Olive Oil facts
While investigating facts about Olive Oil Cake and Olive Oil For Hair, I found out little known, but curios details like:
Ridley Scott tried to make Gladiator (2000) an authentic representation of Ancient Rome. An early script had Maximus doing a product endorsement for olive oil, which was historically accurate for famous gladiators to do, but the detail was left out in later scripts for being too unbelievable.
how olive oil is made?
Up to 75% of the extra virgin olive oil sold in the US does not meet the legal standard for such a label and is often fraudulently composed
What olive oil is best?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what olive oil for cooking. Here are 50 of the best facts about Olive Oil For Skin and Olive Oil In Ear I managed to collect.
what olive oil is best for cooking?
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Most Italian extra virgin olive oil sold in stores is a fraud. Nearly 70% of cheaper olive oil is not from actual olives, but is cut with cheaper seed oil to lower the price, and much of the product doesn't even come from Italy.
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There is an artificial hill in Italy, over 100 feet tall, made entirely of empty olive oil pots, carefully placed over a period of 250 years by ancient Romans.
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There is a fully intact Roman wine bottle sitting in Germany from the year 350 AD. It's fully drinkable but the Romans added a significant amount of thick olive oil as a preservative.
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One olive tree can produce around four liters of oil every year for hundreds of years.
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Rome has an artificial hill consisting of 80 million ancient, used, olive oil amphorae. Monte Testaccio was in use by the Romans from 140 to 250 AD for disposing of these terracotta pots.
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The Romans imported so much wine and olive oil that the city's trash heap (made up entirely of broken amphorae) reached a height of 35 meters and a circumference of 1km. The hill, called 'Monte Testaccio,' exists to this day.
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Spain produces more Virgin olive oil than the rest of the world combined yet most of it is sold as Italian virgin olive oil.
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The English word oil comes from the ancient Greek word elaia, which means olive. So olive oil basically means olive olive.
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Up to 80% of olive oil sold in America is fake oil manufactured by the Italian Mafia
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The earliest written evidence of lube is from ancient Greece in 350 B.C., when olive oil was being employed with the use of leather dildos
Why olive oil is good?
You can easily fact check why olive oil is good for you by examining the linked well-known sources.
A study in a Swiss population concluded: a Mediterranean diet, rich in extra virgin olive oil, with a Swiss twist of dairy products, lowers cancer and heart disease risk
Most of the Italian olive oil sold is not actually Italian. Italy is the biggest olive oil importer and exporter. They buy olive oil mostly from Spain rebrand it and sell it as Italian. - source
Rats are sometimes eaten in parts of France. In Bordeaux, there is a recipe that calls for the use of alcoholic rats who live in wine cellars. The rats are skinned and eviscerated, brushed with a thick sauce of olive oil and crushed shallots, and grilled over a fire of broken wine barrels.
There is a 35m high hill in Rome which consists of the shards of about 53 million olive oil amphorae from ancient times. - source
When olive oil is cloudy?
The oldest person to have ever lived, Jeanne Calment, aged 122 at death, attributed her longevity to a diet of olive oil, port wine, and 2 pounds of chocolate every week.
How olive oil is good for skin?
The Turkish national sport is oil wrestling where men douse themselves in olive oil and then wrestle.
An Italian mob pulled an elaborate heist involving olive oil, using adulterated and chemically treated oils and labelling their containers as extra virgin. The profit margin of this heist was said to have "three times the profit margin of cocaine."
The "Agromafia" which consists of Mafia organizations that make their profits off of manipulating olive oil exports. Many types of olive oils are low quality fakes which are sold as the real thing in order to increase profits. The Mafia has been doing this for years.
Oleic acid, the main constituent of Olive oil, is also emitted by the dead corpses of insects and bees. If a live bee or ant is dabbed with oleic acid, it is dragged off for disposal as if it were dead.
In 2006 the former health minister of South Africa advocated a diet of garlic, olive oil and lemon to cure HIV. Approximately 300 000 people died of AIDS-related diseases that year in South Africa alone.