The Ongoing Controversy of Flavored Olive Oils

Summary

Flavored olive oil has a long his­tory, with ancient cul­tures using scented oils for var­i­ous pur­poses. The mar­ket for fla­vored olive oil is expected to dou­ble over the next decade, dri­ven by con­sumer pref­er­ences for gourmet prod­ucts and the health ben­e­fits of olive oil. However, crit­ics argue that fla­vored olive oil may per­pet­u­ate mis­in­for­ma­tion about olive oil fraud and adul­ter­ation.

Flavored olive oil has been made since time immemo­r­ial. 

In the Hebrew scrip­tures, God told Moses to anoint priests with olive oil scented with myrrh and cin­na­mon. Ancient Greeks also offered scented olive oil to their gods.

Meanwhile, mol­e­c­u­lar analy­sis of Roman tombs has also demon­strated that olive oil infused with cin­na­mon, pine resin, frank­in­cense or myrrh was poured over bod­ies before they were cre­mated or buried.

Two recent reports antic­i­pate that the fla­vored olive oil mar­ket will dou­ble over the next decade, ris­ing from $1.29 bil­lion in 2024 to $2.47 bil­lion by 2033.

Market research group Dataintelo cited increas­ing con­sumer pref­er­ence for gourmet food prod­ucts, the ver­sa­tile culi­nary appli­ca­tions of fla­vored olive oils and ris­ing aware­ness of olive oil health ben­e­fits as the main rea­sons for the pop­u­lar­ity of fla­vored olive oil.

By com­par­i­son, sep­a­rate data fore­casts the entire olive oil mar­ket to grow more slowly, from $15.11 bil­lion in 2024 to $19.77 bil­lion in 2032.

While many pro­duc­ers see fla­vored olive oil as a way to diver­sify their prod­uct port­fo­lio, other experts worry that the grow­ing seg­ment may pre­vent con­sumers from learn­ing about the many nat­ural fla­vors of extra vir­gin olive oil.

“Many peo­ple still need to be edu­cated about olive oil,” said Amy Riolo, a self-described olive oil purist, Olive Oil for Dummies co-author and an award-win­ning chef.

“When we intro­duce fla­vored olive oil, peo­ple for­get about what’s extra vir­gin and what’s a polyphe­nol,” she added. ​“They still won’t know any­thing about what makes a good qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil and all the dif­fer­ent fla­vor nuances you can get from the dif­fer­ent cul­ti­vars.”

Flavored olive oil is a broad cat­e­gory encom­pass­ing var­i­ous pro­duc­tion meth­ods, includ­ing oils fla­vored with extracts, infused olive oils, and those pro­duced by co-milling olives with other ingre­di­ents.

Co-milling olives with other fruits or herbs is espe­cially pop­u­lar in south­ern Italy, where olives are co-milled with cit­rus fruit, includ­ing oranges, blood oranges and lemons.

The entire fruit, veg­etable or herb is added into the hop­per with the olives, which are co-crushed in the mill. The paste is then malaxed to accu­mu­late the oils from the olives and other ingre­di­ents before being cen­trifuged.

“The best results come from using the whole fruit, not just peel,” Riolo said. ​“That way, you get the juice and all of the fruit’s health ben­e­fits. It’s the most hon­est, pro­nounced fla­vor that is still gen­uine.” 

“If I am mak­ing a fish recipe that calls for orange or lemon, then [co-milling olive oil with other fruits] elim­i­nates an ingre­di­ent, but I know I’m still get­ting the real fla­vor from the fruit and olives,” she added. ​“It’s a win-win.”

“It makes the process in the kitchen quicker and eas­ier, so I can jus­tify that,” Riolo con­tin­ued. ​“But if it’s an arti­fi­cially fla­vored olive oil with lemon essence, I would rather add fresh lemon zest or juice sep­a­rately.”

While co-processed oils must be pro­duced in a mill, anec­do­tal evi­dence sug­gests that more peo­ple pre­pare nat­u­rally infused olive oil at home by steep­ing herbs or veg­eta­bles. 

However, Riolo warned that this method can be dan­ger­ous if done incor­rectly. ​“If the herb wasn’t ade­quately treated, washed or dried before use and just put into the olive oil bot­tle, then there is a risk for some bac­te­r­ial infec­tions,” Riolo said.

She advises adven­tur­ous home cooks who pre­pare nat­u­rally infused olive oil to ensure all the ingre­di­ents going into the oil are ster­ile and dried before steep­ing. 

Aside from co-processed and infused vari­a­tions, olive oils blended with fla­vor extracts are com­monly found on super­mar­ket shelves.

“Due to scale, the [co-pressed] method is more dif­fi­cult,” said Mary Mori, the vice pres­i­dent of qual­ity and research at California Olive Ranch (COR). ​“For us, the goal is to get the nat­ural fla­vor­ing and add it to the oil uni­formly.” 

The largest United States-based olive oil pro­ducer sells three fla­vored olive oils – gar­lic, black truf­fle and jalapeño herb – in squeeze bot­tles under the COR brand and three under its imported Lucini brand.

“The fla­vors in the squeeze bot­tle are a smaller seg­ment cat­e­gory,” Mori said. ​“It’s much more of a niche pur­chase for con­sumers. They love them, but it’s smaller than the extra vir­gin cat­e­gory.”

