Do you really think high quality Extra Virgin Olive Oil is expensive?

Quality extra virgin olive oil, little known for its fragrant and delicious organoleptic characteristics, and for its nutritional and health benefits, is commonly believed to be expensive.

Industrial producers and mass distributors of olive oil are to be blamed for this unfair perception, that coincidentally plays straight into their gameplan. They deliberately transformed this precious natural product into a surrogate of olive oil, into an “oleo-gram” a mirror image of itself. The result is that the only property that industrial commoditized olive oil has in common with real extra virgin olive oil, is that both are vegetable fats.

Idustry deliberately impoverished Extra Virgin Olive Oil of its delicious organoleptic characteristics and of its nutritional and health beneficial properties.

This was done in order to keep such an indispensable product on the store shelf at an attractive price that enables consumption and outsized profits. An indispensable product has to be within everyone’s reach, like milk or flour and canned tomatoes. These are primary goods and are also known as commodities.

Wikipedia defines a Commodity as a good for which there is demand but which is offered without qualitative differences on the market, that is fungible and has the same properties regardless of who produces it, such as petrol or metal ores. One important characteristic of a commodity is that its price is also determined by the market. Commodities are generally raw materials or agricultural products or unprocessed basic products such as gold, grains, sugar and coffee.

Business models centered on commodities speak of quantity not quality.

Olive Oil is thus wickedly downgraded among a score of anonymous products of unknown origin, this is an unfair faith shared with similar eatable products like salt, pepper, butter and vinegar. All are products that we eat and that could express pleasantness to our palates, but are instead left to lie anonymously on our table like a fork, a napkin, a jug of water, for someone elses profit.

Our palate has been trained, it has been numbed and has given up discerning the quality and flavours of these products in favour of fictitious savings, it has become addicted to defective and rancid oils that spoil most dishes that are prepared with them.

All these low-quality oils that we have grown used to are only consumed for their fat component, ignoring all other possible benefits they could bring to your diet. We do it because it’s a reflex, a repetitive habit, one we never paused to question.

Thus, the average consumer who ignores the virtues of a quality olive oil rejects the idea that such a high-quality product can cost many times the unlikely 3 euros per litre at which the commodity version can be found on supermarket shelves.

Quality Oil is thus confined in niche market segments, hidden from public view.

If we pause and think the realization that a quality oil is actually cheaper is within reach. The reasons for this apparent paradox are numerous, we have to compare apples with apples! Let us give the following points a good thought when we are about to choose and pay for an olive oil:

• It is scientifically proved that a high-quality olive oil* if consumed regularly, will keep you healthy – happy – and reduce your medical costs;
• a high-quality olive oil* rich in flavours will be consumed in smaller doses; a few drops are enough to dress and enhance the aromas of a dish;
• a high-quality olive oil* comes with a hedonistic component: aromas and flavours are two parameters that cannot be done without when it comes to quality food.
• as opposed to a commoditized oil assembled from batches of different origins and qualities, a high-quality olive oil*is necessarily cared for by the olive grower who personally carries out a scrupulous monitoring of the entire production chain, guaranteeing the quality, genuine origin and nutritional values.
• a high-quality olive oil* is a conservation and sustainability exercise, in order to produce it, a grower cultivates and protects a part of the planet`s olive heritage that is increasingly at risk of abandonment despite its environmental, nutritional and gastronomic value;
• a high-quality olive oil* provides us with a cultural experience, just like wine, it makes us feel the different expressions that each variety of olive, each terroir and each different production skill can generate, providing infinite pairing options to satisfy our creativity in our kitchen.

I could go a lot further with this, but I think I have made the point of the opportunities we deprive ourselves of when we absentmindedly grab a bottle of any oil in a supermarket, erroneously thinking we are onto a bargain.

So next time pause and ask yourself if you are being paid enough to renounce the features of a high-quality olive oil.

Caterina Mazzocolin for Olea Prilis

* high-quality olive oil – We consider a high quality olive oil, one that fits significantly thighter chemical and organoleptic parameters than those set by the COI to classify extra virgin olive oil. One that is fresh, has been correctly produced and stored. Refer to our buyng guide .