Never.
Well, not by my definition, anyway.
California Olive Ranch is my standard go-to and its’ purity was validated by that genetic study of olive oils (can’t find it right now). However, recently I discovered that my favorite italian deli sells Partanna for $26/3L, which is about half the price I normally pay for COR plus it’s a Sicilian varietal oil. I lost my mind the day I found it. So damn good.
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Ok, I’ll hold off on my usual #notalljersey defense. 
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I was just looking at the picture, noting the color of the oil - which is obviously not extra-virgin olive oil - and wondering how the hell they could label it as such for the longest time, actively looking for the scam, before I was able to read the other text.
I’ve seen some pretty shifty (and shitty) product labeling along those lines, but that is, by far, the absolute worst.
Yeah, I know someone with a sunflower allergy, though it’s not in the top 10 most common, though usually the presence of oil or seed seems to be disclosed. The problem: anything beyond the top 8 most common food allergens don’t need to be disclosed on packaging (e.g. sesame seeds), so it it’s in small quantities (e.g. also sesame) they don’t. At all. They just list it as “natural flavor.” So for some allergies, you literally can’t tell if it’s in the product based on the label. I really, really don’t understand the logic of not including the presence of a top-10 allergen on the ingredient label, at the very least.
Fake olive oil is a huge problem even today. There’s a high demand specifically for “Italian olive oil” - far beyond what they grow olives for, so they make up the difference, variously, by mislabeling oil mixes and importing olives (and oils) from other countries and packaging them in Italy. So “Italian olive oil” is frequently neither Italian nor olive.
It’s amazing to read about food fraud in, say, 18th century London. Plaster in flour. Totally toxic materials being carefully handcrafted to look like valuable spices. It’s amazing they got away with it, because they were creating facsimiles that actually would have killed people (and tasted nothing like real food, either).
The olives don’t even do “the other stuff.”
Seriously though, apparently “extra virgin” has no legal meaning in the US, so in practice it means nothing here. In theory, virgin is cold pressed (not heated or chemically treated); the extra/non-extra distinction is the ripeness of the olives and the acidity. (Extra virgin is supposed to be less acid.)
Yeah, Costco apparently actually sends someone out to go inspect the whole process, down to the level of the individual farms, to verify the product for their home brand.
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virgin oil defined:
(b) “U.S. Virgin Olive Oil” is virgin olive oil which has reasonably good flavor and odor (median of defects between zero and 2.5 and median of fruitiness greater than zero) and a free fatty acid content, expressed as oleic acid, of not more than 2.0 grams per 100 grams, and meets the additional requirements as outlined in §52.1539 as appropriate. Olive oil that falls into this classification shall not be graded above “U.S. Virgin Olive Oil” (this is a limiting rule).
extra virgin olive oil defined:
(a) “U.S. Extra Virgin Olive Oil” is virgin olive oil which has excellent flavor and odor (median of defects equal to zero and median of fruitiness greater than zero) and a free fatty acid content, expressed as oleic acid, of not more than 0.8 grams per 100 grams, and meets the additional requirements as outlined in §52.1539, as appropriate
.
https://www.oliveoilsource.com/page/product-grade-definitionsIt’s something extra.
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at least they used edible oil…not like 1981 in spain.
The cause was traced to the consumption of colza oil that had been intended for industrial rather than food use.[1] To discourage human consumption, the oil was denatured by the addition of aniline to make it smell and taste bad. It was then imported as cheap industrial oil by the company RAPSA at San Sebastián, handled by RAELCA, and illegally refined by ITH in Seville to remove the aniline, resulting in a palatable product that could then be illegally sold. It was sold as “olive oil” by street vendors at weekly street markets, and was used on salads and for cooking
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Stuff like this is why I don’t buy olive oil. For cooking purposes, I tend to use Finnish canola oil. Much cheaper, quite healthy, and (semi-)locally produced.
That’s a great observation. There’s reason to think olive oil fraud is quite a lot older still, though:
By the first century A.D. … [ancient Roman] amphorae show evidence of extensive anti-fraud measures: each was painted with the exact weight of oil it contained, along with the name of the farm where the olives were pressed, the merchant who shipped the oil, and the official who verified this information before shipment. Reverse checks were presumably performed at Monte Testaccio when the amphorae were emptied, to confirm that the weight and quality had not changed during shipment. “The biggest danger was that merchants would substitute an inferior product en route, and the explicit labelling of goods was clearly designed to counter this,” Mattingly said.
In other words, the ancient Romans anticipated fraud of the [modern] kind perpetrated by Domenico Ribatti, and took more effective steps to prevent it than Italians do today.
– Slippery Business: The trade in adulterated olive oil (2007)
My guess is the ancient Romans didn’t really anticipate fraud, they reacted to it.
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I pass this place twice a day and I have often wondered what could justify an entire shop dedicated to olive oil. I see now that the pit of the olive is rife with sex, corruption and shady business. I’lll bet The Little Shop of Olive Oil has an entire room dedicated to counting the proceeds of their black market, cash only sales.
Now I’m wondering if my “grapeseed” oil is actually G-quality rapeseed oil.
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My brother-in-law ruined a batch of baked goods when he tried to help out in the kitchen once. It turns out that he didn’t know Lestoil is not a form of vegetable oil. Literally!
My sister could tell by the smell of what was baking in the oven that it was definitely not right, so nobody was poisoned.
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@beschizza , you might have to add another drum of slippery stuff to the BBS Xmas list:
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I’ve noticed that Trader Joe’s Italian olive oils variously say “packed in Italy” or “product of Italy.” I think there was one where the label was up-front about the olives being from Tunisia.
I’m hoping they do the same with the honey they sell in relatively inexpensive half-gallons…
“That’s some good olive oil!”
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Apparently Costco’s Kirkland Signature brand is one of the most consistently good (and well-priced) options.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/costco-olive-oil_n_5981e0abe4b09d24e9945c22
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Lard!
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Buy California olive oil. Non of those scandals were in the US.
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