Slippery Path When Oils Ain't Oils

The Canberra Times - Australia ^ | October 21, 2007 | By Sonya Neufeld

[tet68]

Fake or real? You decide!

[golfisnr1]

Is there a simple chemical test for real olive oil?

[muawiyah]

We've got about 10 quarts of Spanish olive oil around here. Good stuff. Costs much less than the Greek and Italian variety and is definitely their equal when used in cooking.

Then there's this little black jar of super duper extra virgin extracted from cracked, not crushed, olive stone ~ goes on the salad with a cheap redwine vinegar. Got that in World Mart. Didn't even notice where it came from but the bottle makes it all better!

Boutique cooking ~ way to go.

[editor-surveyor]

"Some of the oil consisted almost entirely of soybean oil, which costs about one sixth of the price of olive oil."

And is a serious health hazard (phyto-estrogen in soy can cause breast cancer and prostate cancer)

[muawiyah]

It's all "real". The dispute is over whether or not it's from a first pressing, or a second pressing, or was it released with a solvent (perhaps a lighter vegetable oil like canola), and so on.

These differences count only for the olive oil you use on salads. Once it's heated in cooking ALL SAME THING GI!

[Lurker]

IIRC a few years back there were several deaths traced to adulterated fake olive oil in Europe.

L

[muawiyah]

Isn't the phyto-estrogen business more of a scare tactic by the Butter Board and manufacturers of corn oil?

Once soy is heated, it does undergo some significant chemical changes that degrade all the bad stuff ~ besides, I never drink soy oil.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

26,000 litres of a lower-grade oil from a New Jersey warehouse...
 

GENCO Imports?

[muawiyah]

Europeans used to take cheap white wines, add cows blood, put it in bottles with corks and peddle the stuff as the highest quality estate bottled vintages.

It took scientific tests to tell the difference ~ you mix that cows blood right, you can match the "earthiness" of all the European wines.

Cheap dessert wines in the US cannot be as readily immitated. Sugar water, alcohol and kool-aid mixes will settle out and give themselves away.

[Vince Ferrer]

A year earlier, the Italian special police broke up a criminal ring and confiscated 100,000 litres of fake olive oil, with a street value of about six million euros

We're losing the war on olives. This will continue to happen until olive oil is legalized.

[editor-surveyor]

Actually, corn oil has some problems too, but soy and rape (AKA canola) are the worst. Butter is totally safe in the quantities that most people consume. (If you ate it by the fistfull, you might eventually clog your liver and gallbladder)

[editor-surveyor]

you mix that cows blood right, you can match the "earthiness" of all the European wines

Another good reason to stick with Napa or Sonoma wines.

[muawiyah]

You wouldn't believe ~ once you are diagnosed as a diabetic and go about reducing your carbohydrates to about 10% of normal, about all you've got left to eat is more oil and fat.

So, fistfuls of butter it is!

Even the little pats they hand out in restaurants.

That's why these oils are highly important ~ got a bunch of different ones, even some stuff in there that's probably poisonous (walnut oil, date palm oil, woodchuck oil, etc.).

I noticed that Aldi's has been under criticism for selling the adulterated stuff in its stores in Germany. Just a few years ago a German laboratory found that the standard brand sold by Aldi was the "least poisonous" available in Europe ~ they rated it #1, the olive oil to use if you gotta' use olive oil ~ (I gather there's still a bias towards pork lard in German kitchens).

Apparantly the incentive to commit olive oil fraud in Europe is tremendous if they can suck Aldi's into it.

[dighton]

Fake or real?

In either case they don’t belong on her arms.

No matter to Popeye and Bluto, who after months at sea must have pictured her as Jane Russell.

;-)

[muawiyah]

Or Ripple. Can’t imagine how they’d adulterate or fake that stuff!

[Nathan Zachary]

"Once soy is heated, it does undergo some significant chemical changes that degrade all the bad stuff ~ besides, I never drink soy oil."

Maybe not knowingly. It's in everything from soft ice cream, tofu, "nutrional" drinks, and fake "meats". Hydroginated soy bean oil is in practically all processed foods which claim to be 'good' for you. That's why you should always read the labels.

[muawiyah]

I read every label. Interestingly enough almost every product containing soy also contains wheat, barley or rye ~ and I don't eat anything with those three "gluten containing" materials.

The only soy products I currently use are a steak sauce which contains wheat free soysauce, and a wheat free soysauce. These products are marketed as Richfood and/or LaChoy ~ definitely not at the top of the soysauce snob market hierarchy, but certainly safe for me.

Think of soysauce as a cooked and fermented product ~

[muawiyah]

Oh, yeah, these things that are supposed to be “good for you” are off the list. I do eat whole corn cornchips and some potato byproducts, but my diet is pretty much limited to the 17 lowest glycemic level vegetables on the market.

[editor-surveyor]

Or Ripple. Can’t imagine how they’d adulterate or fake that stuff!

Ripple isn't really wine. It's distilled water, ethyl alcohol, corn syrup, and artificial flavors.