April 2006
Articles from Dr. Weil
"Top 10 Most Recent Q&A's" on Olive Oil
WASHINGTON - Food containing olive oil can carry labels saying it may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, the government says, citing limited evidence from a dozen scientific studies about the benefits of monounsaturated fats.
As long as people don't increase the number of calories they consume daily, the Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) confirmed a reduction in the risk of coronary heart disease when people replace foods high in saturated fat with the monounsaturated fat in olive oil.
That means a change as simple as sauteing food in two tablespoons of olive oil instead of butter may be healthier for your heart.
"Since CHD is the No. 1 killer of both men and women in the United States, it is a public health priority to make sure that consumers have accurate and useful information on reducing their risk," Lester M. Crawford, acting FDA (news - web sites) commissioner, said in a prepared statement.
"It's good news for consumers," said Bob Bauer, president of the North American Olive Oil Association, which sought the qualified health claim on Aug. 28, 2003. "Olive oil is a healthy product to help them fight heart disease."
Recent research has underscored the heart benefits from so-called Mediterranean diets high in unsaturated fats from vegetable oil, nuts and such fish as salmon and tuna. Mortality rates dropped by more than 50 percent among elderly Europeans who stuck to such diets and led healthy lifestyles, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (news - web sites) in September.
The North American Olive Oil Association included 88 publications to back its claim for the heart-healthy benefits of olive oil. The group wanted to make the claim for monounsaturated fats contained in just one tablespoon of olive oil per day.
Olive oil and certain food containing olive oil can now indicate that "limited and not conclusive scientific evidence suggests that eating about two tablespoons (23 grams) of olive oil daily may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease due to the monounsaturated fat in olive oil," the FDA concluded.
"I think FDA just took a more conservative view," Bauer said.
ià Manufacturers waited for the FDA's precise wording before revising labels. "I expect, over time, most every container of olive oil will have this," he said.
Already, American restaurants and consumers drive $450 million in olive oil sales per year. Supermarket sales in 2003 accounted for 132 million pounds of olive oil, up by nearly one-third over the past six years.
Bauer said he expects the label change to spur a larger uptick in sales.
According to the American Heart Association (news - web sites), coronary heart disease caused 502,189 deaths — or one in five deaths — in 2001, the most current statistic available. Another 13.2 million Americans that year survived the heart attacks, chest pains and other ailments caused by coronary heart disease.
Along with lowering cholesterol, cutting out cigarettes and exercising, the group says Americans can boost heart health by eating foods low in saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium. An American Heart Association spokeswoman declined comment on the FDA's action until it reviews the health claim.
The FDA discounted most of the submitted studies because the methodology made it difficult to tease out the effect of the monounsaturated fats in olive oil. Of a dozen studies that survived the cut, four were the most persuasive.
Thirty-three healthy young American men ate diets high in saturated fats from butter or cocoa butter, olive oil's monounsaturated fats or polyunsaturated fats from soybean oil. The soybean and olive oil groups significantly lowered total and bad LDL cholesterol.
In another trial involving 21 middle-aged Spanish women, those with diets in which olive oil replaced 8 percent of total daily calories from saturated fats lowered their total and bad cholesterol while significantly boosting good HDL cholesterol.
Forty-one young Spanish men lowered total and bad LDL cholesterol with an olive oil diet. Levels of good cholesterol did not drop in the olive oil group, as they did for youthful peers who replaced calories from saturated fats with carbohydrates.
And 22 healthy, middle-aged Spanish men with slightly elevated cholesterol counts were put on a four-week diet high in saturated fat. Those who switched to a diets high in olive oil and those who replaced calories from saturated fats with carbohydrates lowered total and bad LDL cholesterol levels.
It's the third time the FDA granted a qualified health claim for conventional food. In March, the agency said "supportive but not conclusive research" shows eating 1.5 ounces of walnuts per day may reduce coronary heart disease risk. In September, it issued a similar qualified claim for the heart-healthy benefits of omega-3 fatty acids.
On the Net:
FDA: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/dms/qhcolive.html
Selecting olive oil can be challenging even for olive oil professionals.
With so many labels and so many claims (extra-virgin, organic, light,
first-pressed), it can be nearly impossible to tell which oils really are
what they claim to be. Here are some general rules that might help.
