Dutch people, in particular, will often ask me: "Is grilling and frying with cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil actually safe?" My short answer to that is: "Yes, it's absolutely safe!" No one living in the countries around the Mediterranean Sea would ever have any doubts about that. The question itself is enough to get our Spanish housekeeper laughing. Once I started doing a little research on the background of these 'Dutch' misgivings (praised be the Internet!), I soon came across the article 'Cancer Oil', which the controversial Algemeen Dagblad journalist Wim Meij had written two years ago and which was indiscriminately cited and reprinted in a large number of newspapers and magazines for some time after that. It claimed that using cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil for frying and grilling was extremely dangerous. Mr Meij is also known for his earlier tirade against eggs with his article 'Cancer Eggs'. Here, too, the establishment---this time in the form of the Netherlands Nutrition Centre---had to take the rap. He caused quite a stir another time in a sensational TV programme when---after having eaten nothing but McDonald's food for thirty days---he described that as a healthy diet. Groundbreaking investigative reporting is naturally praiseworthy, but for that it needs to be based on the relevant facts. In the case of using oil for frying, everything clearly revolves around the so-called smoke point. Once that is reached, the resulting soot and dense blue smoke are highly unhealthy and can even cause cancer. Obviously, overheating should be avoided. The hotter the smoke point of the oil, the better. But that smoke point will drop when there are impurities such as deep-fried food particles or burned fat particles in oil that has been used over and over again. Meij's article is an big house of cards built around a single 'fact', namely that the smoke point of pure cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil is supposed to be as low as 122°C---only slightly higher than the boiling point of water! And that would make it extremely bad for frying and grilling! In contrast, Meij recommends refined olive oil (chemically distilled from the pomace remaining after the cold pressing), with a smoke point of 211°C, and otherwise maize oil, with a smoke point of 200°C. He gets his information from a sketchy American source that he fails to mention by name but that he evidently lapped up whole. There is no trace of any attempt at verification. But there's no way he could have, for it is outright nonsense! The Culinary Institute of America lists the smoke point of cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil at 375°F (190°C). The International Olive Oil Council (IOOC) in Madrid lists the smoke point of cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil at 210°C. The Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils (ISEO) (UK) lists the smoke point of cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil at 420°F (216°C). Bertolli (Unilever) states: "[The] smoke point of olive oil is generally higher than other vegetable oils. In general pure olive oil has the highest smoke point." Being curious, I decided to do a test of my own in our kitchen using a professional digital thermometer that goes to 300°C. Our pure, cold-pressed 100% Arbequina extra virgin olive oil got to 240°C before I noticed even the slightest bit of smoke---and my nose was literally right above the pan! My conclusion: for frying and grilling (120°C - 150°C), a pure, cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil is absolutely safe. For safe deep-frying (170°C - 190°C), I would recommend never using any oil more than three times. But if you are truly concerned about your health, stop using any refined oils from products like soybeans, maize (corn), peanuts, sunflower seeds, grape seeds and exotic nuts. All those are distilled by means of chemicals (including the solvent heptane) and can therefore contain traces of the cancer-causing benzopyrene---something that Mr Meij fails to mention at all. Only extra virgin olive oil is cold-pressed and thus completely free of benzopyrene!
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