You may not like what’s lurking in your olive oil

By Frances Dinkelspiel

That bottle of extra virgin olive oil you take off the grocery store shelf may not be what you think it is.
Instead of being a greenish-gold, fruity, fresh oil made from olives, rich in antioxidants and delicious to drizzle over a beautiful caprese salad, more likely than not it is a blend of oils, some made from olives, and some not.
In fact, a recent study by UC Davis that tested a number of the best-selling olive oils in California, including Bertolli, Star, and Colavita found that 69% of the extra virgin olive oil imported into the U.S. did not meet the standards for extra virgin.
“It’s a big hoax,” said Tom Mueller, who will be talking about the issue and his new book, Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, at on Saturday from 2 to 6p at Amphora Nueva Berkeley Olive Oil Works on Domingo Avenue in Berkeley. “What’s written on the bottle does not guarantee what is inside.”
Mueller, who lives in Liguria, Italy, stumbled into the murky world of black market olive oil in 2007, when he agreed to write an article about oil for the New Yorker. What he found surprised him.
“I figure I am living in Italy,” said Mueller, 48. “I’ve been eating some good olive oil. Italy is the world center of olive oil. Surely it would be an easy, folksy story. I had no idea what I was getting into – the collusion, the crime, talking to investigative magistrates.”
The result of his research was Slippery Business, an article that shook up American palates by showing how many large companies pass off inferior oil as extra virgin olive oil. Since neither the USDA nor the Italian equivalent police or even really regulate the market, unscrupulous producers have developed numerous ways to adulterate extra virgin olive oil and make it cheaper, according to Mueller. They cut olive oil with hazelnut or sunflower oil. They take musty oil made from rotting olives, deodorize it to remove the bad smell, and then add a bit of extra virgin oil to make it smell authentic. Then they slap fancy labels on glass bottles and sell it as extra virgin olive oil.

Some of the worst oil goes into industrial food, said Mueller.