Misinformation from the Cook Who Coined 'EVOO'

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Doctor Oz told mil­lions of view­ers that the best way to tell if their olive oil was good or not was to put it in the refrig­er­a­tor, a myth swiftly debunked by the University of California at Davis Olive Center.

It’s not uncom­mon or sur­pris­ing to hear celebrity doc­tors, chefs and other tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ties prop­a­gat­ing myths and false­hoods when it comes to olive oil.

But you might expect the cook and author Rachael Ray, who is cred­ited with coin­ing E‑V-O‑O as a short­hand for extra vir­gin olive oil (added to the Oxford American College Dictionary in 2007), to do the nec­es­sary home­work to get it right.

“If you can see through it, it’s fine for cook­ing,” Ray stated in a recent seg­ment on her show, apply­ing an even cruder method of olive oil qual­ity assess­ment than Oz’s fridge test. In fact, the color of extra vir­gin olive oil can range from pale yel­low to emer­ald green and is not an indi­ca­tion of its qual­ity or grade. For that rea­son, experts use cobalt glasses to con­ceal the color of oil when con­duct­ing their sen­sory analy­ses.

Ray con­tin­ued in her seg­ment with ill-informed pro­nounce­ments to even fur­ther com­pound con­sumers’ con­fu­sion about olive oil qual­ity: ​“The deep green, super-fruity, really expen­sive stuff — that’s tech­ni­cally extra vir­gin olive oil because it has­n’t been strained and puri­fied in any way.”

Of course, it’s not tech­ni­cally extra vir­gin olive oil unless it meets cer­tain tech­ni­cal chem­i­cal and sen­sory bench­marks, what­ever its color or price. And most extra vir­gin olive oil, includ­ing Ray’s own brand, is strained through a bat­tery of fil­ters to remove par­ti­cles of pits and pulp. The fil­ter­ing process extends the shelf life and reduces the sed­i­ment on the bot­tom of the bot­tle that turns off some shop­pers.

Ray con­tin­ued, ​“But if you can see through it, you can cook with it up to medium-high heat,” with­out stat­ing what ​“high” means and while at the same time throw­ing more sup­port behind a com­mon myth that you can’t fry in olive oil. Extra vir­gin olive oil has a smoke point in line with other veg­etable oils and is well within the range of all but the most intense high-heat appli­ca­tions.

Viewers of the show can find more fal­lac­ies on Ray’s web­site, where the color of olive oil is wrongly sin­gled out not only as an indi­ca­tion of its suit­abil­ity for cook­ing but as a cri­te­rion for the extra vir­gin grade itself:

“To be graded as Extra Virgin, the oil must exhibit supe­rior taste, aroma and color,” the site pro­claims. Nowhere in the inter­na­tional stan­dard is there a mea­sure (or even a men­tion) of color.

“And to meet the most exact­ing label­ing stan­dards, it must also have less than 1 per­cent free oleic acid,” Ray’s web­site states incor­rectly, cit­ing an acid­ity bench­mark for the refined olive oil grade, not extra vir­gin.

“Thus,” Ray’s web­site con­cludes, ​“the ​‘Extra’ in Extra Virgin Olive Oil means ​‘pre­mium,’ or sim­ply, ​‘the best.’ ”

If only it were that sim­ple.