Health

Why do people in the Mediterranean live longer. The answer is simple they just eat healthier food and use olive oil. Olive oil just has an undescrible taste and it's just delicious! It's no wonder that it is consumed in so many countries. It significantly lowers all risks of death from all causes like heart diseases. Many studies have proven that people who follow a Mediterranean diet for some time will decrease the risk of death. Keep in mind that olive oil still is an oil to be consumed in small quantities.

Olive oil quality

There are many different qualities of olive oil that we can distinguish.
This is the full overview of all the different varietes of olive oil.

A Virgin olive oil

1) Virgin olive oil for consumption.

- Extra virgin olive oil
- Virgin olive oil
- Ordinary virgin olive oil

2)Lampante virgin olive oil


B Refined olive oil

C Olive oil

D Olive-pomace oil

1)Crude olive-pomace oil
2)Refined olive-pomace oil
3)Olive-pomace oil

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These different oil varietes are obtained by different % of oilec acid that the oil contains. Also by mixing up one variety with another can we produce a new variety of oil. How lower the % of acid how higher the prices. Extra virgin olive oil is the best quality oil on the market with a lower or equal percentage of 1% Oilec acid.
Does this mean that other qualities of oil aren't good?
In one way they are, but what we need to know is that we use each quality of oil
for a particular purpose. We don't use Extra virgin olive oil for cooking, but rather use it on bread, or for use on salades.

Olive oil consumption

The biggest olive oil consumer is Greece followed by Italy, Spain and many other mediterranean countries. But they aren't the only ones that consume a realtive big quantity of olive oil on yearly bases. America, Canada, Japan...they do not have a big consumption compared to the mediterranean countries. However the numbers keeps rising each year as olive oil becomes more requested in foreign countries.






Here I have a list of numbers of the year 2005 to give you an impression.

Country Production (2005) Consumption (2005) Annual Per Capita Consumption (kg)
Spain 36% 20% 13.62
Tunisia 32% 25% 11.1
Italy 25% 30% 12.35
Greece 18% 9% 23.7
Turkey 5% 2% 1.2
Syria 4% 3% 6
Morocco 3% 2% 1.8
Portugal 1% 2% 7.1
United States 0% 8% 0.56
France 0% 4% 1.34
Lebanon 0% 3% 1.18