The Truth About Olive Oil: Is It Really Worth the Hype?

Let’s start with a story. I recall a client, Jenny, who came to see me earlier in the year to improve her body composition. Jenny had been doing brilliantly on her weight loss journey. Week after week, she was seeing steady weight loss, exactly the kind I like to see — gradual, sustainable and achieved through healthy habits rather than restriction.

Then suddenly, it stopped.

We were a little puzzled because nothing obvious had changed. We went back through everything together and reviewed her metabolic rate, daily energy requirement and diet in detail. Breakfast was balanced, lunch was a high-protein salad, and her evening meal was packed with lean protein, starchy carbohydrates and plenty of vegetables. Jenny enjoyed meeting friends and had some fizz along the way. Infact, her diet looked exactly like the kind of balanced, nutrient-rich approach we would all encourage.

So, we looked a little deeper.

We analysed her calorie intake, which had been tailored to her metabolic rate, along with her macronutrients and micronutrients, and that's when we found the missing piece of the puzzle. Her lunch sounded fantastic. Lean chicken breast or fish, some starchy carbohydrate and a colourful salad full of all the colours of the rainbow. The issue wasn’t the meal itself. It was the dressing.

She had been making a delicious salad dressing using extra virgin olive oil and, quite understandably, had been generous with it. After all, olive oil has such a fantastic reputation for being a healthy food. However, that generous drizzle was contributing almost 300 calories to her lunch — roughly the same as a couple of slices of toast, and very thick slices at that.

We made one simple adjustment to the amount she was using, and she was soon back on track with her steady and sustainable weight loss journey.

This was such a great reminder that we may need to understand food and its role in our bodies to ensure we get the right balance for our own personal nutrition goals.

Olive oil has been heralded as a nutrition superstar for decades now, and more recently we’re watching people on social media taking shots of it straight from the bottle, but is it really worth the hype? As with so much in nutrition, the answer isn’t black and white. Olive oil is a perfect example. The more we understand where it comes from and what it’s made of, the more we begin to appreciate why it has earned such an impressive reputation.

Firstly, unlike many of the oils we find on shelves, olive oil doesn’t come from a seed.

It comes from a fruit.

And that's one of the reasons it is so very special.

Unlike sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, soybean, sesame and many other oils, olive oil is not extracted from seeds. It is pressed from the fruit of the olive tree. All fruits have their own plant superpowers called antioxidants. Olives and therefore their oil contains hundreds of naturally occurring antioxidant plant compounds called polyphenols. These natural and amazing antioxidants are part of the olive’s own defence system. They help protect the fruit from sunlight, insects and disease while it is growing in the olive grove. Remarkably, when we eat them, many of those protective properties appear to benefit us too.

This is what makes olive oil so different from many other oils. It is a fruit-derived food that contains naturally occurring compounds designed by nature to protect the olive itself.

Every day, our bodies naturally produce unstable molecules called free radicals. That’s perfectly normal. Problems arise when too many build up over time, leading to something known as oxidative stress. We now know oxidative stress plays a role in ageing, inflammation and in many long-term conditions, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and some types of cancers.

These antioxidants, polyphenols, abundant in olive oil, help to neutralise these free radicals before they can cause too much damage, helping to protect our cells from the everyday stress they experience. Scientists have identified over 20 of these polyphenols in olive oil, but three receive most of the attention: hydroxytyrosol, oleuropein and oleocanthal. Oleocanthal is a polyphenol that is particularly characteristic in olive oil. If we have ever tasted a really good extra virgin olive oil and noticed a slight peppery sensation at the back of our throat, that’s often oleocanthal at work. Some people assume that peppery feeling means the oil has gone off, but it is often a sign of exactly the opposite. It can indicate that the oil is rich in these valuable plant compounds. Even more fascinating is that researchers have found oleocanthal acts on some of the same inflammatory pathways as ibuprofen, although much more gently. That certainly doesn’t mean olive oil replaces medication, but it may help explain why people following a Mediterranean-style diet tend to have lower levels of chronic inflammation over time.

