Good olive oil from the supermarket?

The range of olive oils in supermarkets is often overwhelming. Especially in large supermarkets, the shelves are filled from top to bottom with different bottles from various brands. Most of them have Italian and Spanish-sounding terms on the label that we have all heard at some point: Aceite de oliva, olio extravergine di Oliva, Vierge, extra vierge, etc. And then there are all sorts of meaningless terms such as traditional olive oil, blend olive oil, first pressing olive oil, classico, classico original, gentle, mild, robusto, cucina delicata, etc. And there you are; which one was for salads again and which one for frying and roasting? Click here for our blog about frying and roasting.

Does it even matter? Oil is oil, isn't it? Then just buy olive oil that's on offer or special. Or maybe that pretty bottle? It'll look good on the counter, and aesthetics matter. Which one should I choose?

The short answer

Fortunately, The Olive Label.shop has the solution: none of them! Why not? Because supermarket olive oil is of mediocre to poor quality. It is even said that good olive oil from the supermarket does not exist. Mediocre to poor quality olive oil is not only a waste of your money. It is also bad for your health! So, just don't do it. Do you want to know why? Then read on. If you don't feel like reading, know that at TheOliveLabel.shop, we only source the very best, premium quality extra virgin olive oil directly from the farmers. Whichever you choose, it is the best quality you can buy.

But there is still much to tell and much to learn! Welcome to the wonderful world of olive oil!

Good olive oil from the supermarket doesn't exist?

That's right. With the rare exception that proves the rule, it is very likely that the olive oil you bought at the supermarket is not tasty. Or just bad, like the refined oil in transparent plastic bottles. It could also be counterfeit oil. Counterfeit oil? I'll get back to that later.

I hear you thinking, yes, that suits The Olive Label.shop just fine! I'd say the same if I were selling olive oil. That's true! But that's not the only reason we say this, and it's not something we made up. For years, there have been reports in the news that the quality of olive oil in supermarkets is simply poor. Just search online and read the reports about mediocre to bad olive oil. For example, the Algemeen Dagblad regularly tests supermarket olive oil. Including in June 2020. A blind tasting with 8 different (house) brands, and the result was that it was all not great. Apart from one mediocre one, the rest were unpleasant, greasy, bland, rancid oxidation traces, unbalanced, etc. There was even one that seemed only suitable for greasing a creaky door. Click here for the report in the AD.

And in April 2022, there was a report that a study by the American UC Davis Olive Center revealed that at least 70% of the olive oil in supermarkets is diluted with cheap oil such as sunflower oil and soybean oil. And in the same report, 14 brands are mentioned that you should avoid because they are known to tamper with their olive oil. A few brands among them: Bertolli and Carapelli. Read that report here.

The price of extra virgin olive oil

Supermarkets therefore need to purchase smartly and sell everything at competitive prices as quickly as possible. Volume is key! And they are very good at that! Supermarkets often offer half a liter of extra virgin olive oil for no more than €6! You might wonder if that's good olive oil. The production costs of half a liter of real Mediterranean extra virgin olive oil, produced with love and respect for nature, amount to at least €6 to €10 in the country of origin. The same half liter of extra virgin olive oil should yield at least €11 to €20 in stores in the Netherlands, otherwise it will result in a loss, and it's usually the farmer who loses the most. So, you can wonder what kind of olive oil you get if you buy half a liter at the supermarket for €6. From that, you deduct VAT, the price of the bottle, the cap and the label, the farmer's profit, the wholesaler's margin, the supermarket's margin, transport, marketing, etc. Then very little is left for the oil itself.

Where does cheap olive oil come from?

As of January 1, 2024, there were at least 6,700 supermarkets in the Netherlands alone. According to IBISWorld, there are approximately 713,000 supermarkets, convenience stores, and grocery stores in Europe. All of them have shelves full of olive oil, and they all want to buy that olive oil at the lowest possible purchase price. All these stores together create an enormous demand for the cheapest possible olive oil. And where there is demand, there is supply. Producers will find ways to meet that demand. So there is a very, very large market for cheap olive oil.

The 'much for little' approach and the race to rock-bottom prices have a negative impact on quality, but also on working conditions and, for example, sustainability. The true price is higher than what you pay in the supermarket. Cheap production in agriculture has a directly proportional effect on how nature and the environment are treated.

Because there is a lot of demand, criminals are also active, of course. In the case of extra virgin olive oil, these are internationally organized criminals. See below for how that works.

Good extra virgin olive oil doesn't necessarily have to be very expensive, but sharply priced olive oil is almost certainly of poor quality, is bad for people, nature, and the environment, and can therefore also be illegal! But first, something about cheap, legal olive oil.

Legal olive oil of mediocre to poor quality

The production of mediocre quality olive oil is not that difficult. You choose an olive variety that yields a relatively large amount of oil when pressed, and you plant a lot of trees of that variety. Then you harvest the olives as late as possible because that's when the olives yield the most oil. Subsequently, you mix different pressings of different quality and ensure that the quality just meets European requirements. These olive groves are usually located in countries where olive oil prices are lower. For example, North Africa and the Middle East, but also in Spain and Greece.

