You’ve already heard from us about studies suggesting olive oil could be good for your heart, your bones, and your head, namely your brain. Now comes word that it could be good for your eyes, too.

A new Australian study, from the Centre for Eye Research Australia, suggests olive oil could significantly reduce your risk of blindness in old age.

According to the study, people who consume at least 100 milliliters, or about seven tablespoons, of olive oil per week are almost 50% less likely to develop late age-related macular degeneration than those who eat less than 1 milliliter per week.

Known as AMD, the disease targets people older than 60. It affects the part of the eye known as the macula that allows you to see fine details. The disease gradually destroys sharp, central vision. You need that vision to see objects clearly. You use it when you read and drive.

Report author Elaine Chong said olive oil contains a number of protective elements that contribute to eye health.

“Olive oil is rich in powerful antioxidants such as vitamin E. It also contains an anti-inflammatory
component, similar to ibuprofen, which helps to protect the blood vessels in the eye,” said Dr. Chong.

“A diet rich in olive oil and other foods containing omega-3 fatty acids such as oily fish varieties like salmon and tuna, and nuts may help protect your eyes against diseases such as AMD.”

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

Your brain will thank you for working out at the gym and eating plenty of fruits, vegetables and olive oil. A recent study suggests you could significantly cut your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease if you’re more physically active and eat a Mediterranean-style diet.

In fact, a combination of exercise and a Mediterranean-type diet were far more effective in lowering your risk of Alzheimer’s than exercise or diet alone.

“This study is important because it shows that people may be able to alter their risk of developing Alzheimer’s by modifying their lifestyles through diet and exercise,” said Nikos Scarmeas, lead author of the study and associate professor of clinical neurology at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York.

Past studies have looked separately at the link between Alzheimer’s and either physical activity or diet. This study, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, examined exercise and diet together.

“Often people who exercise also follow a healthy diet and vice versa,” said Scarmeas.  “We wanted to tease out which of these two behaviors may be associated with lower risk for Alzheimer’s disease,” or if the combination of the two is associated with an even lower risk.”

The study looked at 1,880 elderly subjects, with an average age of 77, living in northern Manhattan.

The participants were interviewed about their level of physical activity – jogging, biking, hiking, and gardening, for example – and their dietary habits.  They were observed over about 5-1/2 years, receiving periodic tests.

Those subjects who were very physically active had a 33% reduction in the risk of developing Alzheimer’s. Those who adhered more strongly to a Mediterranean-type diet had a 40% risk reduction.

And for the clincher: those who reported they were exercising a lot and following a diet closer to the Mediterranean-type had a 60% risk reduction.

“So it seemed that the more that they were doing in terms of both diet and exercise, the lower was their risk for the disease,” said Scarmeas.

It wasn’t exactly clear which foods in the Mediterranean diet delivered the most benefits.  Scarmeas said it could be individual components – or the interaction among the various foods.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

We’ve run across more misinformation about olive oil. The latest involves olive oil’s “smoke point.”

A cooking oil’s smoke point is the temperature at which the oil begins to break down and smoke. A high-quality extra virgin olive oil has a higher smoke point than other oils, making it very suitable for many forms of cooking, such as frying.

So it’s plain wrong to say olive oil isn’t suitable for stir-frying or frying. This belief mistakenly assumes olive oil, including extra virgin olive oil, has a low smoke point.

First, let’s clear up the misinformation about whether it’s OK to sauté, fry, roast and even deep fry with extra virgin olive oil. As I’ve noted before, cooking doesn’t destroy an EVOO’s healthful polyphenols. Even if your deep frying, the typical home stove doesn’t heat up enough to cause an issue.

“I tell my classes that in a home kitchen it’s very hard to burn olive oil,” says Nancy Ash, a trained olive oil taster and owner of the consulting firm Strictly Olive Oil.

Adds Karen Collins, a nutrition adviser for the American Institute for Cancer Research, a nonprofit which funds cancer-prevention research: “Extra virgin olive oil’s smoke point is generally given as 410 degrees Fahrenheit, which gives plenty of room for the 250-350 degrees Fahrenheit that covers most cooking.”

