Guide to the golden O

Two focused campaigns ran simultaneously, almost, to change how Indians fry their puris, pakoras, paranthas and masala. One was Olive it Up, a three-year-long campaign financed by the European Union, and the other was Dalmia Continental’s five-year-long, Rs 60-crore marketing blitz, Go Indiano, conceived and pushed by Himani Dalmia, AGM corporate, under the guidance of her father, V.N. Dalmia, chairman of Dalmia Continental Private Limited, and president of the Indian Olive Association. It was a multi-pronged blitzkrieg — part advocacy, part aspiration marketing. There were sponsored cookery shows on television, print and TV advertisements and tastings at posh olive oil bars in malls. There were also lifestyle and health articles, most packed with favourable quotes from experts, some backed by research. The target: Cooking mothers, figure-conscious youngsters, the diabetic senior citizen, and father with a heart ailment. Indians were getting fat, clogging their arteries, and had shooting sugar levels. And here, in a bottle, was a solution. Olive oil is rich in mono-unsaturated fatty acids that improve cholesterol levels, and it has an abundance of antioxidants that fight cancer and increase life expectancy. The Indian palate, so used to dalda, ghee, vanaspati, canola began changing. Initially this change was most noticeable in the aisles of fancy, air-conditioned stores; the corner kirana shops so much. Obviously. According to a newspaper report, in India one person uses at least 12 litres of edible oil annually. Pricing, therefore, matters. 500 gm Amul butter Rs 172 1 litre of Saffola oil Rs 145 1 litre Amul ghee Rs 370 1 litre Dhara groundnut oil Rs 145 1 litre mustard oil Rs 145 1 litre sunflower oil Rs 85-120 1 litre coconut oil Rs 100-180 1 litre of Leonardo’s extra virgin olive oil Rs 995 1 litre Leonardo olive-Pomace oil Rs 799 On weekends, when women and men were wheeling their trolleys through supermarts, for the week’s kitchen shopping, nicely packaged foreign olive oil seemed the better choice. Surely, foreigners don’t lie — what they say on the bottle is what’s inside. Extra Virgin Olive Oil was healthy and delicious. It was perfect to drizzle on salads and pasta, and to double-dip your focaccia bread in. But what about those cans and bottles of Olive-Pomace Oil with Italian flags and tags like Premium, Gold etc Are all olive oils the same No. Not at all. While the unanimous opinion is that Extra Virgin Oil is great for health, as is Virgin Olive Oil (both are to be had as is, without heating), and even olive oil (used for light cooking), the story gets murky as we move to lower grade olive oils. On Olive-Pomace Oil, for example, opinion is divided and both sides are shrill. Nutritionists differ from cardiologists. Businessmen who sell Olive- Pomace Oil say it’s great, and dish out health certificates from experts, but chefs and food writers disagree. Most vegetable oils are extracted in refineries from seeds or nuts, using solvents, heat and pressure. The best olive oils are made using a simple hydraulic press – Extra Virgin Olive Oil, thus, is like freshly squeezed juice. According to EU law, Extra-Virgin Olive Oil must be made exclusively by physical means and meet 32 chemical requirements, including having “free acidity” of no more than 0.8 per cent (free acidity is an indicator of decomposition). Virgin oil, the next grade lower, must have free acidity of no more than 2 per cent. “Oil that has a greater percentage of free acidity is classified as lampante (lamp oil) and cannot be legally sold as food.” Olive-Pomace Oil is obtained by chemically treating olive pomace (the residual pulp and fragments of stone left after olive oil has been squeezed out) with chemicals on high heat. This oil is then blended with a small percentage of Extra Virgin Olive Oil. The Diabetes Foundation of India carried out a six-month study on 90 patients divided into three groups — one used Olive-Pomace Oil, the second canola oil, and the third one refined oil (coconut and soya). Canola oil showed the best results in reducing waist circumference, in fasting insulin and fasting glucose levels. Even the fall in BMI was maximum in the canola group. Olive oil group showed positive changes as well, but was a close second to canola. The worst off were those on a diet of coconut and soya oil. Their