Do You Make These Mistakes When You Buy Olive Oil?

How to avoid scores of fake, stale, rancid, and substandard olive oils and choose only the freshest, most flavorful, and most nutritious olive oils for your table

“Use Extra Virgin Olive Oil and You Might Just Forget to Die” — Article Headline in Reader’s Digest

Extra virgin olive oil is on almost everyone’s shopping list these days. It’s been hailed as a superfood by Harvard Medical School, acclaimed by the Mayo Clinic, lauded by the Yale School of Public Health, and recommended by scores of leading MDs for its numerous health benefits.

Extra virgin olive oil is the cornerstone of the popular Mediterranean Diet, renowned for its benefits of health and longevity. In fact, the Med Diet has just won top honors for the fourth consecutive year. A panel of leading health experts surveyed by US News & World Report ranked the Mediterranean Diet the best diet for healthy eating, best diet for diabetes, best heart-healthy diet, easiest diet to follow, and best plant-based diet.

What’s more, extra virgin olive oil is all the rage among those on the paleo, keto, and Atkins diets as well because it’s a delicious, zero-carb food that makes almost any meal more flavorful and deeply satisfying.

But many shoppers make mistakes when buying olive oil. For example:

Mistake #1: Buying Any Olive Oil Other Than “Extra Virgin”

When you shop for olive oil, be sure to buy extra virgin. It’s the only grade that retains its natural phenols (antioxidants) and other health-promoting compounds. Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) is cold-pressed, meaning it’s not extracted using high heat or harsh chemicals. It’s minimally processed, which leaves in all the wholesome nutrients that Mother Nature meant it to have. All other olive oil grades, such as “virgin,” “pure,” or “light,” have been chemically refined to mask defects, which typically destroys the healthful phenols.

Mistake #2: Buying Olive Oil in a Clear Bottle (Choose a Dark Glass Bottle Instead)

Many shoppers mistakenly believe that “the greener the color, the better the olive oil.” This is a myth. Color has no influence whatsoever on an olive oil’s quality.

Nevertheless, because so many misinformed consumers believe the “green color” myth, some unscrupulous olive oil producers add the chemical chlorophyll to make their cheap, diluted, substandard olive oil look bright green. Then, adding insult to injury, they package this adulterated, low-quality olive oil in clear bottles to show off its bright green color. Clear bottles cause further damage because they expose the oils to florescent lights in supermarkets, which causes olive oil to turn rancid more quickly.

To avoid such deception, always buy olive oil in dark glass bottles which protect olive oil from light.

Mistake #3: Buying Stale Supermarket Olive Oils

If you want to enjoy olive oil at 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.

The olive, after all, is a fruit. And olive oil is a fruit juice. Just like orange juice, olive oil tastes so much better fresh-squeezed. That’s why in Italy, where people know their olive oil, they honor an age-old adage: “Vino vecchio, olio nuovo.” It means, you want your wine to be old but your olive oil new.

The problem is, harvest-fresh olive oil is almost impossible to find in supermarkets. Most olive oil is shipped to the US on slow-moving cargo ships. Then it languishes in warehouses and on store shelves for many months, even years.

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 and rancidity, a study from the University of California, Davis, found that 69% of imported olive oils labeled “extra virgin” sold in stores were so substandard, in no way could they qualify to be classified as “extra virgin olive oil,” the highest grade.

The Six-Month Rule

When you shop for olive oil, forget the “best used by” date on the label. It tells you nothing about how recently the olive oil was pressed. You need to find EVOO with a pressing date (also known as the “harvest date”) on the label, preferably a date no more than six months before your date of purchase. If you don’t see a pressing date on the label, don’t buy!

Unfortunately, the producers of mediocre, mass-market olive oils sold in stores do not put pressing dates on the label because they don’t want you to know how old, stale, or rancid their oils may be. If fact, you can verify this by checking the bottle in your own pantry right now. If you bought it in a store, the odds are overwhelming that the pressing date was intentionally omitted from the label. This is no coincidence, and it’s no way to buy your EVOO, not when freshness is the most critical factor in olive oil flavor and nutritional goodness.

Skip the Supermarket and Buy Online

I recommend buying online, directly from award-winning farms, where you can secure remarkably 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 fresh-pressed olive oil from a gold medal-winning farm that ships direct to your door, and you’ll likely never go back to store-bought oils. Your first taste will be a revelation of how delicious EVOO is when it’s fresh from the harvest.

Below, I’ll tell you how you can try some of the world’s finest harvest-fresh EVOOs 100% risk-free, meaning you can get all of your money back if you don’t fall madly in love with them, as most people do. It’s an excellent opportunity to discover how EVOO is meant to taste at its peak of freshness and flavor. More in a moment.

Mistake #4: Unwittingly Buying Fake Olive Oil Made by the Mafia

As you’ve probably heard, fake Mafia-made olive oils have been flooding U.S. supermarkets for years now. If you’ve missed this frightening story, here are just a few quotes from articles you can read 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 EVOO, 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 highest grade. The New Yorker magazine has reported that the profits in counterfeiting olive oil are “comparable to cocaine trafficking, with none of the risks.”

