Can 3 🥄 spoons of 🫒 olive oil a day protect your health - even if cooked?
A new Italian study indicates maybe. Some great Mediterranean cooking resources. Plus a reminder of our kombucha meet-up this Sunday.
You CAN heat olive oil for cooking and REDUCE your risk of dying of cancer (as opposed to increasing it). Maybe.
That was one of the takeaways from a recent study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition about olive oil (link below). It studied the diets of 22,800 men and women living in the south of Italy in Molise.
Researchers looked at their diet, then the illnesses they died of in the 13 years after.
The more olive oil they had daily, the less deaths from cancer, heart disease and everything else too.
3 tablespoons or more daily seems to be the life-saving number.
Two interesting things.
Participants included cooked olive oil in their diets. Many of us were told, back in the day, not to do this for fear of it becoming carcinogenic in the heating process.
In case you don’t believe me - look at this…notice the word “frying'“.
The authors say they don’t know what type of olive oil participants were using. They don’t even know if it was the extra virgin type (the expensive one full of the antioxidant polyphenols which feed good bacteria in the gut and keep us healthy).
These polyphenols are also what are thought to protect the oil from becoming carcinogenic when heated.
For all we know participants were buying cheaper, lower-polyphenol more-processed regular olive oil or virgin olive oil and there is something else in it, or what it is cooked with that partly imparts protection?
This observational study comes on the back of a famous randomised control trial known as PREDIMED (2018) see link below. It asked thousands of Spaniards to include 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) daily (including in cooking so heated) as part of a Mediterranean diet over several years.
Btw the EVOO was provided so we know for sure that is what they used.
They had less heart attacks and breast cancer than a low-fat eating group. So extra virgin has some convincing science behind it.
But what does the Italian study add?
Well it certainly reinforces that cooked olive oil may protect us from cancer and heart disease. For example - when it’s part of the whole concert of Mediterranean foods.
Eg in this new Italian study the people having the higher portions of olive oil we are told, were also the ones eating more fruits, vegetables, legumes, and fish and drinking more moderately.
So it may be the whole overall pattern of foods that is creating protection?
We know from other studies that frying certain foods in combinaton with others can enhance the meal’s nutrition eg tomatoes fried in olive oil, may lead to the polyphenol count - antioxidants - being increased in the sauce (it is one research avenue out there).
Sofrito - tomatoes lightly fried in olive oil with onions and garlic - is a classic example of this in Spanish cooking. In the PREDIMED study, the olive oil Med diet people were encouraged to include two portions of that a week. Sofrito is used as a base for many Spanish dishes - so brings a lot of polyphenol welly everywhere it goes.
So it may be the matrix of foods cooked together working as teams that might be where the Mediterranean diet health impact really lies - rather than singling out just the olive oil.
This new study also makes me question if it is essential to cook with extra virgin for health? If you can’t afford it, can cooking with virgin or regular olive oil still impart some health benefits if you make sure you’re cooking lots of colourful vegetables and beans etc with it? We don’t know, but this study raises that question.
On another note I just want to add, I’m not suggesting we all start deep frying for hours or burning our oil.
But gently cooking our olive oil with lots colourful plants like a Mediterranean sounds like it could be a bit of an SOS.
Here are a few Mediterranean cooking resources…
This book has improved my year! Mediterranean cooking which can be done in half an hour or so - and plenty of gently-fried olive oil included! My favourite recipes so far:
Caramelised onion leek and courgette butter beans (p152)
The onions, leek, and beans are all prebiotic meaning they are great fibre for feeding good bacteria in the gut. If you use beans from a jar (rather than the harder ones from a tin) I find it really creamy and delicious. Cheap too.
Spanakopita jacket potatoes (p96)
At least 7 of your 30 plants a week in one sitting here - potatoes, spinach, dill, onion, lemon, chilli, olive oil (of course). I love that Georgina includes grated lemon peel - which gives a spark of citrus while piling additional antioxidants into you (because antioxidants are more concentrated in the skin than other parts of the lemon). You may get some probiotics from the feta and yogurt depending which you buy.
Another recent discovery is the Substack called Letters from Tuscany by Giulia Scarpaleggia for Mediterranean cooking. Check out the aubergine salad here (btw loads of polyphenols - loving that this uses tomatoes and aubergines which are in season in Europe right now and lashings of olive oil that you get to sink into the aubergines by making criss crosses on them).
FINALLY
Are you coming this Sunday at 5pm (UK time) to our kombucha chat on Zoom? Btw this pic isn’t really vermouth - it’s just a recyled bottle I used to house my kombucha.
Bring a bottle of kombucha (home made or bought) and we will swap tips on making/buying - for 45 minutes.
It’s for paid subscribers so if you are already one, please email me by return of this email and let me know you're coming and I’ll send you the link.
If you are not a paid subscriber yet, and want to come, then you can take out a subscription by pressing the button below. Once a paid member, let me know by return of this email and I’ll send the link.
Thank you and look forward to meeting you!
References
Ruggiero et al (2024). Olive oil consumption is associated with lower cancer, cardiovascular and all-cause mortality among Italian adults: prospective results from the Moli-sani Study and analysis of potential biological mechanisms. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-024-01442-8
Estruch et al (2018). Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease with a Mediterranean Diet Supplemented with Extra-Virgin Olive Oil or Nuts. The New England Journal of Medicine. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1800389
Some of you have told me you value my work, aren’t ready to take out a paid subscription, however would like to show your appreciation. So I’m including a Buy me a Coffee button for you guys. Thank you! Your support is hugely appreciated. Jeannette x
To avoid cancer and heart disease - your evoo habit is worth continuing. There are so many things that affect weight - I’d probably focus on adding in more foods like more veg and fibre and protein to feel full than reduce EVOO. Also alcohol a blind spot for many - adding to weight. Also time of eating, stress, sleep all worth getting right before worrying about evoo. Hard to comment without seeing a food diary but there are many areas to balance.
This is what I preach, what I do! For the last 25 years, even in my restaurant olive oil was the cooking medium of choice. We even fried in olive oil. Then somewhere 10 years ago, I fell in love with an olive grove in the Turkish Northern Aegean and started farming olives and pressing our own.
I don’t reject other fats, they have their places but, generally I use olive oil.
Also in Turkish/Istanbul cuisine we have a section dedicated solely on olive oil: olive oil braised dishes (zeytinyağlı in Turkish, meaning with olive oil)
They are always vegetables, cooked in olive oil, served either room temperature or chilled, contain NO meat.