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TREVI, Italy — It was in June, the time of year when the first olives normally burst from their blossoms in the mild warmth of early summer, when Irene Guidobaldi walked through her groves in blistering heat and watched in horror as the flowers on her trees began to wither and fall. The only way to save her family’s precious orchard in the hills of Umbria was to buy the most precious thing of all in this summer of drought: water. Lots and lots of water. And so, Ms. Guidobaldi, an eighth-generation olive grower, bought water by the truckload, nearly...

There is no single reason Britons voted to sever ties with the European Union, but for many, decentralized, unelected foreign bureaucrats with bone-headed, meddlesome ideas was all the convincing needed to call it quits. So ridiculous were some of the EU’s proposed regulations that even the wildest American legislators look somewhat sane by comparison. Forget migrant assimilation difficulties, terrorism, and financial woes. What and how people ate became a regulatory priority. Sound familiar? A handful of overly nitpicky proposals provide a glimpse into a microcosm of over-reach frustration. That time the EU tried to ban refillable olive oil jugs from...

According to the book Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, illicit manufacturers slap an Italian flag and the name of an imaginary producer on the label and dump this stuff on the US market, where consumers are easy pickings. But consumers in the US aren’t the only victims. Studies done in Australia and New Zealand found that half of their Mediterranean imports were fake, too. Anywhere olive oil is in demand is a possible target. How do you fake olive oil? Olive oil can be diluted with poor quality oils or sometimes there is no real...

Professor Elizabeth Lyding Will (1924 - 2009...) was one of the world's leading authorities on amphoras, an ancient two-handled container that her research demonstrated to be vitally important for tracing ancient trade patterns and for opening windows on tremendous amounts of information about ancient life and commerce. In a 2000 article entitled "The Roman Amphora: learning from storage jars," she discusses the diverse uses of "the lowly Roman amphora -- a two-handled clay jar used by the Canaanites, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans to ship goods," describing both its main usage for the transportation of liquids including wine, olive oil, and...

A Rutgers nutritional scientist and two cancer biologists at New York City’s Hunter College have found that an ingredient in extra-virgin olive oil kills a variety of human cancer cells without harming healthy cells. The ingredient is oleocanthal, a compound that ruptures a part of the cancerous cell, releasing enzymes that cause cell death. Paul Breslin, professor of nutritional sciences in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, and David Foster and Onica LeGendre of Hunter College, report that oleocanthal kills cancerous cells in the laboratory by rupturing vesicles that store the cell’s waste. The findings are published in Molecular...

A huge quantity of olive stones on an ancient shipwreck more than 2,000 years old has provided valuable insight into the diet of sailors in the ancient world, researchers in Cyprus said Thursday. The shipwreck, dating from around 400 B.C. and laden mainly with wine amphorae from the Aegean island of Chios and other north Aegean islands, was discovered deep under the sea off Cyprus's southern coast. Excavation on the site, which started in November 2007, has determined that the ship was a merchant vessel of the late classical period. "An interesting piece of evidence that gives us information on...

The earliest evidence of the use of olive oil in the country, and possibly the entire Middle East, was unearthed at an excavation site in the Lower Galilee, the Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday. The discovery was made after Dr. Ianir Milevski and Nimrod Getzov directed an archeological salvage excavation at Ein Tzipori between 2011 and 2013. The excavation led to research that indicated that olive oil was already being used in the country 8,000 years ago, during the 6th millennium BCE... These tests revealed that the pottery, dating to the Early Chalcolithic period, contained olive oil, the researchers concluded... Of...

Generally speaking, the Israelites of Christ’s time were frugal eaters. Frankly until about 100 years ago, frugality in eating was more imposed than chosen. The food was more scarce and less convenient than today. It’s availability was seasonable, and all the elements needed to be made from scratch, including hauling in the water from wells etc.Bread was the essential, basic food. So basic was it that in Hebrew “to eat bread” and “to have a meal” in the same thing. Bread was treated with great respect and many rules existed to preserve that reverence. Any crumbs of over the size...

The secret to the Mediterranean diet may be in the salad. Eating unsaturated fats, like those in olive oil, along with leafy greens and other vegetables creates a certain kind of fatty acid that lowers blood pressure, scientists said Monday. These nitro fatty acids are formed when consuming spinach, celery and carrots that are filled with nitrates and nitrites, along with avocado, nuts and olive oils that contain healthy fats. Nitro fatty acids appear to inhibit an enzyme known as soluble epoxide hydrolase, which regulates blood pressure, said the research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a...

Omega-6-rich oils don't have same benefits as canola, soybean and olive oils, studies show The Canadian Press Posted: Nov 11, 2013 1:46 PM ET Last Updated: Nov 11, 2013 2:10 PM ET In 2012, Health Canada agreed to let manufacturers of cooking oils containing either omega-6 or omega-3 fatty acids claim on their product labels that these oils help reduce the risk of heart disease by lowering cholesterol. (iStock) A pair of Canadian scientists are challenging the fact that manufacturers of some cooking oils are entitled to make health claims about the products. They argue that new evidence suggests oils...