Walk down any supermarket aisle and we'll find shelves packed with different grades of olive oil. But does the one we choose really make any difference to our nutrition and health? As a starting point all olives are harvested, crushed and pressed to release their natural oil. After that this is where the different types of olive oil may matter. Extra virgin olive oil is the least processed and therefore should contain the most healthy phytonutrients. It is produced without excessive heat or chemical solvents, helping to preserve many of the naturally occurring compounds found within the olive itself. Virgin olive oil is also mechanically extracted but tends to contain slightly fewer of these beneficial compounds, while refined olive oil undergoes much more processing. Although refined olive oil is perfectly safe to use, some of what makes extra virgin olive oil so special may have been removed during refining. Its also worth noting regardless of the grade, olive oil has probably undergone less harsh a treatment than other culinary oils such as rapeseed and sunflower oil.

When it comes to its fat profile, olive oil is different again. There are three main types of fat in our diet: saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. Although they all provide the same amount of energy, they behave very differently inside the body because their chemical structures are different. Excess saturated fats, found in foods such as butter, cream, cheese and fatty meats, can increase harmful LDL-cholesterol in some of us. In contrast polyunsaturated fats, including omega-3 fatty acids from oily fish and omega-6 fats found naturally in foods such as nuts and seeds, tend to have the greatest effect on promoting the good HDL- cholesterol which can mop up the bad LDL-cholesterol. These fats are also essential in our diet because our bodies simply can’t make them. Around three quarters of olive oil is made up of monounsaturated fat, mainly oleic acid. Monounsaturated fats tend to sit somewhere in the middle. While they don't lower LDL-cholesterol like polyunsaturated fats, they can still improve cholesterol levels when they replace saturated fats in the diet. This is one of the reasons why replacing butter with olive oil is associated with better heart health and why the Mediterranean style diet continues to impress researchers.

When we step back and look at the bigger picture, the evidence becomes even more impressive. One of the largest nutrition studies ever carried out, the PREDIMED study, followed thousands of people who were at high risk of cardiovascular disease. Those following a Mediterranean-style diet supplemented with extra virgin olive oil experienced significantly fewer heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths than those advised to follow a traditional low-fat diet. Of course, olive oil wasn’t working in isolation. These people were also eating plenty of vegetables, fruit, beans, wholegrains, nuts and fish. It’s a good reminder that no single food works like magic. It is the overall pattern of our diet that has the greatest impact on our health.

For years, we have also been told that olive oil shouldn’t be heated because it breaks down too easily. It is one of those nutrition myths that has been repeated so often that many of us simply accept it as fact. Thankfully, the research tells a different story. Because extra virgin olive oil is rich in monounsaturated fats, it is naturally more stable than many oils that are higher in polyunsaturated fats. It also contains those protective polyphenols we’ve already talked about, which help reduce oxidation during cooking. For everyday roasting, frying and home cooking, olive oil remains an excellent choice.

There is, however, back to Jenny and her olive oil laced salad dressing, one important point that we shouldn’t ignore. Olive oil is still almost entirely fat, and all fats contribute double the calories (9kcal/g) when compared to the same weight of protein or carbohydrate (4kcal/g). Too much olive oil can quickly start to increase energy consumption. A tablespoon contains roughly 120 calories, so it is surprisingly easy for those generous glugs to add several hundred calories to a meal before we have even realised it.

That doesn’t make olive oil unhealthy. In essence, olive oil is a minimally processed fruit oil, naturally rich in monounsaturated fats and packed with unique polyphenols that simply aren’t found in most seed oils. To get the most of those super duper antioxidant polyphenols we can select the better grades of extra virgin over refined olive oil. Though depending on our body composition and nutrition goals we may need to remind ourselves it is nearly 100% fat and with dietary fat may come excess calories.

Here at Bridgford & Bingham Nutrition, we certainly won’t be drinking olive oil by the shot glass, though we will continue to lap up all the other health benefits as part of a balanced Mediterranean-style diet.

If you would like help with your personal nutrition please reach out to me at Bridgford & Bingham Nutrition.

Happy eating,

Nina Thomas

BSc (Hons), MSc, ANutr

Registered Associate Nutritionist & Food Scientist

Bridgford & Bingham Nutrition              

21 Brickyard Lane

East Bridgford

Nottingham

NG13 8NJ

Call: 07958 765337

​www.bridgfordbinghamnutrition.co.uk