The olive oil in your kitchen is probably fake

The olive oil you buy may not technically be &#039;real,&#039; Mother Jones found.

(Image credit: LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP/Getty Images)

published 12 August 2016

Many Americans probably don't even know what real olive oil tastes like. But wait, you might be protesting, your bottle at home says "made in Italy." Or maybe it says "pure," or "natural," or "premium," or "virgin olive oil," or perhaps even "first cold pressed." What do you mean it isn't real?

Food fraud is the widespread and poorly-policed practice of tricking customers into thinking they are buying one thing, while using a different product or diluting the original in order to cut costs. You might have heard recent reports about wood pulp being used in parmesan cheese? That's food fraud. And when it comes to tricking customers, olive oil is king. Mother Jones reports:

Since extra-virgin olive oil is the most valuable oil category in the U.S., shady producers and dealers have plenty of incentive to mess with it in hopes of reaping more profit. They defraud consumers in three main ways: 1) By diluting real extra-virgin olive oil with less expensive oils, like soybean or sunflower oil; 2) diluting high-quality olive oil with low-quality olive oil; or 3) making low quality extra-virgin olive oil, "typically incorporating older — and often rancid — stocks of oil held over from bumper crops of previous seasons," writes [Larry] Olmsted. When the University of California–Davis researchers tested olive oil bought off the shelf in 2010, they found that 69 percent of imported "extra-virgin" samples failed to meet international standards. [Mother Jones]

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.