The European Commission has been forced to beat a hasty retreat from a proposed ban on jugs of olive oil in restaurants after the idea met with widespread ridicule. Barely a week after it was announced for “hygiene” and “consumer protection” purposes, the EU commissioner in charge, Dacian Ciolos, rushed to the same press room on Thursday (23 May) to announce he was withdrawing the measure. … The proposal would have banned jugs and dipping bowls of olive oil in restaurants from next year and was meant to prevent restaurant-goers from being served any old inferior oil. It had been...

The European Union is to ban olive oil jugs and dipping bowls from restaurant tables in a move described by one of Britain’s top cooks as authoritarian and damaging to artisan food makers. The small glass jugs filled with green- or gold-colored extra virgin olive oil are familiar and traditional for restaurant goers across Europe, but they will be banned from 1 January 2014 after a decision taken in an obscure Brussels committee earlier this week. From next year, olive oil “presented at a restaurant table” must be in prepackaged factory bottles with a tamper-proof dispensing nozzle and labeling in...

If you're using fat free dressing on your salad, you're doing it all wrong. According to scientists, you need to eat salad with fat-based dressings to get the most out of the veggies. Having no fat in your salad actually diminishes the benefit from eating vegetables. This sounds a little crazy, right? But yes, even though fat free dressing has less calories than its fatty filled counterpart, you're not getting the full oomph you want when eating vegetables with skinny dressings. Researchers at Purdue University compared salad eating with dressing that had saturated fat, monounsaturated fat and polyunsaturated fat at...

In the middle of Rome's trendiest neighborhood, surrounded by sushi restaurants and nightclubs with names like Rodeo Steakhouse and Love Story, sits the ancient world's biggest garbage dump--a 150-foot-tall mountain of discarded Roman amphorae, the shipping drums of the ancient world. It takes about 20 minutes to walk around Monte Testaccio, from the Latin testa and Italian cocci, both meaning "potsherd." But despite its size--almost a mile in circumference--it's easy to walk by and not really notice unless you are headed for some excellent pizza at Velavevodetto, a restaurant literally stuck into the mountain's side. Most local residents don't know...

They say there is mounting research that it is the type of oil used, and whether or not it has been used before, that really matters. The latest study, published in the British Medical Journal, found no association between the frequency of fried food consumption in Spain - where olive and sunflower oils are mostly used - and the incidence of serious heart disease.

'It is a "myth" that regularly eating fried foods causes heart attacks, researchers have found, as long as you use olive oil or sunflower oil. They say there is mounting research that it is the type of oil used, and whether or not it has been used before, that really matters. The latest study, published in the British Medical Journal, found no association between the frequency of fried food consumption in Spain - where olive and sunflower oils are mostly used - and the incidence of serious heart disease. However, the British Heart Foundation warned Britons not to "reach for...

Scientists at the University of Granada have shown that oleic acid and hydroxytyrosol –present in a particularly high concentration in virgin olive oil– and n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids –found in fish– relieve the symptoms of pancreatitis. The researchers evaluated the role of Mediterranean diet ingredients in the prevention and mitigation of cell damage. Oleic acid and hydroxytyrosol –present in a particularly high concentration in virgin olive oil– and n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids –found in fish– affect the cellular mechanisms involved in the development of acute pancreatitis, a disease of oxidative-inflammatory etiology. Therefore, oleic acid and hydroxytyrosol can be considered...

The term "extra-virgin olive oil" means the olive oil has been made from crushed olives and is not refined in any way by chemical solvents or high heat… "In the past, the technology that had been used had been used really by the Romans, you grounded the olives with stone mills [and] you crushed them with presses." One olive oil producer told Mueller that 50 percent of the olive oil sold in the United States is, in some ways, adulterated.

*** Among the 2,323 bills introduced by lawmakers this year are ones to revise the definition of olive oil and enact 'Spay Day' to encourage spaying of animals. But Gov. Jerry Brown and others say that's too many as the state grapples with fiscal crisis. *** Reporting from Sacramento — In addition to addressing the state's $25-billion deficit this year, the Legislature is making time for some other less pressing matters: Caffeinated beer. Spaceships. How to properly describe a dog pound. Proposals on those subjects are among the 2,323 bills lawmakers have introduced this year. Others would revise the definition...

Health conscious consumers have long known that virgin olive oil is a good choice when it comes to preparing meals and dipping breads. Now, a team of researchers, including one with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), has found that phenolic components in olive oil actually modify genes that are involved in the inflammatory response. The researchers knew from other studies that consuming high-phenolic-content virgin olive oil reduces pro-inflammatory, pro-oxidant and pro-blood-clotting biomarkers when compared with consuming low-phenolic-content olive oil. But they wanted to know whether olive oil’s beneficial effects could be the result of gene activity. The study, published recently...