fasting glucose levels rose. Virgin Olive Oil doesn’t need too much selling. We all know that it’s good for us. That’s why those in the business of selling Olive-Pomace Oil have settled on a clever and canny spiel. “We are creating awareness among all classes of consumers that olive oil improves blood cholesterol levels and prevents heart disease. Compared to refined oil, a third of the same quantity of olive oil is enough to cook the same food,” Mr Dalmia and Ms Dalmia say. There’s a blend in this statement — of the benefits of Extra Virgin Olive Oil and the utilitarian property of Olive-Pomace Oil. Olive-Pomace Oil, they are essentially saying, is beneficial because you use less of it. But a lot is left unsaid. Chef and entrepreneur Ritu Dalmia, who runs several Italian restaurants and has travelled extensively in Italy, cooking and eating, said, “Nowhere in Italy have I seen people cook in Olive-Pomace Oil. Never, never. Maybe some big restaurant may use it for frying because it has a high burning point, but otherwise it’s not used for cooking. It’s mostly an export product. In my cooking, and in my restaurants, I mostly like to use Extra Virgin Olive Oil and for frying I prefer corn oil because I find it a far healthier option”. Smoking points: mustard and rice bran 250; canola 242; Olive-Pomace Oil 238; Sunflower 226; Corn and Palm Oil 215. In 2001, the UK’s Food Standards Agency issued advice against Olive-Pomace Oil after the Spanish government found high levels of contaminants called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), some of which can cause cancer, in some Olive-Pomace Oil products. “Olive-Pomace Oil,” its website says, “is made from the residue left after producing virgin olive oil. It is the lowest grade of oil... The contamination is believed to result from the process used to produce this oil. The Spanish government introduced a temporary ban on Olive-Pomace Oil in response to these findings. It has now set legal limits for the maximum amount of PAHs in olive oil.” The bottles and cans that are sold in India are sometimes pre-packed, at times packed here. But there’s no checking. Not at our end at least. In 2011, Tom Mueller followed up his 2007 investigative piece in the New Yorker (Slippery Business: The Trade in Adulterated Olive Oil) with a full-fledged book – Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, where he wrote that in 1997 and 1998, olive oil was the most adulterated agricultural product in the EU. An olive oil task force investigator told him that “profits were comparable to cocaine trafficking, with none of the risks”. “Olive oil is far more valuable than most other oils, but it is costly and time-consuming to produce. And, apparently, surprisingly easy to doctor. Adulteration is especially common in Italy, the world’s leading importer, consumer and exporter.” Mario Puzo’s Godfather, Don Vito Corleone, was modelled on “olive oil king” Joe Profaci. Olive is a drupe, stone fruit, and is harvested when green olives begin to turn black. Ideally they should be milled within hours, to minimise oxidization which leads to unpleasant tastes and odour in the oil. According to EU regulations, “Extra Virgin Olive Oil must have appreciable levels of peppriness, bitterness and fruitiness and must be free of 16 official taste flaws — musty, fusty, cucumber, grubby...” When you sip and slurp good olive oil, sensations of bitterness, astringency and pungency are caused by members of the phenolic family of chemicals. Phenols have antioxidant properties and help to protect the oil from going rancid. Olive oil tasting is a fabulously specialised art where professional tasters, deprived of coffee and cigarettes (forbidden before a tasting because they dull the senses), sit in little cubicles with warmed oil samples in tulip glasses. “Cradling the glasses containing the first sample in their palms to keep the oil warm, they removed the lids, inserted their noses, and snuffled loudly, some closing their eyes. They sipped the oil, and began sucking in air violently, a technique known as strippaggio, which coats the taste buds with oil and helps its aromas ascend to the nasal passages,” writes Mueller. The more the tasters cough after they sip and slurp, the better the oil’s rating. Peppery oil is an indication that it's rich in olive extracts and relatively fresh. According to