440: The Olive Oil Scandal: Why Your 'Healthy' Oil Might Be Making You Sick with TJ Robinson

So guess what happened, people this. They sold people on the idea that they had to have two separate oils in their pantry. And guess what? Their sales doubled.

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Did you know that most of the olive oil in and on American shelves has lost its health boosting properties before you even open it? And we know it is this liquid gold, but could that liquid gold in your kitchen actually be delivering just calories and helping you pack on the pounds versus what we think it's doing the heart and brain benefits that we've been counting on? And is it common advice? Is the common advice that we can't cook olive oil at high heat, that we have to use other oils? Is that a myth or is that a reality? And why? Where did that come from? Today we're exploring all of these questions and more about olive oil with TG TJ Robinson, the olive oil hunter. Also the, the founder, the founder of my favorite olive oil company, the Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club. I get olive oil delivered fresh every month. It is. You can drink it. It's so good. It's so good. I have a lot of questions for you, TJ thanks for being here.

A real pleasure. Thank you so much. I can't wait to share everything I know about olive oil in this quick rapid fire interview. So I'm excited and ready.

So let's start. I have a lot of questions to ask you, but I want to just start with those kind of like three, three, three main things. I said give me yes or nos. Like one, is it, is it a myth? Can we, can we not cook it in high heat?

That is a myth. And actually I have some research studies on that. If you stay below the smoke point, you're going to be beautiful with olive oil. So we'll dig into that and the research behind it.

And is it true that the ones on American shelves are pretty much garbage? A lot of them. Is that true?

Sadly, sadly. Olive oil is a commodity product, so it is literally in the newspaper, traded like corn. It's not in the, in the Mediterranean. So if you're buying commodity grade olive oil, which is what most olive oil sold in America is, you're not getting the health benefits you think you are.

Oh, gosh. Okay, I got a lot of questions here. We're going to go, we're going to go a lot deep. Let's. I want to back up a little bit. First of all, you are a chef by trade. That's your background. Were you getting into the olive oil world because of taste or because of health or what was that? What was the reasons? Where did this come from?

Well, I'll give you the quick story. So I was a food writer. I worked for the Food network for about 10 years in the Today show. Living and working in New York City, had a great life there. Industries from the Israeli Dairy Board to Leon, France to the Australian cattle breeders. They brought me all over the world to sample products. And one of the mission trips, the research trips I was, was to Sicily and I was invited by a family to come to try fresh olive oil. And I'm a southern boy. I grew up in Asheville, North Carolina. I know what fresh pressed apple juice tastes like because I visit Cider Ease. But I had no idea until I actually picked olives and spent time at an olive mill with his family. I had no idea what fresh olive oil tasted like and what it even. How to even identify that it was not what I was getting in America. So even though I was this culinary expert from America, this was 20 years ago, I visited with his family and I stuck my nose in the tasting glass and I was blown away. And at that moment I knew my life was changed. I had a new mission in life because I was so pissed off that this amazing product that most people have never even tried had been kept for me as an American. We were the dumping grounds for crappy olive oil back then. And we still get a lot of low quality olive oil. So anyway, that's the quick story. I can give you more on that. But tonight they kind of changed my my life as an extra virgin olive oil vers origin in Sicily and led me to found this olive oil club.

And you became like known as the Olive oil Hunter. Like literally like that is what. I love that.

I love that title right there.

Yes. Well, so what I do, I travel around the globe because harvest happened in the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere and you asked about taste. So before I was a chef and that was my main mission 20 years ago when I founded the club, I was in gourmet magazine. I was in the New York Times, I was doing all food related stuff. But about that time, something started to happen. There was so much research going into the health benefits of olive oil that I was like, it just was like this wave, this tsunami of information and we started learning about brain health and gut health. And first it was just cholesterol. Have it for your cholesterol. And then suddenly we figured out, wow, this is like brain gut inflammation. You know, we discovered that these antioxidants, which come from fresh olive oil only, they deplete in the first six months after harves. They are what is known as the kind of like the ibuprofen in olive oil that cools inflammation and lower. It's, it's just like ibuprofen. So research has been keeping up with this trend over 20 years. And as more people have gotten into olive oil, well, that has led to more slippery business in the olive oil industry. So when you, you know, you read these articles about olive oil being cut with seed oils and being sold as blended and light oil, there's like, there's so much to unpack. But yeah, so I transitioned about 2009 really into health and wellness. Even though I bring, you know, my culinary background, you know, I'm a chef, but I work with a lot of health and wellness influencers, people who truly value what they're putting and are willing to pay for what they're willing to put in their body. And so I travel around the globe. So I'm in the southern hemisphere in Chile and Australia hunting olive oil when their season and then I'm back in the Mediterranean when it's time for their harvest season. So I'm like all over the planet. So that's where I got the hunter moniker is, you know, traveling all around the world finding the best olive oil and we'll get into how, how we do that.

Yes, I got, I got a lot of questions here and I want to, I want to say this. I'm. I definitely am a little bit weird when it comes to food. So I don't know if anyone listening can relate to this or if you can, maybe you can actually as a chef. But my body, like I will specifically crave specific foods. Like I have these random cravings for like parsley or just ran. My husband makes fun of me for this, but olive oil is one of those foods that I crave, I always have, and I do not like other oils. Like, so if so we're told to stay away from the unhealthy oils. And that the healthy ones are sort of like avocado oil or olive oil. We're told that. And then we tend to lean towards things like avocado oil for cooking because we've been, we've been told that. But there's something really nourishing about the taste and feel of olive oil of the. And I believe that's our bodies telling us like that we need this, that it's a healthy thing for us. I mean I'd love to get just. I know that that's not your jam, that the health side of it, but I want you.

No, absolutely. So what we know about olive oil is from a lot of the research that we're talking about is it has a very high level of satiety. So olive oil is one of these especially high quality olive oil that has the polyphenols and antioxidants and all of the tocopherols that we're going to learn how to identify when you taste olive oil. Get. We'll do a tasting as part of this interview. Love it. And so when you learn how to identify that that has a very high level of satiety. So your body, when you consume food with olive oil or just a shot of olive oil, if you're doing like a detox or a fat fast or something like that, it is very. Your body is so intensely happy with that it quells hunger. There's a great research on this and you know, there, there is.

The oils you're mentioning are. And people don't realize that olive, olives are a fruit just like avocados. So you're mentioning. And people use coconut oil too. Again, fruit based oils, not seed based oils. And fruit based oils are fantastic for us. You know, all of those. I mean when I first met my wife Megan, she was all about. It was kind of during the coconut oil craze. And I like coconut oil. I personally don't like my morning eggs fried in coconut oil because I don't like the flavor at breakfast. It's great in a curry or you know, some other dishes that are on the sweeter side like some roasted root vegetables. But I, it's not, it's not for my everyday. It kind of oil. The oil you use in your kitchen is this kind of backbone of the cooking and also backbone of flavor. So if you're using an oil that you don't really love, like coconut oil, it kind of. I won't use the word contaminate but can be good or bad. Right? So healthy olive oil and olive has all these hallmarks of flavor. You know, we're talking about bitterness, we're talking about spiciness, we're talking about herbalness, we're talking about all this explosion of flavor that high quality extra virgin olive oil can have that also gives you the flavor in those dishes. So you're, you're, you're perceiving those. And it's, it's really making your body happy. I think it is a delivery system for nutrients. So I think it is something your body has identified and I think that's part of, of intuition and, you know, trusting your, your palate and your body and, and I think your listeners, that's something you're very in tune with.

And they're very, I mean, most of you listening, you're familiar with polyphenols and just like, I'll just talk about what we need to do for our mitochondrial health. And, and polyphenols are so abundant in olive oil and it's such an easy thing to be adding in to make it. So I even put, I put olive oil on my eggs. Like, I pour it on there. I.

So I want to. I have a lot of questions here about what does it mean when someone says, like, fresh pressed or extra virgin? Like, what does all that mean?

Okay, so there's a lot of marketing myths out there that a lot of people have put a lot of money behind. So fresh pressed means that an olive oil. And again, there's no, like, legal rules on what's considered fresh pressed. So I see companies or olive grove at harvest once a year selling their olive oil as fresh a year later. Now, we know from scientific studies that within six months, the polyphenols and antioxidants have depleted by 50% already. Which is why I go to the Southern hemisphere. So when you taste the oils coming from Chile that you're going to get in June, I'm going in May. When you try those in June and you taste those and your, like, head blows off, you're going to be like. And your palate is like, so happy, you're like, whoa. Okay, now I see why this dude does this. Like, it makes a difference. So, so fresh olive oil should be consumed within six months of pressing. That's one of the rules. And then your other question was extra virgin.

Yeah, extra virgin.

What is extra virgin? So backing up the extra virgin. So there was a study, it's been quite a few years now, but in UC Davis, which has an olive oil center, they went shopping in California and took off like 30 bottles of olive Oil and sent them just from supermarket shelves and sent them to a lab in Australia and they came back. Almost 70% of them were not extra virgin. So, yeah, I know again, slippery business of olive oil. Great story in the New Yorker about it too. In the past. So when olive oil. So here's a lab test. I've got it here on the screen.

If you're watching on YouTube, you can see this. If not, definitely look at this on YouTube.

That's right. So the deal is with extra virgin olive oil, to get it certified, you send it to a lab, you send it to a third party lab. And how it works, there's actually two types of testing it goes through. One is it is poured into a cup like this with a panel. Tasters, this is called organoleptic tasting. And a test. So they will score the olive oil and look for what are called defects. Defects being the fruit was not fresh, the mill was dirty, the it was used at high heat. These defects happen in olive oil in the process. And it's unlike wine, you can't hide anything in olive oil. Wine has up to 70 additives that can be added. Olive oil, you cannot add anything and there's no fixing it. So what's in this glass tells the tasting panel whether it's extra virgin or not. And then they score it. So they score it here. They look for the defects. And this is for our oil, zero defects. They look for medium, the fruitiness and the oil that's there as a marker. And also the spiciness and the bitterness. This is all organic anileptic. So it has to pass through a tasting panel who certifies it as extra virgin. And then the second is chemistry analysis where they put it through lab tests to also certify that it is extra virgin.

And then you get a report says extra virgin. Unless it says it has this testing, we don't know if it's true or not. Is that accurate?

You have to know who you're buying from. It's like you going to the farmer's market and you buying directly from the farmer. And you know when they're telling you these are fresh vegetables and you look at them and you know they've picked them and they look right. And you buy them and you cook with them and you taste the difference between what you get at the supermarket. Like I, for example, I'm the single link in the chain between the grove and my club member. And I'm there when the olives are on the tree. I inspect the fruit, I make sure it's beautiful. I make sure it's harvested quickly. They're the best producers in the world. I work with the top 20 award winning Olive oil producers in the world. So I'm. And this is, you know, all verifiable stuff. So the, and then we race it to America by jet. So that makes a huge difference. Most olive oil comes, you're like legit serious.

You're like, we're not even gonna, we're not even gonna kind of bring it there. We're like racing it there.

No, we race it. So again, I'm in Chile in May. Club members have that oil on their table in June. Like it is a race against the clock to get it to them. And it makes all the difference in the world. So artisanal olive oil is very different than the commodity product. And olives, when they're on a tree, they go from GRE black. And then as they ripen and the.

More they're the same. I never knew that. So all. It's not a difference. They're the same thing.

It's just, it's, it's the same thing. And what happens. Yes, yes.

So it has like a grape and a raisin.

Yes, exactly. So this, the, A green olive has very little oil inside, about 10%. So back in the day, and still. So we think of Tuscan style olive oil, right? It's green, it's peppery. Well, the reason why Tuscany developed that is because it would freeze up there. So they would have to harvest their fruit really early. And when they would do that, they would get these really flavorful oils that were high in antioxidants and high in polyphenols and high in flavor. But also they got very little oil, which makes it really expensive, which is why Tuscan oil is very expensive. So this style of oil, if you pick an olive green, which is hard to get off the tree, has about. And I know I'm getting nerdy, but I'll make it quick. About 10, 10% of oil inside that fruit. If you leave the same, same fruit hanging on the tree an extra month, two months in Spain could be four months and it will, it will get black and it could have 30% of oil inside. But if you're selling by the leader, that's great for you with a commodity producer. But if you're looking for the health benefits, they're not there. They're in the 10% yield. They're not, they're not in the 25 to 30% yield. So the farmer is incentivized. If you're in the commodity business, which 90.

Yeah, you do like the big box stores too, what they're buying.

Yeah, exactly. So because people, you know, a lot of people, you know, it's like in America we pivoted from Folgers and Maxwell House. We, we pivoted to the local micro roaster, right. So it's like, you know, people who care about quality, they pivoted and people are pivoting in olive oil too. And not only did they taste the difference, but they difference in their body.

So that's super important because I think like especially when the price of olive oil was initially going up and at one point it was like hard to get olive oil, there was all this. So then, you know, people are like, well, I went to Costco, I went to Trader Joe's or I went to whatever and I got extra virgin olive oil. But if I'm hearing you correctly, this is the commodity place. It's coming from those black olives, It's a different percentage. And we also don't know if it's actually extra virgin. If I'm hearing you correctly. We also don't actually know if it's fresh pressed or how long ago it was pressed. We don't know that. And we also don't really know if it's blended with anything.

I'm hearing too well blended is, you know, some of that has stopped. There's a lot of arrest being happening all over Spain. And honestly, as the demand keeps going up for olive oil, the enticement for the fraudsters only grows. So unfortunately we've had some really bad harvests. This last one was great in Spain, but the previous ones were disasters and Spain is like the most heavy producer. The Romans planted a lot of trees in the south of Spain. Andalusia has got the largest man made forest in the world of olive trees. It's like a sea as far as you can see, mountains of olive trees in the south of Spain. But we've had a few bad harvests and it's made a lot of room for fraudsters to get involved. So a, it pays to know what you're buying and who you're buying from. You buy it in small quantities, you use it quickly and you educate your own palate. So that's also, you know, what we're going to do today is teach people how to identify the good stuff from the commodity stuff.

I will tell you because the seed oils that we all are learning them to be so terrible. And if you, if you, if you're like what I Didn't know they were terrible. You got to catch up. Seed oils are not good. We don't want seed oils. And I've done previous episodes really getting into that. But if you go to a restaurant and you ask what kind of oil are you cooking in? They will tell you usually. And if they, if you ask for olive oil, make sure you say is it a pure olive oil or is it an olive oil blend? And I've notice that they're almost always an olive oil blend. And you can taste the difference. It does not taste like olive oil.

Yeah, there's a couple of hacks that I have for that. A lot of my members, they actually take. We have two sizes of the club. We have a large size and a small size. And a lot of my club members, they carry big purses and they bring their own. So restaurants are full of seed oils. It's more affordable for them. So what we do. And people do this with store bought vinaigrettes too. If you read a label of a store bought vinaigrette, it's got len. It's got sugar, it's got seed oil, it's got. And this oil that was. Even if it's extra virgin olive oil by the time it's mixed in a jar and sit on a shelf for months, I wouldn't even put that in my body. So we take our olive oil and we ask for extra lemons or limes depending on the kind of restaurant we're eating at, you know, because you get that free for your water anyway. And we, we squeeze a couple lemons just like they would do in the Mediterranean and drizzle a lot of our olive oil, a little of our olive oil and put it back in our purse. You know, my wife puts it back in her purse and so know it's. It's you. It's a way to like keep in the lane, you know, because some healthy fat at a meal is better than all bad fat. That's what we found. Like we feel better. You know how you wake up the next day and you're like, oh gosh, I'm puffy.

You know, feel like add in the beneficial fat on top of the whatever it is.

Exactly. Somehow it just kind of, you know, it were. And it tastes, you know, of course, course. Fantastic. But yeah, you can make your own vinaigrettes at the table. Very, very simple. And you know how they do it in the Mediterranean, keeping. Keeping things pretty simple.

So give. I mean this is a. Kind of a weird question, but I'm curious Now that I asked that part, what, what was the deal with the olive oil back when people couldn't get olive oil and it became so hard to get. What do you know much about that? Like, what was that?

It was the shortage in Spain. I mean, it really led to skyrocketing olive oil prices. And, you know, I've been doing this for about 20 years since I tasted that fresh olive oil in Sicily. And I've harvest season change, you know, because I visit every global harvest. I land in country, I try all the oils for my. My producers. And I saw like certain years, certain grows had no olive oil to even offer. Like there was a climate change in olive groves is a real thing. Like we see it as a farmer and I say a lot of times Mother Nature owns 51% of the company because, you know, it's. It can be stressful out there. But that was the real deal. We had a couple bad harves Spain that really led because they. They're producing 60%, 70% of the world. And, and in the U.S. i, I should bring this up. In the U.S. we only produce a roughly 5% of what we consume. So we, like I said growing up in North Carolina, we don't have olive groves here. They grow. They're in California, a tiny bit in Texas, a little bit in Arizona, but really California. And there it's, it's, you know, a style of planting, like a hedgerow st planting and, and pretty. Pretty. It's not eclectic as far as all the varieties that are being produced in California. But that's why we are. We have to import like 95% into the US and that's where things get between the grove and if you read the back of a label and it says it's from five different countries of origin, there is no love in that bottle. There's. There's only money in that bottle and most olive oil. So you have to learn to look for harvest date. Harvest d important than expiration date. So you've got to always look. If you're buying olive oil in the grocery store, you have to have a harvest date. So this one was done in late last year and early this year, depending on. Because I'm. I'm a blender and blender in a good way. I use different olive varieties, which we can talk about, but always look for harvest dates. Always buy in glass, dark glass bottles. I hate olive oil and plastic.

Can you explain that?

What is. Yeah, what is that about?

Oh, olive oil. And olive oil breaks down plastic bottles. So there's an olive oil out there on the market that like everyone is asking me about. That's like the squeeze bottle thing you do by your, by your, by your stove to like, you can pretend you're a chef, but the olive oil is plastic. So the. Or the bottle is like rubbery plastic. And unfortunately the oil breaks down the plastic bottle and then olive oil, all the chemicals from the plastic travel into the olive oil. So do, do not. If you have that oil in your pantry, you get, get rid of it. Because I, I would. I'm not a fan of that at all. Because I don't like plastic in my food, especially because it leeches is what's happening. You know how we had got rid of those BPA bottles years ago? Like, you know, you're still getting the leeching. Yeah. So. So, so buy, buy olive oil and glass. Dark glass. Light kills olive oil. So you don't want to keep it in the sun you century. You don't want to keep it by somewhere where it's really hot because heat is not good for olive oil. So dark glass, look for harvest date and then know how to taste it.

Okay, you just said something that. Now I'm going to segue into the heat question because you just said heat is not good for olive oil. But explain to me now why you're saying you can cook with it and what is the truth around. I've always heard you don't want to cook with olive oil because it can turn rancid. Help us understand all this.

Correct. I'm happy to unpack that. So if you go into a grandmother's kitchen in Sicily, she uses one oil and that's olive oil. She uses it for everything. She's also almost 100 years old, right. She's like, you know, she's done well with her diet and her life, and all she cooks with is olive oil. So the tricks of it are use a high quality olive oil that's fresh, which they would be using in the Mediterranean because it's harvested once a year and it's fresh and it's gone before the next season. And they, that's when they get their, their next oil. So use high quality olive oil. Also you want to stay below the smoke point. Now that can be around 400 degrees most of the time in your cooking. You are not cooking over 400 degrees. When I fry my eggs in olive oil for breakfast, I cook on medium low heat.

So if you add it on medium and low, it's not going to get to that heat, right?

No, no. And Here is one of the tricks. The tr. Heat the pan. You. So you turn on your eye. You heat the pan. You have your eggs ready to go. You. Once the pan is hot, this is the key. Pan is hot, add your olive oil. Two seconds later, add your eggs. A lot of people, here's what they'll do.

Don't heat up the pan with the oil on it. I can't wait for my husband to hear that. He's been arguing with me about that.

It takes two seconds to heat the oil. And honestly, most people, they fit little fart around in their oil city.

They're getting totally like, turns it out. Okay, I'll tell you. I'm telling you said so.

So that's the trick. But on. On top of that, so you've got the smoke point. And also olive oil for baking. Like, even if you're in a pinch and you're doing like a box of brownies, which we've been known to do for company, we always.

Are you going to say you're cooking it with olive oil? What?

Of course. See, Replace seed oil oils in your baking with olive oil.

Right now. We've been told a lie. This is a huge lie we've been told. You can't do that.

Absolutely. And olive oil. Make a banana bread using one of these olive oils or a chocolate cake, and your brain is going to just be like, oh, my gosh. Like that level of satiety and like all. You know, if you're gonna splurge on something, make sure the ingredients are strong. But like a Ghirardelli, you know, box of brownies, if we have company coming, and make it with olive oil instead of seed oils and nice egg. Got a delicious chocolate dessert.

Hold on a second. I got to back up here. Okay, so first of all, where did this come from? Is it because they're using the. The older olive oils that are.

Where.

Where did this whole problem come from? Or was it because they were like, literally, like, deep frying in it?

Like, what.

Where did that come from? This whole myth.

Okay, you. You want to know where this really came from?

Yes.

In about the 50s, the 60s, they convinced Americans in the Mediterranean, these great marketers who put Italian flags on the bottle, and most of the oil was. And Tunisia and other places, but they realized they were able to sell Americans through commercials to. To consume extra virgin olive oil. It was great for your, you know, whatever. It was just, you know, it was mostly the. The Italian and Spanish and immigrants were actually using most of the olive oil in those days. So they realized they were able to get one bottle, one product into folks pantries in America. Well, and get their market share up. And. And these are again, very slick marketers in Italy. Well, what they realized they could tell folks once they had them conditioned and they were selling a lot of this oil, a extra virgin. They said, oh, you actually should not cook with that. You need a second olive oil in your pantry. So guess what happened, people? This. They sold people on the idea that they had to have two separate oils in their pantry. And guess what? Their sales doubled. So of course it worked.

What was that second oil? What was the second oil they were saying you wouldn't cook?

Well, people actually started buying what's called light olive oil. And light olive oil is terrible. So light olive oil is refined olive oil. So the story behind that, remember we talked about the black olives in Spain? They will fall. You can minimize your harvest costs because they fall to the ground. You vacuum them up, you press them, and then you send the oil to a refinery. And that refinery makes. They use hexane gas and they strip all the flavor components, components out of the oil and they make what is called light olive oil or pure olive oil. That is what it is. And you'll see the color. It's very yellow. That is a refined olive oil.

Wait, my wheels are spinning because I'm realizing what you just said about marketers. And now I'm thinking, oh, and this is tying into the whole seed oil and vegetable oil story. Oh, you have to use these to cook. Like, let's not have the healthy stuff. Let's put the crap in your body and get you to get disease. Oh, my gosh. This is like, well, which, which do.

You think was more profitable? The stuff that they had to lovingly pick or the stuff that fell to the ground and they sent to a refinery? They were making a lot more money on the olive oil you're supposed to cook with. So of course, the science caught up over 20 years and now it's like, no. So we, we've talked about Smoke Point. You want to stay below 400.

Okay, so, but 400, not what we've been told. We've been told like 200, 250.

400. No, 400 is fine. OK? Quality is really important. It's chemically stable. There are less polar compounds being being made in olive oil as it's heated. I can send you research studies on this. Science backs this. There, there's lots of journals on that. And also culinary tradition in these countries in the Mediterranean also says that they use extra virgin for olive oil. The grandmother in Sicily who's making a cake, she uses olive oil. She doesn't use any other olive oil. She doesn't use coconut. She doesn't use avocado. She. So she's using avocado olive oil.

So, okay, number one, y' all stop with the vegetable oils and seed oils.

We don't.

They're not helping us. They're hurting us. Two, if you love coconut oil, butter, ghee, tallow, fine. But they. They're not as bad as seed oils, but they don't have a lot of the benefits like what you're talking about the polyphenols and stuff with olive oil. So we need to be adding olive oil because the. The research on olive oil is undisputable on how it's healthy. But the lie we've been told is you can't cook with it. The truth is you can. It just has to be the right quality. It has to be the right high quality. It has to have the right structure. It can't be the dead black ones that fell off the tree that they're just trying to blend with a million things. It can't be the blends. And if I'm hearing tj, who is a chef, correctly, how we should be cooking should never be above 400 anyway. Like, you should never have anything higher than 400. So, yeah, you're not going to deep fry it because that wouldn't know. What does that mean when they say it would turn rancid when you do that? Like, what does that. That even mean?

So rancid happens is. Is oxidation. And a lot of olive oil I taste on the shelves when I go to a friend's house and they have olive oil and it's a commodity product. It tastes rancid to me. What is that? That. And when you get used to high quality olive oil, you will become the olive oil with yours.

I definitely can now tell a difference based on restaurants.

When you go to restaurants or you try, you know, other people's oil are like, oh, that tastes awful like wax and crayon. And like, it doesn't even. Like, rancid is is the word. So, yes, when you heat olive oil, if it's a low quality olive oil and it's already old and it's a commodity product, you're just adding to the dominoes start to fall and it's. Look, you use olive oil sparingly. I'm a chef, as you mentioned, olive oil should.

I don't think I use it sparingly.

I like well, so my theory and how I use olive oil, I use it as a sauce that mother nature created for me. It is a sauce. And so these olive varieties, in Italy alone, there are 550 olive varieties. These olive varieties, think of those as apple varieties. In America, we know the difference between a Granny Smith and a Red Delicious. It's the same in Italy. People know different olive varieties and Spain and what that oil is going to taste like. So there. These olives have different flavor profiles and different health benefits. Some are used for mild foods. Some are used for very rich and like heavy foods. Like, I know your husband, Brooks. He likes to a real grilled steak. He puts it in the broiler and then he. So it's like Bistega Florentina. So he pulls it off while it's hot. He drizzles it with olive oil and it just like. Especially if you like grass.

He's going to now because he's been doing. He's been at drizzling on butter, but he's going to be doing olive oil now.

And nothing wrong with that. I make a compound butter where I blend olive oil. In my kitchenaid over here, we blend olive oil and butter with some fresh herbs when they're in season. And we keep it in the freezer. And then so it's like 50 olive oil, 50% butter. But it's got airy. It's light and airy, of course, because we whipped a little air into it. We keep it in the freezer and we just take off a little knob and just if you have some salmon or some veggies or whatever, or steak, and you just put a little of that on there and let it melt. Oh, God, it's.

Oh, my God.

It's like heaven. It's like very simple food in the Mediterranean, like green beans or steamed broccoli. So olive oil, a sauce and olive oil like ours that are mine, that's a sauce is. You've got to do things very simply. So you steam green beans, for example, lightly steam some air covers you drizzle it with some olive oil when it's off the fire, when it's done, put it on the plate. Yep. And then it's going to smell like perfume. Olive oil perfume. The minute it gets the. The heat and hitting the olive oil. And then you want to use some high quality salt. In Sicily, they would use Sicilian sea salt. I think I was talking to Brooks and he likes the Redmond real salt, which I like too. That's a US Product. That's really good. Just put a little Redmond real salt on, and you're good to go. You see, that's three ingredients, right? Green bean, olive oil, salt.

And it's so healthy for you because you're not just getting the antioxidants and all of that, but you're getting the polyphenols you're getting.

Delicious.

Yeah, all of it.

Exactly. Delicious.

Right before this interview, TJ sent me their new seasonal stuff, and he said. They said, somebody on your team said, do not, not open it yet. So I. I followed instructions. I did not open it.

Thank you. Thank you.

Because we said we're gonna do, like, a little live tasting, and you're gonna educate me here. Okay, so let's talk. If you're not watching this on YouTube, like, you're. This might be a little boring right now, but go to. You can go to YouTube.

Go to YouTube. So we're gonna taste two oils together, I think, because we don't really. You know, I want to give people some tips, so I want to just focus on two oils. So the first one, I want to put in our tasting cup. And I have a tasting cup. And we're going to pretend we are those professional tasters that are in competitions. Level olive oil.

So I do have a quick question, though.

Hold on, dj.

Because people are watching video. They're going to catch and ask. We just talked about how you don't store them in plastic, but for our little tasting cup, we're using a little plastic. Does that matter for that quick minute or what's the.

Not for that quick minute. I actually have a blue glass tasting glass that I really. You can use espresso cup. You can use a shot glass. But, you know, I just wanted you to have something handy so you could get the. I want you to be able to smell what professional tasters are going to be smelling.

So we're top and the top.

Yeah. And. And I'm putting about a tablespoon in my cup. Look at that color. Now, you cannot judge olive oil on its color because guess what? The fraudsters add chlorophyll to their olive oil to make you think it's green. Yes. So that's why we put it in these blue glasses. As professional tasters, we don't want olive oil to actually. To trick our senses into thinking it's something. So professional tasters, we taste in blue cups. Okay. Yeah, it does. It's already starting. And then we're. We're actually not going to t taste these yet. We're gonna, I want to pour the second one as well. So we'll keep one, put them, separate.

Them together so I know what to put.

Yep. Put your cup right in front of the other. Yep. And then I'm gonna open. The second one I want to open is the Garcia Torres, which is another Spanish one. So we've got two Spanish oils. Now these oils we actually send to the lab as I showed you the lab report and the, the Garcia Molina. The first one we're going to taste. And these labs are a polyphenol count over 400.

Wow.

So we're going to taste. We're going to taste. So before we taste, I actually want to do a smell test on the two. So we'll step, we'll smell the first one first. The Garcia Molina. I just want to smell it. So the way we do it as a professional taster, we warm the olive oil in our hand so we put it like that and then we put our hand over top. We're catching all the aromas. And what we're trying to find is defects as professional tasters because we want to throw it out of being extra, extra virgin. For me, I know these oils are perfect because I hand selected them and shipped them here. So you're warming. It's exactly warming.

Is that kind of why with wine tasting they do that too? Is that like a similar.

Yeah, to kind of aerate it. Exactly. Okay, so then I'm going to smell it. I'm not going to taste it. I'm going to smell.

Oh my gosh. So I said for the nose on this one, while you're kind of smelling it, I said this is a paqua olive from the south of Spain. It is intensely green and vibrant. So I want you to smell it while, while I'm reading a few things and let's see if you can pick some of these out. It's green and vibrant on the nose with aromas of tomato leaf, baby spinach, arugula, kale with hints of kiwi lime zest, basil, rosemary and thyme.

Wow.

So to me it's very herbal. It's very like green and fresh and grassy. But there's nothing in this but one single olive variety, paqual, which is harvested very early and pressed in a beautiful impeccable clean mill. And then it's, it's shipped here by air and shipped to my club members home. So that's, this is not a commodity product. It's like miles from it. Right. So did you smell any or anything.

Else you're smelling I definitely. The rosemary, for sure. And as you were saying, it like the arugula for sure.

And you're going to taste that arugula, too.

Yeah.

Okay, so now let's. Oh, go ahead, Go ahead.

No, I said. And maybe they're like a little bit of the kiwi that you said, or like a little fruit. Yeah, yeah.

A little that sweet, that fruity. So one of the things we're looking for when you're tasting olive oil and assessing olive oil quality, and you can do this at tasting bars, you can do this in restaurants, you can do this in your home, is you want to look for what's called fruitiness. So when you smell an olive oil, you're not looking for fruit. You're looking for fruitiness, which means it has aroma. It should smell really fresh. It should smell like a garden. It should smell like wonderful fresh things. It should not smell waxy, rancid. It shouldn't taste, like, dull and flat. It should be a lot.

Or even that bitter flavor that I've had in, like, some restaurant olive oils. Yeah, yeah.

And bitter in the. In the wrong way. But we'll. We'll. We'll go further down that. And then let's smell the second oil and see if we can see any differences in that. This is an ohi blanca. So this is a single olive variety from the. Also from the south of Spain, the mountains. This oil is a little on the nuttier side. I get a little bit more nuttiness out of this oil. I'm going to read what. What I taste while you're smelling, and let's see what you get. Or what I smell. I should say, what a beautiful nose on this. Ohi blanco. Fresh cut grass, green tomato. A veritable vegetable garden with pronounced notes of celery, carrot tops, Tuscan kale, and basil, along with the sweetness of fennel seed and Asian. Asian pear.

I think all of that. But I also. I was, like, thinking. I had the word pine nut in my head thinking, I wonder if he's gonna say yes.

Yes. Yes. Okay, so now we've kind of done some nose testing. I want to go back to the medium, which is the Garcia Molina, and we're gonna taste it together, and then we're gonna talk about what we're gonna look for. So when I say taste it, we're gonna smell again. Fantastic. We're gonna take. I have about a tablespoon. I'm probably gonna put about a teaspoon on my palette, and then I'm just going to chew it.

All right, what are we tasting for? 1, we're tasting for bitterness. And this is straight up bitter. And these are the polyphenols you're tasting. This bitterness tells you it's from early harvest fruit, and early harvest fruit is very important. And then I'm, I'm swallowing it and what I'm getting is the spicy.

Yes, definitely the spicy.

Spicy tells you it's fresh. So if your oil is not tingling your throat, maybe making you cough. In Tuscany, they'll say, is that a one cough oil, a two cough oil, or a three cough oil, depending on how that level of polyphenols are. So, all right, so what are we looking for? Fruitiness, bitterness and spiciness. Bitterness comes from that early harvest of fruit. So that green, when you taste, when you pick an olive off of a tree and you try to taste it, it tastes. Tastes very bitter. And this oil is very high in bitterness. This is a. All the oils this quarter were quite on the, on the more high polyphenol side.

I'm wondering if this is something like. I'm gonna use this word. I don't know if it makes sense, but. So with this one, you like, feel it in your mouth. You feel it when you swallow it. I feel that spicy. If I were to go get like a blend, like a cheap blend of olive oil, it's almost too smooth.

It's a one, It's a one. It's flat.

Yeah, it doesn't do that. It just tastes like.

No, this has got an evolution. This has evolution in the palette. So these oils are competition level olive oils. These are sent to the global competitions of olive oil. And I work with the top 20 producers in the world. This one, I said of the palate. I said it's elegant and intense on the palate. We tasted celery leaf, parsley, which you mentioned earlier, wheatgrass, rosemary and thyme, along with the bitterness and spiciness of arugula and black peppercorns. So that's the kind of. We get nerdy kind of like wine tasters. But honestly, olive oils are meant to be consumed. And you know, this bitterness and spiciness, most of that goes away on food. I mean, when you're like, it enhances food, but it's not like you're going to taste. Well, maybe some of the oils, but. And people start with like training wheels on olive oil. And some people try it for the first time and they're like, whoa, that's so spicy and so bitter. Like, I'm not used to that. Well, that's because you're not used to that. You've been using kind of crummy olive oil. That's right. But once your body gets that taste for it, like, you cannot go back. That's why I have like 30. I have 30,000 club members who every quarter, I'm bringing the best olive oil in the world. So I'm part olive oil sommelier and part olive oil concierge.

And I fly down because I'm a club member and.

That's right.

And a lot of the listeners, things are going to be now.

Exactly. So, you know, this is an easy oil change in your kitchen. Right. You just switch this one thing in your kitchen. You're going to use it as a sauce. You're going to use it in your baking. You're going to. When you set your table, if you set your table with salt and pepper, place your olive oil bottle on the table, drizzle it on your broccoli, your veggies, on whatever. I mean, replace crappy salad dressings with olive oil and good vinegar or olive oil and a little lemon juice or lime juice, like olive oil can become. And I pressing report that talks about, you know, my adventures every quarter. Like, you can see some of the families that I work with for you folks on. On YouTube. You know, like the grove I was in, in Portugal. You can barely see me down there. You've been up there before in Portugal. You. You know what these families. You know how.

And it tasted totally different there than it is does here. So this makes sense. Like that, at least before I was using yours.

It does. It does.

Let's try the other. What do I do with this other one?

Yeah.

Am I gonna. Are we gonna take.

Let's do it. But. So I'm going to have a little sip of water.

Okay. So I should do that water first.

Yeah. And then. And just notice how, you know, clean that last oil left us. It was just like that. I'm getting that celery leaf, that rosemary, that Asian pear on the nose.

Take a little sip.

This one can get you. It could make you cough. I'm going to try not to. So I can keep talking, but it's an explosion in the mouth. Like, we just have layers and layers of flavor going on. This is like. Like you've always seen olive oil in black and white, and suddenly you have color. It's like the difference between dried herbs and fresh herbs. It's. It's exactly how I explain it to people.

It's definitely, like, more peppery feel like a. Like A pepper. Like, you just.

Yeah, that's the antioxidants. That's the healing properties of olive oil. That is what you're looking for in your olive oil. Yeah, it's like when you eat garlic music.

Yeah. Like, when you have garlic and we know it heals a lot of things. It's the same thing. That makes sense. So you should feel the healing properties. Makes sense.

You should feel it. And. And so the ibuprofen component in olive oil is. So there was a scientist from Philadelphia, Jerry Bockamp I think was his name. He was traveling in Sicily, like me, and he realized all his work was in ibuprofen. And he realized that olive oil, fresh olive oil, he was there harvest time, stung his throat the way ibuprofen did. So he took olive oil back to his lab, and he has labeled, named one of the compounds in olive oil that's akin to ibuprofen. So, like, we're wondering why all these people in the Mediterranean are feeling so good with, like, lack of inflammation and arthritis. Like, of course they're having high quality olive oil.

This is what's okay. So I want to say this is just Natalie's opinion. I just have a mic, and it's my opinion. This is not like medical advice or diet advice, any of that. But, like, when we hear so much about the Mediterranean diet. Diet, health benefits, I don't believe it's because of the grains and all this. I think it's literally because of the olive oil. It's the heavy amount of olive oil in the diet that I think is that it's not because they had extra quinoa.

That's right. 28 liters. 28 liters per year for a Greek. They're smoking, they're drinking, they're consuming 28 liters of olive oil, and they're living to their hundreds.

You think about a Greek salad. It is draining and out as dry as dry browning and olive oil.

It is the right kind. It is. It is. So we teach people in my pressing report that goes with the oils every quarter. We give people recipes for different all kinds. This is a beautiful color booklet that goes out with the. The three selections. So I curate a mild, a medium, and a bold oil every quarter because it depends on what you're cooking in the kitchen. If you're always changing.

So it always changes what you're carrying.

Exactly. So when I travel, I land in country tree. I try a lot of the oils from my favorite producers. The ones who know treat their trees like children. Because this is what they're feeding to their families. They have the top of the line mills. Like these are people who are fanatics about, you know, sports cars and they're fanatics about their machines, their olive oil machines that know how to minimize oxidation in the process. Because as oxidation happens, flavors goes down, quantity goes up, quality goes down. So these folks, they know how to manage every step of the process.

Wow.

It's like, yeah, it's, it's, it's a very, very cool thing. And so these people. Is this who I work with? Basically they're my partners.

I have more questions for you. But you had mentioned you had set something up for listeners that they can have. Did you say a trial? Can you say what that is?

Yes. So. Because I want everyone to know what high quality olive oil is. Again. I grew up as a southerner. I my, my own aha moment in Sicily. I now know what high quality olive oil should taste like because I tasted it myself. So I have a very easy to get to know me and easy to see if this is a fit for you and your family. And the way you do that. You join the club for $1 to help pay for shipping. And I send you a full size bottle. If you join the large club. I send you this, a $39 bottle of olive oil. I send you a small bottle if you join, join the small club. Okay. And. And within about. So you'll get that for $1. And that's not available on my website. It's available to your listeners. They have to go to get fresh Natalie Jill dot com. Get fresh Natalie Jill dot com. And there they will register and you have about three weeks to roughly three weeks to try the oil in your home. If you don't like it, if you don't want to continue, you just let us know. You email the phone numbers on the bottle. It' cancel on the website. It's like we're a good guy company. You know, we don't treat people badly.

Yeah.

We don't make anything difficult. You. And then what happens is every quarter you will get a box and inside that box you get three bottles of olive oil. What you just received. And essentially what most people do, they go through about a bottle a month. It really depends on how much you cook at home, how much you use it. But if you start setting your table with it, you can put it in your smoothies, you can put it in.

Your bag when you go to restaurants. Apparently now.

Yeah. I mean there's a million things you can do with it. You will Start to become an olive oil fanatic as, as we are and as my club members are. And it just becomes part of your life. And so every quarter. And you want to use it quickly because that's one of the hallmarks. You don't want to buy olive oil in big jugs because it's sitting there oxidizing. So you want to use it quickly.

Now we want you to make a. Now I'm going to need you, I have a request now. We need to make a little like 3 ounce airport approved canister or something that you could like pour it in so we can bring it with us everywhere.

I know, I know. It's so funny. We were, we were out in Arizona when we, when we met you guys and, and my wife was like, are we checking luggage? I was like, oh, I forgot to ship olive oil ahead. Of course we're ship. We're taking. We. Because we're like anti, you know, check luggage people. We're like, we have to take olive oil.

But I wonder if there's some kind of like canister, something you could create that's like reusable.

I know, I'm, I'm, I'm on it. I'm working on an olive oil flask. So anyway, stay tuned, stay tuned. But can we put it in something like that?

Can we put it in a flask or does that destroy the properties if we did that?

Stainless steel or glass is fine. Use it quickly and then fill it up with fresh oil. You know you're going to go through it. So you know, and I don't know, like if there's a particular diet you subscribe to or if you know people. But like if, if you can enjoy this on a ketogenic diet, you like or do fat fast or, you know, this is an olive oil that will keep you full. And then on the other side of that, if you're someone who likes to bake sourdough bread because that's healthier for you than regular bread, then you can have this olive oil. You warm a plate, you pour this olive oil with a little bit of salt and you dip your sourdough bread in it. That's like the perfect appetizer for a party. Or you grill some bread, you put some tomatoes and olive oil on there. I mean it's, it's just a simple. People won't believe it's like, it is the difference between dried herbs and fresh herbs.

And I think if people don't haven't had like a really good quality olive oil, they just don't understand this yet. So, like, yeah, they're thinking, like, if you're gonna. Because if I'm gonna pour canola oil on something, it's gonna be gross. But when you think about the taste of a good fresh olive oil, it's amazing. This is.

It's a sauce. It's a sauce. Think of it as a sauce. That's how I. And so I make these blends. We like, blends do have a dirty word, and they are. But when I say a choose like the paqual olive that's in here. This is harvested over about a three week period. These are all high altitude olives that I harvested. So these are harvested at different moments, depending on which side of the mountain they're on. So that's why this harvest date is a little wider for me. And so I make a blend. I have different vats of oil, different stainless steel tanks, and then I come in and say, oh, I really love that one and that one. So being a chef and a saucier day, I make a blend of all these paqual olives at this one little farm. And that's my paqual for the season. So that. And I do the same at other, other farms. And I do this to create a mild, a medium and bold. And so for each of the oils, I give a description on how I pair them. Like the milder with fish and chicken and the bold with more steak and lamb and duck and those sort of things. And of course, there are no, no rules. You just eat, you know, eat what you love. That's what's most important.

Tj, how is olive oil actually, like, made? Like, I know with like, wine we see things of stomping on the grapes or like, what is happening with the olives? Like, how is that actually work?

I appreciate you educating your audience on this. So olives are fruit and they have. If you have bad fruit, it's like picking rotten apples and trying to make a good apple cider. It ain't happening. So you have to have beautiful fruit. You have to have someone who is a true agronomist who knows how to manage the tree, the amount of water that the tree is getting. Because if the oil, if the, the olive has too much water, and we're getting super nerdy high end olive oil here. But if the olive oil has too much water inside when it's harvested, it washes out the flavor when it's being made. So we try to harvest our fruit at about 50% humidity. So olives, the fruit is made up of the Skin, the pulp and the pit. Those are those three parts. So we pick those in what I call the magic window. These are when they're mostly green and just barely starting to turn maybe a little yellow. But that's the moment. And every fruit kind of has its own moment. But for the most part, it's early harvest green fruit we're going after. So we pick that fruit, we keep it in the shade, we immediately get it to the mill. At the mill, they wash the fruit. That's step one. And you want this to happen quickly because the fruit, the moment it's picked, it starts to degrade. So you don't want big piles of olives and bins sitting around for two days, which could happen all over the world, but not with these producers there. They're crazy. They. So, okay, so the fruit is washed. The next thing you could imagine is the fruit goes through something kind of like a Cuisinart. Think of like a food processor. And what this does, it crushes all. And there's different types of crushers. There's disc, there's hammers, there's the old stone wheel that caused a lot of oxidation. We don't like that at all. No good. Because again, oxidation, rancidity, low quality. We don't want that. So. So that's the step. So wash and then food processor in the mill. And then the next step is malaxing and relaxing. Is kind of like. Or is like a food processor. Not a food processor, a mixer. So it's like using a bread hook. And this bread hook goes around and the enzymes inside the olive just. There's nothing added at this point, period. It just starts to break down into several parts. There's the oil, there's the water, and then there's the solid pit. And this is all happening over a water bath in these malaxers. And you can jack up the heat on these malaxers and get more olive oil and make more money. But guess what happens to the flavor of the oil? It becomes flat and nasty like you're talking about. So we don't do that. So, and then the next step is a centrifuge. So this, after it sits in the Malaxer about 40 minutes, then it's extruded using a pump into a centrifuge. And the centrifuge is spinning in a way that the. The oil is separated from the solid and the water. So it's basically three lines are happening. And then the olive oil goes through a final step of a second centrifuge to make sure it's really clean. And then it goes into a tank. And then from there, some people filter it right away with a light cotton filter, which is what I do because I absolutely detest unfiltered olive oil. If you see cloudy olive oil in the store and think like, oh, that's, that's going to be great. All that stuff at the bottom is rancid and growing. Nothing but. I wouldn't say bacteria, but nasty flavors in your olive oil. I don't. So I'm a lightly, very lightly cotton filter my oil to take out all the, the, the sediment because that can only cause problems in your oil. And then it's, you know, flown here to America from there. So these steps, there's nothing to hide behind. You can't, there's no additives or anything really making sense.

While you'll find these, like, on sale or discount in bulk and like, like. And then. But they've been sitting there for a year or two and they already came from. Now we know the black olives that were sitting there and not. Yeah. So it makes total sense. This is great. And I love this trial you put together. So everyone, I'm commanding you to go there because it's. Why not? It's a dollar. It's a dollar. You go to. So you said, you said get fresh. Natalie. Jill.com. and you've got a little trial. There you go. A dollar. You can try it.

Yeah. If you don't, if you don't love it and you're not using it, cancel right away, no questions asked. It's like we're very easy to deal with. We have a lovely small member services team. Half of them are my family and they just, you know, they're happy to talk recipes, they're happy to talk, you know, whatever to get you indoctrinated in the olive oil. You'll get a short course on olive oil appreciation. You'll get the, the seasonal cookbooks, the e. Cookbooks that I send out. So we really try to give people the knowledge they need to incorporate this into lives. Because these farmers I work with, we're rehabbing groves around the world. Like in Greece, where these groves, a lot of people left the Mediterranean, like the, the rural side countryside and moved to the cities. But now broadband's coming back to the countryside and the kids are staying in. And now we're rehabbing groves. We're. We're cleaning up groves and now harvesting for. As the club has grown. I've worked with so many of these producers for so many years that but it's beautiful stories. So yeah, it's great. I mean I get to be there. I think I have the greatest job in the world, so I love it. I'm very passionate and geeky about it, but when you taste it, you'll see why, like I'm so crazy. But anyway, it's been a real pleasure and thank you so much for supporting the club and the producers and also the folks who are listening today because I think they're going to get a great value out of this business and sitting out of this club.

Thank you so much tj. Thank you.

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