Review

This is a really disturbing book. If you like olive oil it will shake your confidence in your own perceptions, and make you wonder whether you’ve been using lamp oil and calling it EVOO. This is a story of organized fraud perpetrated by some of the world’s largest food companies, with the connivance of the Italian government and various European agencies, and with the willful blindness of US regulators. And not fraud on a small scale, either: this is about possibly 60% of oil labeled as ‘extra virgin’ being fraudulently represented, containing in some cases seed oils mixed with olive oil and treated with heat and chemicals to disguise the awful flavor (and losing in the process all the many health benefits of genuine EVOO).

This is also the story of the many dedicated producers of quality oil who are being driven out of business by the fraudulent, and cheap, oils flooding the market.

Along the way you’ll learn about the long history of olive oil, its many uses, chemical structure, health benefits, production techniques, and so on.

If you use olive oil you owe it to yourself to read this.

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