Refrigerated olive oil report gets chilly reception

Last week I wrote that you could identify pure authentic extra virgin olive oil if it solidified in your refrigerator, which I took from a report forwarded food expert Paula Wolfert. I was writing about how to distinguish pure extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) from those that might be cut with other oils, or even coloring to make them look like EVOO.

Nancy Lilly is a respected Sonoma rancher, olive grower and olive oil producer and member of the California Olive Oil Council Tasting Panel that had to taste all the tested olive oils. “We’re the ones who had to taste all the bad oils that led to the published condemnation of so many imports,” says Lilly.

Lilly described the report and its refrigerator test as “bad information.”

“I think that most fats will become more solid, whether rancid, or otherwise defective, or not,” says Lilly. “Consumers need to understand what rancidity tastes like (think of very old peanuts or old crayons), and they also need to know that rancid oil has absolutely none of the healthful properties of extra virgin oil. The only way to test for rancidity is either by a chemical analysis or by tasting it. And staff members of our markets should be tasting their own oils off their shelves from time and should pull the bad oils.”

Lilly recommends some short videos that the California Olive Oil Council has made about producing and tasting olive oil – they can be accessed on the COOC website, cooc.com.

Kendal Krupa, marketing manager for the Olive Press, agrees with Lilly, saying, “We also dispute this testing procedure. The chemical analysis process the COOC uses, which is testing by UV absorption is a very accurate way to test if the oil is 100 percent extra virgin or if there are other oils present.”

So is there a way to test olive oil at home?

“Unfortunately, I don’t think it is possible to test this at home,” says Krupa. “I would say the best way to guarantee 100 percent extra virgin olive oil is to look on the bottle for either the COOC seal or noted somewhere on the bottle that it has been certified 100 percent extra virgin by the COOC.”