How To Avoid Fake Olive Oil

Do you know that your extra virgin olive oil is probably fake, thanks to the Mob? Did you know that the Mafia is making a small fortune selling fake olive oil or that olive oil is a $1.5 billion dollar industry in the United States alone? In fact, olive oil is currently Europe’s most adulterated agricultural product! 70% of the extra virgin olive oil sold is adulterated — cut with cheaper oils.

Many olive oil scams involve straightforward mixing of low-grade vegetable oils, flavored and colored with plant extracts and sold in tins and bottles emblazoned with the Italian flags or paintings of Mount Vesuvius, together with the folksy names of imaginary producers. More sophisticated scams,  typically take place in high-tech laboratories, where cheaper oils of various kinds, made from olives, but also from seeds and nuts, are processed and blended in ways that are extremely difficult to detect with chemical tests

Mob Controlled Olive Oil

Olive oil racketeering is one of the Italian Mafia’s most lucrative businesses. Their success can be measured by the fact that most olive oil sold is either adulterated or completely fake. In fact  two-thirds of all extra virgin olive oil is fake!

Since genuine olive oil is costly and time consuming to produce, yet easy to adulterate but difficult to detect the real from the fake and in high demand, producing fake olive oil would prove to be an enormous moneymaking enterprise for Mafioso fraudsters. In the original Godfather novel, protagonist Don Vito Corleone was known as the " olive king" but did you know his character was based on a real-life olive oil mobster named Joe Profacani?

 Olive oil has been highly valued as a food and as a medicine in Mediterranean culture for over 2,000 years. During Roman times, per-capita consumption of olive oil was estimated to be up to fifty liters a year.The most coveted type of olive oil is extra virgin. 

In chemical terms extra virgin olive oil is described as having a free acidity, expressed as oleic acid, of not more than 0.8 grams per 100 grams and a peroxide value of less than 20 milliequivalent O2. It must be produced entirely by mechanical means without the use of any solvents, and under temperatures that will not degrade the oil .

The following brands which were labeled extra-virgin failed to meet extra-virgin olive oil standards:

 Bertolli• Carapelli• Filippo Berio• Mazzola• Mezzetta• Newman’s Own• Pompeian• Rachel Ray• Safeway• Star• Whole Foods

These brands did meet extra-virgin olive oil standards:

 Corto Olive• California Olive Ranch• Kirkland Organic• Lucero (Ascolano)• McEvoy Ranch Organic