Olive oil

In the conventional farming, plagues are fought with pesticide, in the ecological, mainly with other methods such as traps. Although olive tree are dry-land crops, since a fewer years. it has become usual to irrigate them for increasing the productivity, mainly in Andalusia and in conventional farming. This has the effect of weakening the resistance to plagues and the oil produced is milder. It is important to support the agriculture that adapts better to nature's action.

How can we do it

Most of Mediterranean countries are members of AgroBioMediterraneo, an organization that promotes the ecological agriculture and the rural tourism to the Mediterranean. The main producers of ecological olive oil are Italy and Spain, but there are other countries like Tunisia where it is quickly expanding it.

The flavour and the odour of virgin olive oil are very different depending of the variety of olive tree from which it is obtained. There are hundreds of them, and Greece is the country where the greastest number of varieties is produced. The traditional grinding method with millstones is quite kept in some countries (88% of mills in Lebanon, 51% in Syria) and almost abandoned in others (14% in Spain, 7% in Jordan), where they have been substituted by the extraction by centrifugation. The paste of olive can be heated so that more oil is obtained, but then it is not so tasteful and it is less nutritious. We will get more pleasure and nutrition if we look for oils extracted without heat.

How can we do it

We can recognize the oils extracted in millstones and without heating by its name, first cold pressed oil.
The oils obtained by centrifugation without heating the paste above 27º are identified as cold extraction
The virgin oil most appreciated (by its taste) is the one called extra, because it has less acidity. It is usual that it is sold filtered (or clarified), which is done so that it has a brilliant appearance and not muddy, but thus, it also loses antioxidants and aroma.

The oil that is too acid is not edible and thus, it is refined: a dissolvent is introduced and it is brought to high temperature, a solvent is added and borne at high temperature, so that is turns to a liquid without nutritional value. To make it edible it is mixed up with a small quantity of virgin oil and is sold as olive oil (that's to say, without the word virgin). In the ecological production it is not permitted to refine the oil. The refined olive oil will be more nutritious the more contents it has of virgin oil. Let us look for the one having more acidity.

How can we do it

We will find the degrees of acidity on the label. It usually ranks between 0'4º and 1º.

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Data d'actualització: 10/06/2010 - 19:28