“ A lot of times, extra vir­gin users that want to try some­thing new and use some­thing dif­fer­ent in their cook­ing,” she added. ​“So often­times, it’s the same user that’s already been pur­chas­ing extra vir­gin olive oil and wants to get the fla­vored oils.”

Neither Mori nor Riolo sees fla­vored olive oil as a gate­way to extra vir­gin olive oil con­sump­tion, with Mori high­light­ing sim­i­lar chal­lenges in the fla­vored olive oil cat­e­gory.

“Flavored olive oil is still a dif­fi­cult cat­e­gory because many con­sumers don’t know how to use it beyond a sin­gle appli­ca­tion,” Mori said. ​“That’s why it is not so pop­u­lar.”

For exam­ple, she cited con­sumers feel­ing lim­ited to using gar­lic olive oil for sautéing veg­eta­bles or lemon olive oil on chicken. 

Mori added that she rec­om­mends the lemon olive oil for bak­ing, but con­firmed that edu­cat­ing con­sumers about dif­fer­ent use cases is nec­es­sary to broaden a fla­vored oil’s appeal.

For her part, Riolo rec­om­mends using cit­rusy co-pressed olive oil with seafood dishes and desserts, ​“but I would rather have a cul­ti­var that I love and add cit­rus.”

However, Riolo’s pref­er­ence for adding extra vir­gin olive oil to fresh ingre­di­ents makes her more sym­pa­thetic to the role of fla­vored olive oil in broad­en­ing the entire olive oil category’s appeal out­side of its tra­di­tional food cul­tures.

“For mar­kets such as Japan and India, where there is sig­nif­i­cant inter­est in Italian food, but dif­fer­ent land­scapes, sea­sons and avail­able prod­ucts, fla­vored olive oil kills two birds with one stone,” Riolo said.

“Putting fla­vored olive oil on a local fish with some salt, pep­per and herbs cre­ates a fla­vor­ful Italian dish,” she added. ​“The more you can get from a sin­gle ingre­di­ent, the bet­ter.”

Nancy Harmon Jenkins, a pro­ducer and the author of TheNew Mediterranean Diet Cookbook, is very blunt in her crit­i­cism of fla­vored olive oil.

“It’s gim­micky. It’s not real. It’s play­ing on pub­lic igno­rance and anx­i­ety,” she said. ​“I don’t like fla­vor in my olive oil. If I want the fla­vor of lemon in my salad, I add lemon juice to it.”

Harmon Jenkins added that in her expe­ri­ence, fla­vored olive oil is less ver­sa­tile than extra vir­gin olive oil for cook­ing.

“ In my very lim­ited expe­ri­ence with heat­ing those fla­vored oils, the fla­vor dis­ap­pears quickly, and it does­n’t infuse in the prod­uct,” she said. ​“If you want rose­mary fla­vor in your dish, add rose­mary, not rose­mary-fla­vored olive oil.”

“ I know I’m a snob, but some­body has to stand up for stan­dards,” she added.

Despite its crit­ics, the pop­u­lar­ity of fla­vored olive oil con­tin­ues to grow. However, a long-time debate con­tin­ues to sim­mer around the product’s nomen­cla­ture.

By def­i­n­i­tion, any grade of olive oil, includ­ing extra vir­gin, is a sin­gle ingre­di­ent food and can­not con­tain addi­tives. ​“Flavored oils can­not be con­sid­ered olive oils,” and they can­not be labeled as such under International Olive Council rules, for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor Abdellatif Ghedira told Olive Oil Times in 2018. 

Some crit­ics argue that since fla­vored olive oil is adul­ter­ated by def­i­n­i­tion — to make it impure by adding extra­ne­ous ingre­di­ents — its pro­duc­ers may per­pet­u­ate com­mon mis­in­for­ma­tion about olive oil fraud. 

“It’s an uphill fight,” Harmon Jenkins said. ​“For some rea­son, the con­sumer is happy to believe that” olive oil fraud and adul­ter­ation are nearly ubiq­ui­tous. 

“That’s not true,” she added. ​“But on the other hand, I don’t think fla­vor­ing oil is any way to com­bat that impres­sion.” 

While Mori said she under­stands the crit­ics’ con­cerns, she believes label­ing a fla­vored oil as ​“fla­vored extra vir­gin olive oil” is the best way to be trans­par­ent about what is in the prod­uct.

“We are adding fla­vor­ing to extra vir­gin olive oil,” she said. ​“We’re not using the [co-milled] method where you don’t know if you’re even pro­duc­ing extra vir­gin olive oil from the start.”

Mori believes ​“fla­vored oil” is too ambigu­ous since it does not iden­tify the grade of olive oil used in the prod­uct. She added that she does not think the term ​“fla­vored extra vir­gin olive oil” con­fuses con­sumers.

“We don’t see con­sumer con­cern or con­fu­sion,” she said. ​“It’s very clearly in a sep­a­rate area of the store where it is clear they are buy­ing fla­vored oils ver­sus extra vir­gin olive oil.”

• Dataintelo
• Business Research Insights
• Fortune Business Insights