The next time you're in the supermarket buying olive oil, you might want to check the label. A new report sheds light on a scam involving legitimate olive oil companies using cheap substitutes to sell their products.
According to the report, these companies are either using GMO soy or GMO canola oil to make olive oil, passing off impure products as the real thing to increase profits. The authorities are warning consumers to be selective in terms of the ingredients of the olive oil they buy to ensure quality.
Do you know that your extra virgin olive oil is probably fake, thanks to the Mob? Did you know that the Mafia is making a small fortune selling fake olive oil or that olive oil is a $1.5 billion dollar industry in the United States alone? In fact, olive oil is currently Europe’s most adulterated agricultural product! According to Tom Mueller, an investigative journalist who wrote an eye –opening expose on fake olive oil entitled : Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, 70% of the extra virgin olive oil sold is adulterated — cut with cheaper oils.
Excerpt from Mueller’s Book:
“Many olive oil scams involve straightforward mixing of low-grade vegetable oils, flavored and colored with plant extracts and sold in tins and bottles emblazoned with the Italian flags or paintings of Mount Vesuvius, together with the folksy names of imaginary producers. More sophisticated scams, like Domenico Ribatti’s typically take place in high-tech laboratories, where cheaper oils of various kinds, made from olives, but also from seeds and nuts, are processed and blended in ways that are extremely difficult to detect with chemical tests.”
Image courtesy of: Blues Views
