COOKING LUBRICANT
Everyone buys it, no one knows it.
(Extra) Virgin Olive Oil is an underrated, unknown, misunderstood product by consumers, exploited with the price lever and attacked by those who are not interested in its actual, provable quality.
This way, oil is downgraded to the role of "kitchen lubricant", a low-cost commodity, in spite of quality.
We pour it every day on our dishes, without even glancing at the bottle and wondering what's inside it.
We spend more for the engine oil for our car, even though we consume at least 12 litres a year!
Who benefits from this?
- 1The oil industry and large multinational companies, whose aim is producing low-quality standard products at low cost, without the flavours, scents and health-related properties, by telling fake stories through their marketing.
- 2The large-scale retail trade, which uses oil as bait and switch product to be sold underpriced to attract customers to their supermarkets.
- 3The majority of oil mills and the "friend of a friend" with the olive trees in his backyard, who make oil like in the old days, passing it off as extra virgin olive oil.
Who loses out?
- 1Oblivious end consumers who purchase (and pay) for an "extra virgin" product, even though it isn't, and consumes low-quality virgin olive oil, which is sometimes even harmful, flavourless, scentless, and without any health-related benefits.
- 2The oil mill owners that have evolved and invested in actual quality, an entire supply chain to which the effort of making excellent product is not recognized.
- 3Italy, the only country with a biodiversity of over 700 cultivars, a great heritage not yet valorized and recognized.
Careful! It is not what you believe.
Forget everything you know about EVO Oil
We have a wrong image of Extra Virgin Olive Oil in our minds:
We imagine it unfiltered, in a clear bottle with a nice residue on the bottom, because it reminds us of the genuine oil of yesteryear, made by the farmer, as we tasted it when we were little at the oil, mill, and we believe that purchasing it directly there or from the "relative" with the olive trees is a guarantee of quality. That's not the case.
The truth is we know nothing about Extra Virgin Olive Oil, and they speculate on our ignorance.
FINANCIAL PRODUCT FOR MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES
Industrial supermarket oil
The large bottling companies with familiar names (often owned by foreign multinational companies) do not have a single olive tree in their name, and make their oil by mixing oils of different nature and origins, often subjected to chemical-physical processes to remove odours and faults and make them fall within the chemical legal thresholds, but without any real bond with their original territories. Product traceability is basically impossible and end prices are incompatible with the cost of a quality-oriented production.
We find these oils on supermarket shelves, with the most fanciful names to recall the product's wholesomeness, such as "Raw Oil", "Unfiltered Oil", "Decanted Oil", "First Pressing", "Cold-Pressed", "100% Traced Oil", "Classic Flavour", and many other marketing fantasies to sell to unaware consumers.
THE FARMER'S OIL IS NOT EXTRA VIRGIN!
The handmade "relative" oil
Even purchasing oil directly at the oil mill or from a "relative" with the olive groves is no guarantee of quality, quite the contrary!
In Italy (and also Spain, Greece, Turkey and Morocco), out of 5,000 oil mills, only a few hundreds know how to make a true extra virgin olive oil. The majority of them have not evolved and make the oil like in the past, with obsolete machines and processes, and false beliefs that do not ensure quality, often unknowingly producing faulty extra virgin olive oil with poor organoleptic and health-related properties.
"Where the olive oil production is higher, there is also the lowest product knowledge, as they are anchored to past traditions, and the oil consumed in these areas often has a low quality."