Don't get us wrong, excellent extra virgin olive oil is also produced in these countries! But there are also olive groves where bulk oil is produced. A lot for little. To be labeled "extra virgin", the acidity must remain below 0.8% according to European regulations. This essentially means that the amount of oxidized, acidified oil in the olive oil must be less than 0.8%, so the lower, the better. The olive oil we sell often does not exceed 0.2 to 0.3%. If analysis of the bulk oil shows that the acidity is somewhat disappointing, they mix the bulk oil with a bit of good olive oil and voilà, the percentage goes down and you have a competitively priced olive oil that still just qualifies as extra virgin.

This was mainly done by major olive oil brands such as Bertolli, Carbonell, and Carapelli. All brands we know from the supermarket and all brands from the same parent company: Deoleo. This Spanish company sells olive oil in 100 countries under many different brand names. But it's all the same mediocre to poor quality oil! That is, of course, fraud, but it can get even worse!

Fraudulent oil

Counterfeit, illegal extra virgin olive oil has been one of the most lucrative forms of fraud in the food world since Roman times. Extra virgin olive oil is easy to fake, difficult to detect, and the average consumer is easy to deceive. Most people don't know what extra virgin olive oil is supposed to taste like anyway.
It's interesting to read that Wilma van Grinsven now also uses the term fraudulent oil.

How then?

Where does that illegal oil come from and how does it end up in the supermarket? There are many, many ways, and one of them goes something like this. Cheap, but still extra virgin olive oil (i.e., with an acidity of just under 0.8%), from countries where oil is cheap, is shipped to Italy, where olive oil is expensive. Meanwhile, sunflower oil, soybean oil, or another cheap oil is also shipped or smuggled to Italy. Then, fraudsters mix the two oils in Italy.

If the acidity, smell, or taste is still really bad, it is adjusted with chemical trickery. For a better taste and smell, you might add some beta-carotene and chlorophyll. Or maybe a little cis-3-hexenol? That's a commonly used synthetic substance used to mimic the smell of fresh grass and the taste of apples and tomatoes. This concocted fake 'extra virgin' olive oil is bottled in Italy in a beautiful bottle, with a stunning label full of Italian-sounding terms and, of course, "olio extravergine di Oliva", and something like, "packaged in Italy" or "imported from Italy", making it look like expensive Italian olive oil.

This fraudulent oil is offered to normal wholesalers, and the supermarket, unaware and not tasting everything, buys this oil as competitively priced extra virgin olive oil. The consumer, rushing through the supermarket, is easily tempted. After all, it's a well-known supermarket, so you're not on your guard. The bottle also looks fine, and the brand name and foreign-sounding terms on the label sound familiar. The price is also good, so off it goes, home. Oil is oil. A nice visual presentation of this story was in the New York Times and can be found here.

Even in 2024, there is widespread fraud with fake olive oil. For example, in January, the Italian police arrested and prosecuted a gang of fraudsters in Rome who had colored an unknown seed oil with chlorophyll and flavored it with beta-carotene. The bottles of fraudulent oil were sold with "extra virgin olive oil made in Italy" on the label. Click here for the news report.

International problem

Illegal olive oil is a big and international problem. There are internationally operating gangs, and in Italy, there is a special international police unit that deals exclusively with detecting olive oil fraud. Regularly, news reports surface about another gang being busted for making millions with mixed sunflower oil that is simply sold in large supermarkets as extra virgin olive oil from Italy. And it's not just gangs. According to the Italian La Stampa, by the end of 2015, Italian police were investigating at least 7 large companies, including the brands Bertolli, Carbonell, and Carapelli. Yes, you read that right, these are the brands readily available in every supermarket. These brands all belong to the same Spanish parent company, Deoleo, which sells olive oil to more than 100 countries. A RAI television investigation showed that Carapelli, which should have been 100% Italian, was in fact made mostly with cheap Greek, Turkish, and Tunisian oil mixed with a little Italian olive oil. In Italy, they don't like this kind of deception, and Deoleo has lost several lawsuits because they bottled cheap olive oil from non-EU countries in Italy and made it appear on the bottle as if it were Italian olive oil.

There have even been books written about it, such as "Extra Virginity: The sublime and scandalous world of olive oil" by Tom Mueller. In it, writer Tom shows that 70% of the olive oil sold is fraudulent oil. Years of research by the founder of the leading Italian wine and olive oil magazine Merum, Andreas März, also showed that at that time (2011), even 95% of the olive oil sold should not have been labeled Extra Virgin. He sent 31 different bottles of olive oil from various German supermarkets to a professional tasting and testing panel in Italy. They concluded that only 1 of the 31 bottles was actually extra virgin olive oil. Nine bottles were of inferior quality, and the rest, according to them, were only suitable as lamp oil.

Olive oil fraud is nothing new. In Ebla, Syria, 2500-year-old clay tablets have been found describing an anti-fraud unit responsible for the purity of olive oil. And it was necessary! The Roman physician and philosopher Claudius Galenus (129 – 199 AD) already complained about unscrupulous traders diluting fine olive oil with liquid lard.