Good olive oil is expensive. Producing high-quality, extra-virgin olive oil
isn't cheap, so your consumer radar should go off if a 500-ml bottle
claiming extra-virgin status is offered for less than $12. Bottles below
that price are almost certain to be chemically extracted, and may not even
be made from olives.
COOC taste panel leader Paul Vossen has tasted oils that claimed to be from
olives, but have turned out to be artificially colored pommace or seed oil.
In an unregulated industry, anything can happen.
Choose oils stored in tinted or aluminum-wrapped glass. Olive oil, like
olives, is perishable, and light speeds up this process.
Choose oils from a harvest no more than one year old. Because of its
perishable nature, olive oil has a greater chance of being rancid when
produced more than a year ago.
Pay attention to where the oil is from and where the label claims the olives
are from. Bottles of oil from a single estate have a higher likelihood of
being made from olives where they say they are from. According to 1997
Senate Bill 920, olive oil with "California" on the label must have been
produced from 100 percent California olives. This rule, however, is
difficult to enforce.
Look for the COOC's certified extra-virgin label, which ensures the olive
oil is free of defects, is truly extra-virgin, and made in California from
California olives.
Don't choose on color. The color of an olive oil has no bearing on its
quality.
When tasting, off-odors reminiscent of Play-Doh, nail polish or rubber
indicate an olive oil has been mistreated or that the olives used in its
production have been compromised. A good olive oil should have positive
flavors reminiscent of olives, tropical fruits and grass. It may also
contain bitterness, a desirable quality, or pungency, the sensation of spice
at the back of the throat. The latter two qualities, however, should be in
balance with respect to the oil's fruit characteristics.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Some of the benefits of a Mediterranean-type diet -- rich in vegetables, fruits, legumes and olive oil and light on red meat -- may stem from the diet's effect on inflammation, new research suggests.
In a study from Greece, markers of inflammation and blood clotting that are related to heart disease were lowest in people who adhered most closely to the traditional Mediterranean diet.
It is too soon to say whether the Mediterranean diet was responsible for the low levels of inflammation and blood-clotting markers, but the findings do provide a plausible explanation of the diet's benefits, according to the study's lead author.
"There is growing scientific evidence that diets high in fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains and that include fish, nuts and low-fat dairy products offer protective health benefits," Dr. Demosthenes B. Panagiotakos of Harokopio University in Athens told Reuters Health.
He noted that in the past few decades, a large body of evidence has linked the Mediterranean diet to reductions in heart disease, overall deaths and some kinds of cancer.
The latest results suggest that the Mediterranean diet protects the heart by reducing inflammation, Panagiotakos said.
"Our findings render this dietary pattern extremely attractive for public health purposes and should be adopted by almost everyone," he said.
The results of the study appear in Wednesday's issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
A Mediterranean-style diet is rich in fruits, vegetables, grains and nuts. It includes few saturated fats like the ones in red meat but plenty of healthier fatty acids like ones found in olive oil.
Inflammation is a prime suspect in a number of health problems, including heart disease, so Panagiotakos and his colleagues set out to measure the effect of a Mediterranean-style diet on inflammation and blood-clotting.
Over the course of a year, the researchers interviewed roughly 3,000 Greek men and women. The researchers also measured several proteins and other markers that are associated with inflammation and blood clotting.
People who stuck most closely to a traditional Mediterranean diet tended to have significantly lower levels of the inflammation and blood-clotting markers, the researchers report.
To make sure that the low levels of these markers were truly related to diet and were not a reflection of better overall health, the researchers accounted for many other factors, including physical activity, smoking, age, gender, socioeconomic status and several health conditions.
Even after taking into account the other factors, the Mediterranean diet was still associated with lower levels of inflammation and blood-clotting markers.
February 2003
1. Closing Label Loopholes for Olive Oil? 2. Choosing Olive Oil? 3. Olive Oil Scam? 4. Olive Oil for Pain Relief?
Ibuprofen-like activity in extra-virgin olive oil
Nature Publishing Group
Nature Publishing Group Article (pdf version)
FDA: Olive Oil May Boost Heart Health
By DIEDTRA HENDERSON, AP Science Writer
Pressing for Greater Olive Oil Oversight
* California producers want U.S. to tighten labeling standards
By Jerry Hirsch, Times Staff Writer
September 17, 2004
When the "virgin" describes the type of olive oil sold in the United States.
