Category/Olive oils

Olive oils

Categories

Supercategories

The olive oils fit in a hierarchy of categories:

• Vegetable oils

• Olive tree products

• Vegetable fats

• Fats
• Plant-based foods
• Plant-based foods and beverages

Subcategories

The olive oils can be subdivided based on the level of processing, the origin of the olive oil or added ingredients:

Processing level

• Olive pomace oils(0.3% of the olive oils);
• Refined olive oils(0.2% of the olive oils);
• Virgin olive oils(83% of the olive oils);
• Extra virgin olive oils(81% of the olive oils);
• Olive oil mixes for products that combine multiple processing levels;

Origin

The products contain olive oils from a specific country or region (PDO)

Related

Products that contain mainly olive oil:

• Olive oil sprays;

• Flavoured olive oils have extra ingredients;
• Vegetable oil mixes if more than one oil type has been used;

Ingredients

Required ingredients

There should be only one ingredient:

• olive oil

It is possible to combine different grades of olive oil.

Sometimes olives are mentioned as ingredient. This is however the product before processing, so not relevant here.

Optional ingredients

There are no optional ingredients.

Disallowed ingredients

Any additional ingredients, for example to create Olive oil sprays or Flavoured olive oils, indicate that the product must be taken out of the Olive oils category.

Production process/labels

The most important labels:

Nutritional information

The nutritional values of olive oils are more spread out than necessary. Some producers list the values per 100g and other per 100ml. The difference is the specific weight of olive oils (0.92 g/l). At the moment it is not possible to distinguish between per ml and per g data.

It seems that some producers do not actually measure the nutritional values, but use canonical (standard) values.

The producers sometimes give upper limits that are quite high. This might distort the statistics as these limits can not be filtered out at the moment.

For products with a per serving style nutritional table (USA/Canada), the small serving size (15ml) and the rounding used might distort the correct values.

per 100 g/ml	min	10%	median	90%	max
Energy (kJ)	3280	3350	3460	3770	4180
Energy(kcal)	788	800	828	900	1000
Fat	85.7	91	93.3	100	100
Saturated fat	4	12.8	13.8	15.8	26
Monounsaturated fat	53	66.7	70	79	83.3
Polyunsaturated fat	3.4	6.5	9.1	13.3	26.7
Carbohydrates	0	0	0	0	0.5
Sugars	0	0	0	0	0.5
Fiber	0	0	0	0	0.5
Proteins	0	0	0	0	1
Salt	0	0	0	0	0.6
Vitamin E (mg)	0	12	20	27	40
Vitamin A (µg)	0	0	0	300	330
Fruit		100	100	100

How accurate are the zero values? Some olive oils suggest that there are measurable values of carbohydrates, proteins and salt.

Nutriscore

Nutriscore C with nutritional values between -5 and -3.

Monitoring

Using the nutritional information (and other information) it is possible to define a quality envelope. Any products that fall outside this envelope have a quality issue. These products can be found with a Mirabelle query. Last check carried out on 6 june 2023.

References

• Wikipedia
• EU Olive oil report
• OFF analysis