posted by PHILEOS EVOO on October 17, 2022
Extra virgin olive oil has long been touted as a health food and has been shown to support the improvement of one's overall wellness. It's a key ingredient in the Mediterranean Diet which may support increased life expectancy for those who follow it.
However, if you think all EVOO is as beneficial for your health as olive oil can be, think again. Although still healthy, a much superior variant is high phenolic olive oil. High phenolic olive oil is a fabulous find for anyone looking to increase their wellness through food.
"Europeans consumers and researchers tend to have more awareness of olive oil's medicinal importance than their North American counterparts." As one of our guiding principles, Phileos seeks to change this as we become entrenched in the North American market.
Health Claim for polyphenols has revolutionized the olive oil business by offering a distinct and measurable health beenfit of each olive oil. It is no longer the level of acidity that is the key criteria for quality of olive oil; the type and concentration of phenolic compounds in olive oil and olives is the new benchmark of quality.
What Does High Phenolic Mean?
Polyphenols are a type of antioxidant. They’re naturally found in plant foods such as olives. Polyphenols can reduce your risk of disease by preventing or even reversing the damage to your cells caused by aging, environment, diet, and lifestyle. "High phenolic" simply means that a food is high in polyphenols. For EVOO the baseline is at least 500mg/kg (Phileos has much more and regularly achieves 1000mg/kg depending on the harvest year).
What Makes High Phenolic Olive Oil Different?
All extra virgin olive oil contains polyphenols. Extra virgin olive oil is made without excess heat or chemicals. "As a result, it has low acidity, more fruity or bitter flavour (the flavour of olives) and is associated with health benefits. On the other hand, refined olive oil is treated differently. "Refined olive oil is made in a process that includes very high heat or chemical refinement that damages or depletes phenols—so those have no health benefits. As for high phenolic olive oil, there are multiple factors that make high phenolic olive oil different from extra virgin:
Olive varietal: Not all olives are created equal! Not all olives can produce high phenolic olive oil. Some varieties of olives contain more polyphenols than others such as Phileos' athinolia and koroneiki varieties.
Harvesting: Timing is key for polyphenol content. "The olives must be harvested while still green and unripe. This is what 99% of producers don't do since they get much lower yields at that stage, and it doesn't make economic sense." They'd rather wait till the olives are ripe, and they can get double or triple the amount of olive oil." Phileos harvests unripe olives to ensure the quality of the oil. with hours and crushes it at our mill immediately storing the liquid in climated controlled stainless steel tanks ensuring freshness.
Storage Conditions: To reap the benefits of any olive oil, it needs to get to you quickly. Any extra virgin olive oil—even high-phenolic—will lose its phenols over time to oxidation. "So storage condition and freshness are key to ensure that it is still high in phenols when you purchase and use your olive oil." Phileos stores the liquid gold in climate controlled stainless steel tanks immediately after the extraction process ensuring freshness.
The History of High Phenolic Olive Oil
If high phenolic olive oil has been around for as long as humans have been pressing olives, why haven't many North Americans heard about it until recently?
There are several reasons this oil hasn't been drizzled all over our salads before. First is the industrialization of olive oil, which caused manufacturers to focus on quantity, not quality. "Also, the global market for olive oils rewarded high-yield, low-quality olive oil, over the lower yield but higher quality necessary to produce high phenolic."
Additionally, olive oil manufacturers have found it wise to hold on to supplies of the high phenolic version themselves. "The reason is that it costs more to make it, but the market demand did not compensate them for that extra expense, so they kept the good stuff for themselves, and extra virgin olive oil with lesser phenols (which are cheaper to produce) to the market." Phileos is a vertically integrated manufacturer of olive oil and has the scale to continually produce superior oil in quantity. One of the guiding principles for Phileos is to make this product more accessible to the retail consumer in North America and we are striving to do just that.
Lastly, science didn't catch up on the polyphenol content of olive oil until recently. scientists only recently discovered the various phenols in olive oil in the last 30 years. More important, biologically beneficial phenols like oleocanthal were found only about 15 years ago. So only in the last decade or so, innovative producers such as Phileos has started measuring and publishing the phenolic content of our glorious olive oil."
Final Takeaway
High phenolic olive oil is something special for your health, and it's making waves accordingly. It has higher amounts of the components that make olive oil so healthy in the first place, and it packs a punch of flavor as much as it does of polyphenols. It's always existed, but it didn't become commercially popular until recent years.