Chemistry plays a role here. A cooking oil’s smoke point depends on the amount of “free fatty acids” in the oil. High-quality EVOO, by the way, has low levels of the acids.

“The lower the free fatty acid content, the more stable the fat, and the higher the smoke point,” renowned food chemist Harold McGee writes in his book, On Food and Cooking (Scribner, 2004).

To be certified as genuine EVOO, the International Olive Council’s guidelines require that an olive oil must have a free fatty acid content of less than 0.8%. The California Olive Oil Council’s standards are stricter, saying a true EVOO must have an acidity level of less than 0.5%.

Our EVOO’s acidity comes in at less than 0.3%, according to lab tests.

“So pay more for a well made extra virgin olive oil with a lower acidity and it’ll reward you with significantly more degrees of heating potential,” notes Australian olive oil expert Richard Gawel.  “In fact, the natural preservatives called polyphenols you find in EVOO protect it from heat degradation.”

Lasty, Gawel offers this advice when cooking with any type of oil:

“Breathing in the smoke from burnt oil (no matter what type) is a health hazard,” he says. “So watch that temperature and keep those exhaust fans on.”

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

Italian film legend Sophia Loren attributes her natural beauty to “spaghetti and the odd bath in virgin olive oil.” I haven’t tried it myself. But Sophia seems to be on to something about the health benefits of olive oil. Greek researchers recently looked at the connection between women who eat lots of olive oil and fish – and not a lot of red meat – and their bone health.

The Greeks took a different approach from past studies. Others have focused on the relation between a particular nutrient, such as calcium, and bone health.

The Greek study, conducted at Harokopio University in Athens, examined the impact of what people eat. The study looked at the Mediterranean diet, which is rich in olive oil and plant foods such as fruits and vegetables. It also also studied other eating patterns. The results appeared in the journal Nutrition.

The researchers followed 220 adult Greek women. X-ray technology was used to analyze the bone mineral density of the women’s lumbar spines as well as the bone mineral content of their entire bodies.

The study’s conclusion: Sticking to a diet with some features of the Mediterranean diet – “high consumption of fish and olive oil and low red meat intake” – was “positively related to bone mass.”

The researchers said the results suggest “potential bone-preserving properties of this (dietary) pattern throughout adult life.”

Apparently, Sophia Loren was on to something that scientists hadn’t quite grasped … until now.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

We’re tuned into cyberspace – including Twitter and the blogosphere – so we see a lot of what people are saying about olive oil. Not surprisingly, we occasionally run across stuff that’s just plain wrong.

Fortunately, there are plenty of online experts jumping in to debunk bogus info.  “Just crap” is how Australian olive oil expert Richard Gawel described a misleading blog.

Two bits of misinformation caught our attention recently and I’d like to dispel the inaccuracies.

For starters, it’s just plain wrong that olive loses its healthy benefits when used in cooking. Likewise, it doesn’t transform into something unhealthy when heated above 350 degrees.  (Gawel used the “crap” comment in a Tweet about a blog post involving a discussion that erroneously tried to link olive oil – when heated to a certain temperature – to trans fat even though there’s absolutley no truth in that at all.)

People ask us if you can cook with extra virgin olive oil – or if it should be used only to finish a dish such as roasted vegetables or fish. Yes, you can roast and fry foods with EVOO. The food will taste better, for starters.

And, notes nutritionist Karen Collins, EVOO doesn’t suffer a significant loss in health benefits when used to cook. Collins is a nutrition adviser for the American Institute for Cancer Research, a nonprofit which funds cancer-prevention research.  “Olive oil is a very healthful oil and most people are aware of its heart-healthy monounsaturated fat,” she says.

Collins told us she wrote a piece for the AICR web site to deflect misinformation she’d read online about cooking and olive oil. In a Q&A, Collins responded to the question of whether EVOO “loses its health benefits when cooked?”

No, she says. It doesn’t destroy the polyphenols EVOO contains. Polyphenols, by the way, are chemical substances found in plants that may reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer.