In a rare case of a trade group asking the federal government for more regulation, the California Olive Oil Council is pressing the U.S. Department of Agriculture to tighten its grading standards. The council wants to prevent domestic and foreign producers from blending lower-grade olive oil, and even other oils such as canola, into what can be sold domestically as "extra virgin" olive oil.
The problem, said Bruce Golino, president of the trade group, is that the U.S. has no legal definition for extra virgin, which in other parts of the world denotes the highest grade of the product. This has created a loophole that allows producers to give their oils a premium label that doesn't truly reflect what's in the bottle, said Antoinette Addison, who with her husband, Shawn, operates olive orchard and mill Figueroa Farms in Santa Ynez, Calif.
Although some California producers market blended oils as extra virgin, the move to tighten the rules is aimed squarely at importers.
Olive oil grading standards are generally stricter in Europe, where most of the world's olive oil is produced. Rules in the U.S. allow foreign producers to ship lower-quality oil here under premium labels, California growers say. Their hope is that tightening U.S. standards will force importers to increase their quality and that as a result, "they will have to charge more," said Paul Vossen, a Santa Rosa, Calif.-based farm advisor with the University of California. "That will make our industry more competitive."
The North American Olive Oil Assn., the trade group representing the importers, also supports "updating the industry standards," said Bob Bauer, its president. But Bauer said mislabeling oil wasn't as big a problem as the California producers claimed. Although "there may be some smaller players" doing it, he said, the association has a testing program and has not heard of widespread incidents of lower-grade oil being sold as extra virgin.
The USDA will soon solicit comments on proposals to change the standards, which have largely stayed the same since 1948. It could be a year or more before any of the rules are changed.
The California trade group, which requires members to adhere to the European standards, wants the U.S. grades of "fancy," "choice," "standard" and "substandard" to be replaced by the internationally accepted terms of "virgin," "extra virgin" and "refined." Additionally, it wants more precise standards for the amount of acceptable impurities and acid and a requirement that extra virgin oils undergo chemical and taste analysis.
Such changes would bring the U.S. up to par with the rules set by the International Olive Oil Council.
The call for stricter grading comes amid rapid growth for California's industry, which accounts for virtually all of U.S. olive and olive oil production but a small fraction of the world market. The value of California's olive crop is about $40 million, depending on the year.
By comparison, the retail value of olive oil sales in the U.S. will be about $443 million this year, the North American Olive Oil Assn. said. About half of that is labeled "extra virgin."
Over the last decade, the industry has grown from a handful to more than 150 California olive oil brands, which typically are gourmet varieties produced in small quantities and sold for as much as $30 for a 500-milliliter bottle. Vossen estimates that California farmers last year planted 1,000 new acres of trees producing high-oil-content olives, bringing acreage devoted to olive oil production to 6,000, compared with an estimated 35,000 acres for table olives.
Most of the new plantings in recent years have been of oil varieties, said Dan Sciabica, operations manager for olive oil company Nick Sciabica & Sons Inc. in Modesto. Growers are starting to remove trees that produce the canned variety because foreign competition has pushed down prices, he said.
Over the last five years, the state's oil production has nearly tripled to 400,000 gallons. Still, Vossen said, that was just a tiny drop of the 60 million gallons the U.S. consumes annually.
Whether California could ever become an international olive oil power is a matter of debate, even within the industry. Production here is mostly limited to small-scale artisan oils. These are typically sold to tourists at wineries or offered in gourmet shops and upscale grocery stores such as Whole Foods Market, which sells Addison's Camino al Cielo label. "You can make some money, but it won't be a killing," Antoinette Addison said.
In the long run, competition and the high cost of growing and handpicking olives in small orchards is going to make artisan production a difficult business, Vossen said. He said, however, that "we could compete quite well with the European imports if we moved to the big scale."
That would require high-density orchards on relatively flat land where a mechanical harvester could be used to collect the crop, Vossen said. So far there is just one operation that fits the requirements, he said: the 500-acre California Olive Ranch orchard and mill near Oroville.
Such farms should be able to retail extra virgin oil for about $10 a bottle, which is competitive with true extra virgin oil from Europe, Vossen said. Because of the efficiency of California farming, 300,000 acres of high-density olive groves would be able to produce 60 million gallons of high-grade oil, he estimates.
