Love Your Body by Talia Fuhrman

Author:Talia Fuhrman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rodale
Published: 2014-04-17T16:00:00+00:00

OLIVE OIL IS NOT YOUR FRIEND

People have raved about the Mediterranean diet for years. The diet is based on the food patterns typical of Greece and southern Italy in the early 1960s, and it pinpoints olive oil as the principal source of fat. According to this much-beloved diet, total fat intake should be in the range of 25 to 35 percent of all calories consumed, with saturated fat at 8 percent or less of calories. This diet style has been praised for being low in saturated fat and high in monounsaturated fat. However, is olive oil really this much of a superfood? Perhaps you can guess my response from what you’ve just learned about oils, but just to be clear, the answer is absolutely, not even in your wildest Mediterranean dreams, NO! Just like all other oils, olive oil is 100 percent fat, with 120 calories per tablespoon.

Some have proposed that extra-virgin olive oil is heart healthy because it is rich in polyphenols. Polyphenols have antioxidant characteristics, and studies show that they reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. However, all plant foods are rich in polyphenols, and most deliver many more polyphenols (and far fewer calories) than olive oil. It’s just not enough to rely on olive oil for your polyphenols. You’d need to eat a ton of olive oil (and all the calories that go along with it)—not something anyone needs. A tablespoon of olive oil with 120 calories contains 30 milligrams of phytosterols (a group of polyphenols). Compare this to only 11 calories of green leafy lettuce that contains the same amount, not to mention thousands of other well-documented benefits. Study after study links the consumption of leafy greens with a healthier, longer, disease-free life—probably because they are loaded with all sorts of nutritious compounds, among them vitamins, minerals, fiber, polyphenols, and beta-carotene. In comparison, unlike the olive, olive oil has little or none of these.14 Eat the walnut, not the walnut oil; sesame seeds, not the sesame oil; and non-GMO corn, not corn oil, cornflakes, corn syrup, or, heaven forbid, corn dogs.

It is also a myth that olive oil lowers LDL (“bad”) cholesterol. Studies linking olive oil consumption to lower cholesterol levels are shamefully flawed. Olive oil appears to lower bad cholesterol in most studies because the participants replace animal fats like butter, cheese, and fatty meats with olive oil. Animal fats are composed of saturated fats, which are the most dangerous types of fat. Consumption of saturated fats raises cholesterol levels and elevates the risk of heart disease and cancer. Replacing animal fat with cardboard would lower anyone’s LDL cholesterol levels. The addition of olive oil is not what lowers bad cholesterol levels; it is the removal of artery-clogging saturated fats! Grrr. It’s frustrating to see the media lead people to believe that olive oil is healthy. (It certainly doesn’t help that we see olive oil bottles labeled as “Heart Healthy.”)

The traditional Mediterranean diet is considerably better than the American diet, not because of

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