reports, over the past 12 months sales of olive oil have slowed down because of a spike in olive oil prices globally (it rose by 60 per cent in 2013 compared to the previous year), but the olive oil market in India has grown in the last 10 years — from 1,000 tonnes in 2003 to 12,000 tonnes in 2013. (2012, the EU exported olive oil worth Euros 9,403,000 to India.) My interest in olive oil was not aroused because I’m a health freak, a cook, or a business writer. It is courtesy the Dalmias. In November 2013, the Dalmias took a group of journalis-ts to Italy. V.N. Dalmia, an unpretentious connoisseur who knows his wine and sings carols with his family on Christmas, and daughter Himani who dabbles in fiction writing, had planned the trip to tell two stories. One was about their flagship product, Leonardo Olive Oil, which had, since its launch in 2003, grown to become the No. 1 brand of olive oil in India. (Last week they divested Leonardo Olive Oil business to Cargill India, which owns NatureFresh, Gemini, Sweekar, Rath and Sunflower Vanaspati.) The other story was about olives and olive oil. It was my first trip to the country that’s shaped like a woman’s high-heel boot. We headed straight for the heel, to Bari, in Puglia. Puglia produces about 40 per cent of Italy’s olives and Bari has ancient olive groves with tress that are 1,000 years old, or more. There we learnt that olives mature from green to black, that the olive tree starts bearing olives only after seven years, but farmers have to wait for 15 years for a full crop. Old olive trees are beautifully twisted, as if they grew up inside a tornado. Often their bark and trunks split, giving the impression of two entwined trees. All this gives them character, something that’s caught the imagination of the gods and artists. It is believed that the “Tree of Life” in the Garden of Eden was an olive tree, and Vincent Van Gogh had a special affinity for these distorted trees and painted them often, even devoting one full canvas to them (Olive Trees in a Mountainous Landscape). The Dalmias packed in sightseeing with the business story of their olive oil and pasta brands. We visited an organic olive farm, an oil refinery in Monopoli and an olive farmers’ cooperative in Ostuni, the “white town”. We visited Lecce, a town with very interesting baroque architecture, and Alberobello, a Unesco world heritage site, where we walked on streets lined with the romantic 17th century trulli – white, cylindrical, one-room stone huts with cone-shaped, grey roofs. The trip was rounded off with a couple of days in Rome. When I returned, I yearned to go back, to walk through St. Peter’s Basilica once more, to have another granita at Caffe Tazza D’oro, and one more pasticciotto, please. This lemon-cream stuffed Lecce speciality still haunts me. I brought back bottled mementoes — wine, limoncello (a delicious, local thara), and lots of Extra Virgin Olive Oil. But I left my bottles of Olive-Pomace Oil behind. How To Buy Olive Oil Olive oil is marketed in accordance with the following designations and definitions set by the International Olive Oil Council. Do yourself a favour and read the fine print on bottles and cans before you go to the cash counter: Virgin Olive Oil is obtained from the fruit of the olive tree solely by mechanical or other physical means under conditions, particularly thermal conditions, that do not lead to alterations in the oil, and which have not undergone any treatment other than washing, decantation, centrifugation and filtration. Extra Virgin Oil has a free acidity (an indicator of decomposition), expressed as oleic acid, of not more than 0.8 grams per 100 grams; Virgin Olive Oil has a free acidity of not more than 2 grams per 100 grams; Ordinary Virgin Olive Oil has a free acidity of not more than 3.3 grams per 100 grams Olive Oil consists of a blend of refined olive oil and virgin olive oils fit for consumption. It has a free acidity of not more than 1 gram per 100 grams Olive-Pomace Oil is the blend of refined olive-pomace oil and virgin olive oils fit for consumption as they are. It has a free acidity of not more than 1 gram per 100 grams. In no case shall this blend be called "olive oil". Lampante Virgin Olive Oil is not fit for consumption as it is. It has a free acidity of more than 3.3 grams per 100 grams. It is intended for refining or for technical use.