful olive oils from a wide array of gold-medal-winning olive oil producers. These olive oils are personally hand-selected by T. J. Robinson exclusively for his Club members and are available nowhere else on earth. They are out-of-this-world delicious! And, as I mentioned, when you join, there’s no commitment to buy anything else.
With T.J. as your personal Olive Oil Hunter, you’ll never again have to worry about unwittingly buying olive oil counterfeited by criminals who use fake and potentially harmful chemical additives. That’s because every olive oil T.J. imports is independently certified to be 100% pure extra virgin.
My First Taste Blew Me Away
At a seminar he attended, T.J. heard about my passion for delicious, all-natural foods. So he sent me three of his new oils, fresh from the harvest, for a taste test. I loved the rich complexity, the vibrant colors that ranged from deep green to golden, and the bright, sunny flavors. They were grassy, herbal, fruity, and intense—all at the same time, just like a complex wine. This was the real McCoy EVOO you get only in the best European restaurants and the back-road bistros around the Mediterranean.
And then came the oil’s remarkable finish: a distinct pepperiness at the back of the throat upon swallowing, the hallmark of the very freshest oil. This peppery tang is due to the oleocanthal, the inflammation-fighting component that can begin to disappear six months after pressing. This is yet another reason to buy your olive oil when it’s fresh. That peppery finish is an excellent indicator of how fresh and therefore how effective the olive oil will be in reducing your inflammation and strengthening your immune system.
Once I tried T.J.’s olive oils, I fell madly in love with them, as did my colleagues here at EasyHealthOptions.com. I told this to T.J. He was so pleased that he offered to give our community a special offer.
$39-Bottle-for-a-Buck Promotion Ends Thursday, January 30
T. J.’s unique Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club is one of the most refreshingly customer-friendly companies I’ve ever come across. Unlike some other clubs, there’s never a minimum commitment or obligation to buy anything. Every olive oil comes with a no-questions-asked, 100% money-back guarantee. And if you ever decide to ask for your money back on a given shipment, you don’t even have to return the oil. Whatever you’ve received is yours to keep with T. J.’s compliments. And his outstanding customer service team graciously takes care of your refund request immediately. (Note: Because of complex custom regulations, this offer is available only in the US.)
If you’d like to try this unique Club and receive one of T. J.’s $39 bottles for just $1 to help cover shipping, I suggest that you act now, for two reasons:
First, T.J. and his Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club have reserved a strictly limited number—240 bottles (20 cases)—to share with my readers. Problem is, I’ve got many thousands of readers, so these 240 bottles should go very fast, and it’s first come, first served.
Second, his free sample offer of a $39 bottle for just $1 shipping ends Thursday, January 30, which will be here before we know it. If you miss it, you’ll have to wait until the next harvest season and hope he repeats the offer.
This is the kind of generous, fair-minded offer I like to present to you as my reader for a product I truly love. And it’s an excellent opportunity, perhaps the first in your life, to experience the exceptionally vibrant and delicious taste of extra virgin olive oil when it’s fresh from the new harvest. As I experienced in my home, it adds whole new layers of flavor and deep-down satisfaction to your crisp salads and veggies, grilled meats, delicate fish, toasted nuts and seeds, and other favorite dishes.
The publicity this oil is getting is quite something. Foodies, celebrity chefs, and food writers are raving about it. For example, Larry Olmsted, the award-winning food and travel journalist, recently wrote in his New York Times bestselling book, Real Food/Fake Food
“I now get most of my oil from T. J. Robinson’s Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club, and every time I open a bottle, my kitchen literally fills up with the smell of fresh crushed olives—the scent explodes out of the bottle. Just breaking the seal transports me to Italy or Spain or Chile.”
When you click on the link below, you'll see similar comments from many other voices as well. If you’re interested, try a bottle for just $1 and taste for yourself.
>>Click here to claim your $39 Bottle-for-a-Buck <<
P.S. At the link above, T.J. Robinson, the Olive Oil Hunter, also provides a short article on “The Best Ways to Store Your Olive Oil.” It’s must reading for anyone who uses olive oil.
Happy drizzling!
Michael Cutler, M.D.,
Editor, Easy Health Options®