Because America is the world’s largest consumer market, the crooks have successfully targeted U.S. supermarkets as perfect ripoff targets.

Cancer-Causing Agents in Fake Olive Oils?

In his New York Times best-selling book, Extra Virginity, olive oil expert Tom Mueller warns of contaminants and even cancer-causing agents in fake olive oils. He writes:

“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: Buy from a supplier whose oils are independently lab certified to be 100% pure extra virgin. This gives you protection against all the fakes. More on how to do this in a moment.

How to Enjoy the World’s Purest, Freshest, Most Flavorful, and Most Nutritious Olive Oils

How do you avoid every one of the mistakes I’ve just mentioned?

Well, you can find superb, award-winning olive oils by doing your homework online. Located around the world are quite a few dedicated artisanal producers who bypass the Mafia’s counterfeiting factories and instead offer their award-winning harvest-fresh olive oils directly to consumers.

However, if you’d just as soon save yourself the time and hassle of researching dozens of online olive oil producers, sometimes having to decipher websites in foreign languages and arranging your own international shipping, I invite you to join me and a group of passionate olive oil lovers on a culinary adventure of a lifetime. We’ve set up a society dedicated to appreciating the purest, freshest, most nutritious, and most flavorful olive oils from around the world.

Delivered Right to Your Door—100% Pure EVOO Direct from the New Harvest

As a food writer and a former professional chef, I’ve been a passionate olive oil lover for most of my life. Several years ago, while on a writing assignment in Sicily during the olive harvest, I tasted authentic fresh-pressed olive oil for the first time. It was an epiphany. I had no idea how divine EVOO tastes when the olives are pressed immediately after being plucked from the tree.

I decided to share this discovery with my fellow chefs and foodie friends. I started a small, private society for olive oil lovers like me who want to receive the world’s finest artisanal olive oils direct from artisanal family farms at harvest time. Such ultra-fresh olive oil is bursting with flavor and nutritional potency that’s impossible to find in supermarket olive oils.

The club I started is called the Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club, and what a wonderful job I’ve given myself. Every three months, I vagabond around the world, visiting gold medal-winning farms to select the purest, most delicious olive oils. I personally inspect, taste, select, and bottle the finest oils available from each new harvest. Then I rush my newfound oils to my club members in America.

And before I commit to any olive oil, I have it independently certified to be 100% pure extra virgin. This means you’ll never again have to worry about serving your family or guests olive oil that’s fake, stale, counterfeit, or diluted with cheap, potentially harmful ingredients.

Try This Harvest–Fresh Olive Oil 100% Risk-Free

I like to make it easy for you to try these best-of-the-best olive oils.

First, in my club, there’s never an obligation or commitment to buy any minimum number of olive oils. Best of all, you can try these extraordinary olive oils 100% risk-free. If, after you try them, you decide for any reason they’re not for you, just let me know and you’ll receive all your money back. You can even keep the oils I’ve sent as my thank you for giving my club a try.

Have you ever heard of a supermarket offering you all your money back and letting you keep whatever you brought home from the store! The only reason I can do it is because the vast majority of olive oil lovers who try my oils never want to be without them again.

Here’s What I Invite You to Savor

As soon as you receive your oil, open the cap and inhale the oil’s harvest-fresh bouquet. You’ll instantly notice the air around you fill with a farm-fresh fragrance, as if you’ve opened a garden in a bottle. This vibrant, grassy aroma, akin to new-mown hay, results from nothing more than 100% pure extra virgin olive oil straight from the olive grove—not a single ingredient added!

Next, for a truly stunning revelation, compare your newly arrived farm-fresh EVOO to the olive oil sitting in your kitchen pantry. Perform a simple taste test with each, and you’ll immediately realize what bountiful fresh flavor and aroma you’ve been missing in all your dishes, all these years.

“I have died and gone to Italy!!!”

If, like most people, you’ve been dining at home a lot more these days, these harvest-fresh oils will bring a well-deserved upgrade to every meal. You’ll experience such enhanced dining pleasure as you drizzle this harvest-fresh olive oil on your crisp salads, delicate fish, grilled steaks, fresh veggies, luscious pastas, or simply on a hunk of warm, crusty bread or piece of tangy cheese. As one club member, Jennifer of Newport, Rhode Island, said of her first experience with our harvest-fresh olive oil: “I have died and gone to Italy!!!”

A Food Critic’s Rave

The publicity this oil is getting is quite something. Foodies, celebrity chefs, and food writers are raving as well. For example, Larry Olmsted, the award-winning food and travel journalist, recently wrote this in his New York Times best-selling 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 olive oil lovers as well.

Click here
for more information on the Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club and to claim your risk-free invitation to try our independently lab-certified, 100% pure extra virgin olive oils from award-winning artisanal small farms.

P.S. At this link, I also include a short article, “The Best Ways to Store Your Olive Oil.” It’s a must-read for anyone who uses olive oil.