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NEWS > BUSINESS > STUDY FINDS OLIVE OIL STILL TECHNICALLY VIRGIN
STUDY FINDS OLIVE OIL STILL TECHNICALLY VIRGIN
July 23 2010
San Francisco, CA - Despite their reputation for being very much an acquired taste, the lowly olive has actually been one of the most important crops in human history. First cultivated more than 10,000 years ago, olives have been used in food, hygiene 
products, religion, medicine, and in the lamps that lit the homes of the great thinkers of our past such as Homer and Socrates. Virtually every culture in southern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa utilized olives in their day to day lives, and in the process of founding our modern world.
Today of course olives don’t have quite the same power as they did in antiquity. They no longer fuel the economy that built the pyramids or helped the Romans build aqueducts in France, they now sit in jars on supermarket shelves waiting to draw sneers from children and adults. Even though wars between nations are no longer fought over the fruit, the economics of olives, particularly the oil derived from them, has inspired battles on all new modern battlefields. With renewed growth in popularity of olive oil in cooking the debate over the purity has become a major issue, not only of pride but also of money. Now a new study has found that the vast majority of olive oils claiming to be extra virgin are in fact not so pure, but still technically virgin by the strictest definition.
“Consumers, retailers and regulators should really start asking questions. It's sad for consumers that there is fraud out there. It's a problem, and maybe this will get folks to perk up and listen,” said Dan Flynn, executive director of UC Davis' Olive Oil Center. “Many of the oils tested, particularly California oils, make the claim that they are extra virgin, proclaim it proudly on their labels, but are in fact far less than that. While a few are not even remotely virgin, the majority are but are not deserving of the ‘extra virgin’ label that they have applied to themselves.”
Extra virgin oil is considered that which hasn’t been violated with heat or foreign bodies.
“This may seem a trifling issue for the vast majority of the population, my guess would be in the 99 percent range, but for those intimately involved it is of serious concern. Anytime someone claims purity and forces people to make decisions based on that information one would expect it to be truthful. When it is not trust is broken, trust that can never be regained,” said Scrape TV Business analyst Ken Green. “Most people would never be able to taste the difference between a totally virgin oil and one that has had some alterations but that doesn’t change the situation of truth in advertising and the trust issue. I mean most people will be able to tell non-virgin oil immediately but when you have these subtle differences it can be very difficult, even for an experienced palate.”
The researchers have proposed in-depth testing to determine the true purity of oils.
“Bringing awareness to this topic will certainly help. No one wants to be stuck with 
spoiled or impure oil if they can help it, unless of course that’s what they want. I mean people like different things and it’s not really for anyone else to judge. Still, you sell something one way and that’s what people expect to get and that’s exactly what they should get,” continued Green. “I mean we are talking about subtle differences. The offending oil wasn’t exactly cooked up in a dark alleyway or been handled by greasy and unseemly workers but it still isn’t pure and not what it claims to be and that is the core issue and that needs to change.”
Researcher acknowledged that California oils have long had a reputation of being less than pure despite claims to the opposite.
William Ashford, Business Correspondent
NEWS > BUSINESS > STUDY FINDS OLIVE OIL STILL TECHNICALLY VIRGIN
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