Olive oil is world renowned for its health benefits. The Mediterranean diet has olive oil as one of its centerpieces, and those countries where people eat a traditional Mediterranean diet, such as Greece and Italy, enjoy the benefits of one of the longest life spans and lowest cancer rates in the world. Over the last couple of decades, the health benefits of olive oil have started to gain traction in the American culinary arena. How does olive oil benefit health? Although most people today have a vague notion that olive oil is good for them, many people don’t understand exactly why. For instance, olive oil is almost pure fat, so how can it really be good for you since we are taught that we should lower our intake of fats to reduce our risk or cardiovascular disease. The fact is that our body needs fat as it is one of the […]

Olive oil is not your best choice for cooking or frying because of its extremely low smoke point of about 350°F.  This characteristic of olive oil means that the oil will burn more quickly than most other vegetable oils. When olive oil is burned, the chemical structure of the oil itself is changed and loses most all of its healthful qualities and may even be mildly toxic.  So if you’re going to cook with olive oil be especially careful not to overheat it for this reason. Cooking with unrefined olive oil Extra virgin olive oil actually burns more quickly than unfiltered or unrefined oil, so your best choice may be to use these less expensive types of olive oil for cooking.  You can get away with using a lower quality oil because the flavor and texture of the oil is somewhat eroded by the heating process anyway. When I cook […]

If you love olive oil and tend to use a lot of it, you will probably get great pleasure out of owning an olive oil spray bottle.  You can fill it with a bottle of your best oil and leave it on the counter top kitchen table for quick access.  It has a great variety of uses in baking, grilling, and coating fresh salads and vegetables. The spray bottle works great for adding a fresh coat of olive oil on fruit salads and fresh vegetables and spreads the oil evenly and cleanly.  Olive oil adds a great texture and really brings out the flavor in vegetables and fruit.  It’s also an easy way to add the healthy fats of olive oil to your diet without hardly knowing that it’s there. You may also use the bottle to give baking pans a nice coating of oil to prevent sticking.  And it […]

For those of you who just simply cannot tolerate the taste of olive oil (which does not compute with me because I absolutely love the taste of extra virgin olive oil), there is still a way for you to get your daily dose. Olive oil capsules may be taken as a supplement to your diet.  The main benefit you would get would be the increased amount of monounsaturated fat, which is almost completely composed of oleic acid in olive oil. I would highly recommend that you try to obtain all of your nutrients, including the healthy fats of olive oil, from a natural healthy diet rather than through supplements.  The reason for this is because supplements have obviously been highly processed and thus the nutrients are often degraded and not is helpful to the body as when they are derived from natural food. I would recommend olive oil capsules only […]

Olive oil is 100% fat, but it should not be considered “fattening” because that is a negative term. Olive oil consists of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats which are the good kind of fats that enhance your health.  Studies show that these unsaturated fats help to increase the “good” cholesterol levels in your blood which reduce your risk for heart attack and stroke. A healthy diet should get about 30% of its calories from fat but the type of fat you eat, either saturated or unsaturated, is critical to your cardiovascular health.  You should try to get the vast majority of your fat from vegetable sources such as olive and canola oil, as opposed to saturated fat which comes from animal sources and is linked to increased cholesterol levels and hardening of the arteries. All fats are high in calories If you’re worried about weight gain from olive oil, remember that […]

Yes, olive oil does go bad after a period of time that is influenced heavily by the conditions in which the oil is stored.  Once olives are picked, they slowly start decay just like any other food, and the nutrients and enzymes that make olive oil famous for its healthful properties begin to break down and turn rancid. The best time to consume olive oil is within the first six months after production, as it will have the most flavor and antioxidant retention during that time.  After about a year, the oil will not have the same taste as before, though some people are more sensitive to the degradation than others.  The oil will not make you sick, but it will not be as good for you as when it was fresh. Olive oil bottles are supposed to have manufacturing dates and expiration dates printed right on the label, however, […]

There are wine connoisseurs, coffee connoisseurs, and believe it or not there are olive oil connoisseurs , too.  I love olive oil for both its buttery, peppery flavor and also for its many established health benefits.  I just seem to feel and look better when I regularly consume olive oil my diet, from my mood to my skin and hair.  I consider myself somewhat of an olive oil connoisseur. If you too are an olive oil connoisseur or would like to be, Lucini olive oil should be one of the brands that you sample.  It is a higher-end artisan olive oil produced and the olives used are 100% handpicked in Tuscany, Italy.  All the olive trees are located between 300 and 500 meters above sea level, which is ideal for growing olives. Lucini olive oil has an ultra low acidity level between .02 and .04, less than half the typical […]

When comparing the health, cooking, and nutritional properties of rice bran oil versus olive oil, you’ll find more similarities than you will differences. Because both are natural vegetable oils, they have many things in common, but with some subtle differences. In the Western world, extra virgin olive oil is renowned for its healthful properties. But in much of the Far East, rice bran oil takes its place near the pinnacle of healthiest oils, due mainly to rices ubiquity in that part of the world. I live in Thailand, and in Thai language the word for “eat” literally means “eat rice”. That is how ingrained into the culture rice is in this part of the world. So here, rice bran oil is king, and many Thai people have never even tasted olive oil. Which is healthier? The research on olive oil is quite conclusive that it is very healthy when consumed […]