Can you even buy good olive oil in the supermarket?

If we assume that the big brands have now improved their lives and their olive oil, and that fraudulent oil is no longer sold in supermarkets, you can still be pretty sure that supermarket olive oil will be of mediocre to poor quality. Is that bad? It's convenient, after all.

You do your daily shopping and, hop, quickly put a bottle of oil in your basket. It might not be the best olive oil, but everything is more expensive, and how snobbish is it to only want to buy premium extra virgin olive oil? Is it like, for example, bread? Everyone knows that the competitively priced pre-baked bread at the supermarket is generally of mediocre quality and full of additives that don't belong in bread. Everyone also knows that for really tasty bread, you have to go to the baker. Yet a great many people buy their daily bread at the supermarket.

Perhaps mediocre quality bread is perfectly fine. Mediocre quality olive oil is not. That has nothing to do with snobbery. Bad olive oil is unhealthy and not tasty in your salad, not tasty over your potatoes, and also not suitable for frying and roasting. Poor quality olive oil oxidizes too quickly, which is very unhealthy. And the refined olive oil, which would be suitable for higher temperatures, is already an oxidant for your body in the bottle. So that's just as bad for you as smoking and air pollution.

Even if the bottle says it's suitable for baking and frying, it's not! On top of that, it's often untrustworthy, adulterated oil. For extra virgin olive oil, there is still European regulation and reasonably strict control. That regulation and control are almost nonexistent for all oils that are not extra virgin, such as refined oil. You can read all about refined 'olive' oil in our blog here. You can read all about baking and frying with olive oil in our blog.

Taste for yourself!

The best test is to try it yourself. Do you have olive oil from the supermarket in your kitchen? Take a tablespoon and pour some olive oil onto it. Warm it up in your palm. Smell the oil. If it smells fresh and clean, as it should, you can taste the oil. If the oil smells a bit flat but not bad, you can carefully taste a small amount. Does it smell musty, perhaps like old nuts, or just rancid? Then don't taste it and throw it away. It's bad oil, unhealthy, and best not consumed.

If the oil still smells somewhat okay, taste it. Chances are it will still taste greasy, flat, slightly rancid, or simply bad. Dear people, that's not how olive oil should taste! Olive oil is a fat, but it shouldn't taste greasy. Olive oil should smell fresh, fruity, and clean and has a broader flavor palette than wine! The scent of green grass and flavors that hint of apples, tomatoes, fresh leaves, artichokes, etc. There are 1500 different types of olives from various countries, and every good extra virgin olive oil has its own specific scent and taste. But we Dutch people are used to the supermarket taste; flat, slightly rancid, and somewhat greasy. Not good! That's why most people look a bit disgusted when you suggest tasting olive oil neat, without bread. Everyone already expects it to be bad, but it should be delicious! You don't expect olives to taste bad, flat, greasy, and rancid, do you? Why then do you expect that from olive oil?

In short

There's really no reason to buy olive oil at the supermarket. Even though the chance of fraudulent oil is genuinely less nowadays, the chance of mediocre quality is still high. You don't want rancid, greasy, flat olive oil, do you?

Keuringsdienst van Waarde. Viewing tip!

The Dutch consumer program Keuringsdienst van Waarde also wanted to know what's up with all the different types of olive oil in the supermarket. Olives, a press, and boom, you have olive oil. Simple, right? So why is there so much choice that you can't see the forest for the olive trees? Classico, mild olive oil, light (?), cold, hot, traditional, etc. Keuringsdienst van Waarde investigates and asks around in the world of olive oil and raises eyebrows about the bizarre range of different types of olive oil and the notion that you shouldn't fry or bake with extra virgin olive oil. That's great for us, of course, to hear it from someone else for once!

The fact that an olive oil producer then proudly stands in front of the camera to say that he can even make a kind of (olive) oil from rotten olives is truly unbelievable. It indicates that mass producers have no problem selling rubbish. That's one of the reasons why The Olive Label.shop never buys olive oil from wholesalers. The risk of fraudulent oil or olive oil that is simply bad for your health is too great. We always buy directly from the farmer!

Where do you buy that premium extra virgin olive oil?

Duh, at The Olive Label.shop, of course. Such a beautiful, delicious, and healthy product that comes straight from nature and directly from the farmer should be available to everyone. Because good olive oil is not simply available at the supermarket, we started The Olive Label.shop.

The Olive Label.shop specially sources the very best premium olive oil for you, without intermediaries, directly from the farmer. There is no large company in between trying to sell bulk oil or fraudulent oil. We know the farmers personally, and we have visited most of them. They are proud of their products, and we often can't wait to taste their products when they arrive. This way, you can be sure that you have the freshest, very best, and healthiest olive oil available.

Top Tip!

A low-priced olive oil is almost certainly a mediocre to bad olive oil. A higher price doesn't guarantee you have the best olive oil, but it significantly increases your chances! In short, leave cheap oil alone. Indulge and surprise yourself and others with a really good olive oil.

Enjoy! Health is Wealth! O'Lives Great!