NPR carried a story this week about the safety of gourmet olive oils. That one piqued my interest, because I couldn’t help but wonder why olive oil and safety would be mentioned in the same story. After all, virgin olive oil is usually considered the healthiest cooking oil available, and is an integral part of the Mediterranean Diet.
Fraud in the gourmet olive oil business
The business of gourmet olive oils is a very lucrative market. The connoisseurs of virgin olive oil take the flavor and richness imparted by the “extra virgin” fraction are worth a lot of money. I was in the grocery store today, and the gourmet olive oils sell for between $9 and $19 a bottle. Compared to the price of most commodity oils, that’s a huge markup. I personally don’t understand why there’s such value in the product, but there are those who swear by it. My most common experience with the “extra virgin oil” is when restaurants put it out for dipping bread. Apparently, there is a whole host of things that can be done with olive oil. You can learn more about that subject in The Passionate Olive: 101 Things to Do with Olive Oil
At any rate, this huge return has apparently encouraged people to start substituting other oils, and selling it as full value extra virgin oil. This generates a huge return for those committing the fraud, which is bad enough, but in some cases, they’re not even using olive oil. This is worse than fraud, its unsafe. Imagine a parent with a child that has a severe peanut allergy who buys (what they think is) olive oil, and cooks with it, serving the food to their kid. It isn’t hard to image that child going into anaphylactic shock and possibly even dying as a result.
Apparently some states have taken notice of both the fraud, and the potential hazards, of this activity. Several states have introduced legislation to regulate virgin olive oil. With the possible health hazards that could result from this sort of fraud, they probably can’t get these laws in place fast enough.
