An 'Interactive' Lesson in Olive Oil Fraud

Summary

Infographics and inter­ac­tive fea­tures often sim­plify com­plex top­ics, but can lead to incom­plete and inac­cu­rate under­stand­ing. The New York Times pre­sented a slideshow on olive oil fraud in Italy, spark­ing con­fu­sion and over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion among read­ers.

Infographics and so-called ​“inter­ac­tives” aim to present com­pli­cated sub­jects with aes­thetic sim­plic­ity. All too often, though, their beauty comes at a cost. Like the infor­ma­tional lim­i­ta­tions of the 140-char­ac­ter Twitter update, these swi­peable car­toons leave read­ers with an incom­plete and often inac­cu­rate under­stand­ing of top­ics that deserve a closer look.

Yesterday, the New York Times offered a slideshow titled ​“Extra Virgin Suicide,” that pre­sented 15 cards on the process of large-scale adul­ter­ation in the olive oil indus­try in Italy.

Hours after it was pub­lished, I asked four peo­ple at a din­ner party to swipe through the Times piece on my phone and tell me what they thought the ​“take­away” of the fea­ture was. This was what they said:

• “Don’t buy Italian olive oil.”
• “Everyone in the olive oil busi­ness is a crook.”
• “Makes me want to use another oil, like grape­seed.”
• “I had no idea most olive oil is cut with chem­i­cals. It makes me sick.”

Although the sec­ond slide of the pre­sen­ta­tion con­tains the crit­i­cal qual­i­fier ​“much” Italian olive oil, some read­ers were left with the impres­sion that all Italian pro­duc­ers work this way.

One of the cards in the series said, ​“approx­i­mately 69 per­cent of the olive oil for sale in the U.S. is doc­tored.” It pre­sum­ably referred to the 2010 UC Davis study that found sam­ples of ten imported brands labeled extra vir­gin in three California super­mar­kets (not exactly a national sam­pling) to be sub­stan­dard — not that they were inten­tion­ally ​“doc­tored.”

The arti­cle cites ​“Extra Virginity” author Tom Mueller as its source.

The Times applies a loose def­i­n­i­tion to the term ​“inter­ac­tive,” appar­ently refer­ring to how we get to click from one slide to the next and back if we want. There is no way for read­ers to actu­ally com­ment on the piece (and there cer­tainly would be com­ments).

Over the past few years, bewil­dered con­sumers have been bom­barded by con­fus­ing mes­sages from olive oil evan­ge­lists and neg­a­tive cam­paigns by groups of pro­duc­ers in their zeal­ous pur­suit of mar­ket share.

Simple, infor­ma­tive mes­sages about olive oil qual­ity, ben­e­fits and uses will even­tu­ally clear the con­fu­sion and fos­ter greater con­sump­tion of this vital, healthy food.

However, in efforts to boil down such a com­pli­cated topic for increas­ingly short atten­tion spans, there is the dan­ger that over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion can dis­guise what is often just more mis­in­for­ma­tion.

The New York Times Olive Oil Fraud Infographic Timeline