The most surprising item we’ve found was a blog wrongly suggesting olive oil forms trans fats when heated. Trans fats are something totally different. They’re otherwise known as partially hydrogenated oils and are found in stick margarines, shortenings and some packaged goods and fast foods.

“Eating trans fats increases your risk of developing heart disease and stroke,” says the American Heart Association. “It’s also associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes.”

Not a good thing, of course.

No matter what you do while you’re cooking at home, you fortunately can’t create trans fats yourself. They’re created through an industrial process known as hydrogenation, in which hydrogen is added to liquid vegetable oils to make them more solid.

“The hydrogenation process involves heating up oil under extreme pressure and then bubbling hydrogen gas through it in the presence of a Palladium metal catalyst,” Gawel writes in an informative FAQ. “For trans fats to form all of these conditions must be in place – heat and pressure and hydrogen gas and an appropriate catalyst.”

“It just can’t happen in your kitchen.”

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

It’s New Year’s resolution time. As good a time as any to spread the word about polyphenols. They’re found in olive oil. And if you haven’t heard about them, they promote good health and can help prevent disease.

So what exactly are polyphenols – other than a mouthful of a word? They’re chemical substances found in plants that may reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. Extra virgin olive oil, in particular, is rich in polyphenols.

Unlike other olive oils, EVOO isn’t refined. So it contains more polyphenols than other olive oils – including much of the olive oil imported here from Europe.

That’s important from a health standpoint: Polyphenols are a potent antioxidant – one that can decommission a nasty molecule in your body called a free radical. Free radicals contain at least one unpaired electron. They can ricochet around inside your body and harm good cells.

In her book,The New American Olive Oil (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2009), Fran Gage describes the work of polyphenols this way:

“These antioxidants circulate in the body, hooking up with free radicals, unstable compounds thought to play a role in more than 60 different health conditions including cancer and atherosclerosis, as well as aging.”

Nutritionist  Lisa Sheldon, author of Olive Oil Baking (Turner Publishing, 2007), notes polyphenols “are vital to cellular health because they prevent damage from free radicals.”

Polyphenols, in other words, can nip some pretty serious problems in the bud.

Other foods rich in polyphenols include: onions, apple, tea, red wine, strawberries, blueberries, and cranberries.

Olio Nuovo – pressed right after the olives are picked – also happens to be a good source for polyphenols.

Here’s to a healthy 201o.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

With the holidays approaching, we’ve collected several dessert recipes that substitute olive oil for butter. I’ll start with a pecan pie that uses extra virgin olive oil to accentuate the nuttiness of the pecans. You can match it with an olive oil pie crust that’s simple to make – and skips the stick of butter you might ordinarily use.

My colleague Jennifer Samples has developed a beautiful pecan pie using extra virgin olive oil. It’s pictured here.

Jen wanted to avoid using butter or cream in the filling. So she turned to our EVOO and got good results.

“When you use the Arbequina it really brings out the flavor of the pecans,” says Jen.

And if you want to go all the way and bake Jen’s pie in an olive oil pie crust, we’ve got a recipe for you.

It comes courtesy of chef and cookbook author Micki Sannar. She’s written an entire cookbook devoted to olive oil desserts: aptly named Olive Oil Desserts (Mikko Publishing, 2009).

There’s an interesting story behind Sannar’s use of olive oil. “Seven years ago I learned I had high cholesterol. I had to adjust my diet,” she says. “But giving up dessert was not an option.”

So Sannar turned to olive oil: “Since that time I’ve dropped 100 points in my cholesterol.”

Sannar’s recipe makes two pie crusts. You could make two pies – it’s the holidays, remember – or freeze one of the crusts for future use.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

I discovered this cranberry walnut pound cake recipe a few months ago. It seemed like a perfect treat to enjoy over the holidays.

The creator of this dish, Lisa Sheldon, has written a cookbook devoted entirely to baking with extra virgin olive oil. It’s entitled, appropriately enough, Olive Oil Baking (Turner Publishing, 2007). I wrote about her delicious pumpkin bread recipe last June.