Others believe that olive oil will always be a boutique business in California, even with the rule changes.
By most estimates, there are well under 40,000 acres of olive-bearing groves in California, compared with 6 million in Spain and 4 million in Italy, said Adin Hester, president of the Olive Growers Council of California, which represents the table olive end of the business.
Moreover, the European Union helps underwrite the industry with subsidies. And that doesn't even factor in nations such as Turkey, Tunisia and Morocco "where the costs are so much lower than here," Hester said.
"In the international scheme of things," he said, "we are a nobody."
How to Select and Taste Olive Oil
http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/
July 2004
Health - Reuters
Tue July 6, 2004 6:30 PM ET
Mediterranean Diet May Reduce Inflammation
By Merritt McKinney
SOURCE: Journal of the American College of Cardiology, July 7, 2004.
Olive oil's slippery supply line
Italian extra-virgin not always real thing
Article Published: Sunday, October 26, 2003
By Kimberly Lord Stewart
Special to The Denver Post
Denver Post article
June 25, 2003
Add 1 lb. of veggies, olive oil
By Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY
Eating a traditional Mediterranean
diet, including a pound of vegetables and several tablespoons of
olive oil a day, may reduce your risk of dying from heart disease,
cancer and other causes, suggests a large new study from
Greece.
This adds to the growing body of evidence on the health benefits of
this diet, which is rich in vegetables, fruits, beans, whole-grain
breads and olive oil. In Greece, the diet contains a moderate amount
of fish and dairy products and is low in meat. Wine is consumed in
moderation and generally during meals.
The Mediterranean diet varies between countries and regions, but it
usually gets about 30% to 40% of total calories from fat, mostly olive oil, a monounsaturated fat.
For the latest study, researchers at the University of Athens and Harvard University tracked more than 22,000 adults, ages 20 to
86, in Greece for almost four years.
They interviewed them about what they ate and drank, portion sizes and how often they
ate. They also questioned them about their activity and smoking habits. They measured their
height, weight and waist circumference.
Then, participants were rated on a scale of 0 to 9, based on how closely they stuck to the
traditional Mediterranean diet. The higher the score, the better the adherence.
Among the findings in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine:
"It seems it's the total Mediterranean diet that's protective, rather than individual food
groups," says lead author Antonia Trichopoulou, a professor of nutrition at the University of
Athens Medical School.
People in Greece eat about a pound of vegetables a day, mostly cooked because it would be impossible to eat that quantity of raw
vegetables, she says. "We cook a stew of vegetables with eggplant, zucchini, okra, wild greens in olive oil with garlic, onion and
herbs."
Salads are served with fish, and vegetables like zucchini and spinach are boiled and seasoned with lemon and olive oil, she says.
This Mediterranean diet probably has six to nine servings of vegetables a day, says Colleen Doyle, director of nutrition and physical
activity for the American Cancer Society. That's far more than what most Americans eat, which is believed to be between two and
three servings a day, she says.
But would time-pressed Americans who were weaned on fast food and processed fare really want to eat this way?
With this diet, you may have to spend more time in the kitchen, "but you will live longer," says Dimitrios Trichopoulos, a co-author on
the study and a professor of cancer prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health. "It's a matter of choice."
For a lot of people, this diet probably seems like a stretch, but it's something they should be striving for, Doyle says.
"This is another study that shows if we'd focus more on fruits, vegetables and whole grains and eat less red meat and high-fat
dairy products, we'd be a lot healthier," she says.
Not all producers of olive oils put themselves through the expense and trials of specialty labeling. If you want the ultimate guarantee of freshness and quality, look for markings such as a seal from California (COOC) or from HEPO, the Greek foreign trade board. Quality Spanish oils should carry the initialism DO (Denominacion de Origen) just as DOP (Denominazone Di Origine Protetta) denotes Italian oils. These quality assurances can help narrow your choices. Oils produced in the Chianti Classico region of Tuscany have a new label of distinction: a black rooster, also seen on wine labels. Not just hype, these are quality assurance guarantees that the oil has been put through rigorous standards for pressing and taste. The seal on California’s extra virgin olive oils means the growing and pressing methods, along with taste tests, meet the acceptance of the International Olive Oil Council (IOOC) in Madrid, Katz says. 