Herbal, Fruity, Spicy, Sweet
DFW Mom Lyda reaches for a fresh olive - packed with polyphenols.
The Many Flavors of Polyphenols
Tasting fresh-pressed olive oil is an extraordinary experience. Notes of heat, pepper, butter, verdancy—good olive oil offers a potent expression of the land on which it was grown.
Olive oils from Spain are punchy and bold, perfect for drizzling over grilled meat. Italian olive oils are greener and more mild, with lemony brightness that makes them ideal for finishing a salad. Greek olive oils have a rough intensity that adds depth to charred vegetables or a bowl of tzatziki.
Olive oil’s variety of flavor is extraordinary, and most of it comes down to a single class of compounds: polyphenols. Polyphenols are molecules that you find in the skins of olives. While olives are growing, polyphenols protect the young fruits from oxidation and disease—and once the olives are pressed, those same polyphenols impart extraordinary flavor to the oil.
Polyphenols are as good for you as they are for the olives that carry them. People with high-polyphenol diets live longer[1],and research suggests that eating polyphenols keeps your heart[2] and brain healthy[3]. Perhaps it’s no surprise that in almost all the Blue Zones—the parts of the world where people live the longest—polyphenol-rich foods are a staple of the culture.
The more polyphenols your olive oil has, the better it will taste (and the better it will be for you).
A “blue zone” diet rich in fresh fruits, vegetables, red wine, and olive oil.
But like many great ingredients, olive oil is delicate. From the moment olives are pressed, the polyphenols they contain begin to break down. With every month that passes, the polyphenols degrade, and the oil becomes noticeably less vibrant in taste.
One of the most important markers of good olive oil is its harvest date. The best olive oil makers put their harvest date on their bottles because they know that’s what discerning buyers want to see.
A freshly pressed olive oil and a three-year-old olive oil are two entirely different foods. The former will be dancing with flavor; the latter will be flat and dull, robbed of its essence by the march of time.
The polyphenols in olive oil remain fairly stable for about 15 months post-harvest. After that, they begin to degrade, and olive oil rapidly loses its flavor and nuance.
Sadly, most commercial olive oil is much older than that. It has to come overseas, clear customs, reach a distribution center, get to a warehouse, and sell to a store—and once it reaches the store, it may sit on the shelf for months. By the time you buy most commercial olive oil, it’s usually old enough to have lost its vibrancy.
The best olive oil growers take great care to preserve the polyphenols in their oil.
The best artisan olive growers in the world know how important polyphenols are, and they take great care to create olive oil with the highest phenolic content possible.
Most commercial producers use young olive trees because they produce more olives, and thus more oil. After 20 years, commercial olive trees are cut down and replanted. But artisan olive growers search for the oldest trees they can find; while the yield is smaller, the olives contain more polyphenols[4], and the flavor and healthfulness of the resulting oil is far more intense.
Artisan growers also avoid pesticides and other chemicals. They may lose more olives, but the ones that survive have higher phenolic content—when a tree goes through natural stress, it produces more polyphenols to protect its olives from the environment[5].
Finally, the growers make sure their oil is sold fresh. They print a harvest date on their bottles and they get their oil to market before the polyphenols disappear, taking the oil’s flavor with them.
Fresh, rich olive oil is the mark of a well-considered kitchen. It will elevate your cooking and bring elegance to your daily meals. It’s one of life’s little joys—and life is too short to go without it.
XVOO sources pure, lab-tested olive oil, high in polyphenols.
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