Like us, Sheldon is a big advocate of using olive oil instead of butter and the like in baking. “My experience over the past few years has been that baked goods traditionally made with shortening, margarine, and butter can almost always be made with olive oil instead, without sacrificing richness or flavor,” she writes in her book.

Sheldon has a masters degree in clinical nutrition. Her book features “heart-healthy recipes that increase good cholesterol and reduce saturated fat.”

We told Sheldon the other day we planned to feature her cranberry walnut pound cake this month. She immediately e-mailed back: “I just filed my newspaper column about (cooking with) cranberries.”

Cranberries also happen to be one of her favorite fruits. “I simply love the tartness and refreshing taste,” she wrote.

Sheldon said the cranberries in this recipe “add a touch of tartness to this wonderfully rich and aromatic cake.” She added the red specks of fruit add a “festive touch at the holidays.”

Sheldon also notes that cranberries freeze well. So it’s a good idea to buy an extra bag now while the fruit’s in season and throw it in the freezer for future use.

I can vouch for her suggestion. This cake – our version appears in the photograph above – turned out beautifully using cranberries we’d frozen after last year’s holidays.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

I’m sifting through more evidence suggesting that a Mediterranean-style diet could be good for not just your body, but your head. A new British study suggests the diet – rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes, olive oil – could fend off depression. It’s the opposite with less healthy foods, such as fried foods and processed meats.

The study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, found that a diet high in processed food amounted to a “risk factor” for developing depression. A “whole food” diet was “protective.”

In the study, those who followed a Mediterranean-style diet were 30% less likely to suffer from depression than people who ate  less healthy foods – think of sweetened desserts, fried foods, processed meat, refined grains and high-fat dairy products.

It’s the latest research to emerge showing the benefits of a Mediterranean diet. Last month I wrote about a study in the Archives of General Psychiatry suggesting you could cut your risk of depression “significantly” by following the Mediterranean regimen.

In the newest study, researchers from University College, London followed 3,486 people over five years. Their mean age was about 56 years. Roughly a quarter were women. The participants answered questions about their eating habits and conducted their own assessment of their mental health.

“Those who reported suffering depressive symptoms were more likely to have a high consumption of sweetened desserts, fried foods, processed meats, refined grains and high-fat dairy products,” said an article from Britain’s Observer newspaper published on the Guardian web site.

“These associations held true even after the researchers had adjusted the findings to take account of other indicators of a healthy lifestyle, such as not smoking, taking physical activity and a healthy body mass.”

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

Our gluten-free friend Karina Allrich has given us a stuffed acorn squash recipe that’s healthy and flavorful. What’s more, if you’re looking for a gluten-free stuffing for your Thanksgiving turkey, the cornbread stuffing used for the squash would be just the ticket.

The stuffing features curried apples, cranberries, and gluten-free cornbread. If you don’t require a gluten-free recipe you can make your own favorite cornbread.

Allrich, who writes the gluten-free blog Karina’s Kitchen, suffers from a digestive condition known as celiac disease. She must eat a gluten-free diet. That means cutting out everything from breads made from white and whole wheat flours to pasta, beer and bagels. An estimated 3 million Americans suffer from celiac disease.

For this recipe, Allrich begins with maple roasted acorn squash. “It’s vegan, therefore perfect for those of you sharing your humble meal with vegetarian guests,” she notes. Plus, “it’s one of the easiest vegetable side dishes you could make.”

You drizzle the halved squash pieces with a fruity extra virgin olive oil and some maple syrup “until it collects in the hollow.” Roast the squash until tender.

You can serve the squash as is – or with the stuffing. For the latter, pour off the maple syrup into a measuring cup. Stuff the squash with the cornbread stuffing. Pour the maple syrup on top and re-bake until heated through.

To make the stuffing, cut the cornbread into cubes and toast them. Celery, onion and apples are cooked in olive oil along with curry, cinnamon and thyme. Mix in chopped cranberries, the toasted cornbread and some broth. Top that with more olive oil and maple syrup.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch