Quality extra virgin olive oil is good for you precisely because it is good

Our Oil is great for your health!Extra virgin olive oil is a staple of the “Mediterranean diet” that has been synonymous with taste and health all over the world for a few years now. In fact, compared to other vegetable-based seasonings, extra virgin olive oil is definitely the tastiest, but also the most beneficial.

A characteristic that stems first of all from the fact that it is the only oil that is obtained simply by pressing the olive, without the help of chemical solvents or other industrial interventions, as is the case with other vegetable oils or fats.Extra virgin olive oil contains powerful antioxidants, vitamin E and polyphenols, in significant quantities.

Moreover,quality extra virgin olive oil is good for you precisely because it is good: it adds to and enhances the flavor of foods, and it is the condiment with the best balance of fats. In fact, it is low in saturated fats, the major culprits in raising blood cholesterol levels, is rich in monounsaturated fats, i.e., oleic acid, and contains essential polyunsaturated fats w6 and w3 in the correct ratio to each other, and practically similar to those in breast milk fat, positively influencing our bodies.

In most seed oils, the polyunsaturated fats w6 and w3, in addition to not having an optimal ratio, are present in high amounts causing the formation of free radicals and engaging vitamin E exclusively in its antioxidant role, thus nullifying its vitamin activity.

Healthy living requires healthy nutrition

This is the concept promoting the studies undertaken around the 1970s by the U.S. scientist Ancel Keys, the results of which were summarized in the “Mediterranean diet.”
To sum up, it was intuited and then demonstrated by research conducted for 20 years in Finland, Japan, Greece, Italy, Holland, the United States and Yugoslavia, that the diet of the peoples bordering the Mediterranean Sea determine a life expectancy for adults among the highest in the world; with drastic reductions for incidences related to coronary heart disease, some types of cancer and also many other diseases all correlated to dietary style.

A healthy diet involves first of all the intake of moderate amounts of food, then secondly some attention to the chemical composition of food.
The dietary pattern developed by Ancel Keys that became known as the “Mediterranean diet” bases its rationale on certain foods, and among them, in terms of the type of lipids to be consumed,Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Oil in the Mediterranean diet, because of its concentration of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids, plays a key role.

Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Other Fats

All fats and oils contain 98 percent triglycerides, which in turn consist of fatty acids. Fatty acids can be in the saturated form, in the monounsaturated form, and finally in the polyunsaturated form. To seek the right balance for our diet, we need to know that:

Saturated fatty acids, abundant in animal fats, significantly raise blood cholesterol levels, with all the consequences now known about atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease;

Polyunsaturated fatty acids (linoleic and linolenic), abundant in seed oils, reduce LDL cholesterol (the bad one) in the blood, but they also reduce HDL cholesterol (the good one!). We still need to know that animal organisms are unable to manufacture linoleic and linolenic acids so we must compulsorily take them from the diet. BUT WITHOUT OVERDOING IT! In fact, polyunsaturated acids are also highly unstable and an excess of them, besides being unnecessary, is even harmful to the body. They oxidize very quickly forming free radicals, thus contributing to cell aging, and causing cancers of various kinds, and in particular colon and breast cancer.

Monounsaturated fatty acids (oleic acid), abundant in olive oil, significantly reduce LDL (the bad one!) cholesterol without decreasing good cholesterol or HDL. They also have excellent resistance to oxidation.

A concentrate of antioxidants

Vitamin “E”: Oxidation of fats is counteracted by antioxidant substances in the foods themselves. A proper balance occurs when the ratio of vitamin E to linoleic acid is greater than 0.79. In seed oils this ratio is unfavorable and varies between 0.30 and 0.50, while in olive oil it is 1.87, which is more than twice as much as necessary to safeguard the formation of endoperoxides, which, by activating platelet aggregation, increase the risk of thrombosis.The good ratio of vitamin E to polyunsaturated acids also combats the formation of free radicals in the body, thus counteracting the processes of aging of cellular structures, carcinogenesis, liver damage, and atherosclerosis itself.

Polyphenols: The olive is a fortunate exception in the natural world: it is a fruit in which the fat is present in a small part in the seed (the kernel) and the remainder is present in the watery fruit. In seed-derived oils, on the other hand, the fat is contained entirely in the seed. Nature has therefore given the olive and therefore its oil, a group of substances, very powerful antioxidants in addition to the high contents of vitamin “E”: Polyphenols. They, in addition to the antioxidant action, also have a very important role in giving extra virgin olive oil that lively, slightly bitter and spicy taste that plays a very important physiological role in nutrition, improving the palatability of food and giving food better digestibility.