
Slick Olive Oil Label Designed to Deceive - apsec112
https://www.mouseprint.org/2018/11/12/slick-olive-oil-label-designed-to-deceive/
======
jaclaz
At least to me it makes no sense to mix a "premium" product, i.e. _extra
virgin_ olive oil with sunflower oil, so - personally - I doubt that the 20%
olive oil (provided there is actually 20% of olive oil) is actually _extra
virgin_.

I find also queer that on the label of something with the name "Iberia" is
depoicted what appears as an Italian (likely Tuscany) landscape.

And BTW _is_ actually Tuscany, more precisely San Quirico d'Orcia:

[https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/beautiful-
sunrise-v...](https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/beautiful-sunrise-
valley-san-quirico-dorcia-141591397)

P.S.: does that thingy really cost US$ 48.50 on Amazon? For 2 liters, that is
24.25/lt. Locally (Italy) the best of the best (and possibly even better) 100%
EVO can be max (retail) 14-15 Euro/lt.

~~~
jhauris
Premium olive oil can cost around $24/lt in the US, but most people pay more
like $8 per liter for something you probably wouldn't identify as olive oil.
It would appear that the US is largely considered a dumping ground of olive
oil that is subpar in Italy or Spain, and is frequently sold mislabeled as a
higher quality olive oil than it is (or very old, or not even olive
oil).[0],[1]

I can't find a source right now, but I read at some point that Italy doesn't
actually export their top grades of olive oil, as producers have trouble even
meeting local demand.

0:
[https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/12/06/166662525/u-...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/12/06/166662525/u-s-
olive-oil-makers-say-imports-arent-always-so-extra-virgin)

1: [https://consumerist.com/2010/07/07/us-is-a-dumping-ground-
fo...](https://consumerist.com/2010/07/07/us-is-a-dumping-ground-for-crappy-
dangerous-olive-oil/)

~~~
oAlbe
Italy has stopped meeting local demand for a while at this point.

The bulk of the EVO oil sold here seems to be Spanish, and if you go in any
grocery store (big or small) you'll have trouble finding a bottle of EVO oil
that is 100% made in Italy. Most of them (I'm tempted to say the majority, but
I only have anectodal data) have a disclaimer on the label stating that the
oil was "made from oils sourced from the European Union". Last time I saw an
actually made in Italy bottle of oil was in a specialized store, and it costed
about 3x more than those in the grocery shops.

There was recently a very thorough investigative journalism report by an
Italian program on public television called "Report" that dug quite deep into
the whole deal with Italy and oil. Turns out that there's also a lot of
shadiness going on in the industry. I'd link to it, but it's entirely in
Italian and last I watched it there were no subtitles whatsoever. Sorry.

------
ThinkingGuy
One of the most important life lessons I've learned as an adult is how easy
(and common) it is to _mislead_ people without actually _lying_ to them.

~~~
kemiller2002
I took statistics in high school, and the first day the teacher gets up and
says, "Let me show you how statistics lie." He gave example after example
about how the graphs and data presented were not wrong, but they were
definitely meant to bias you into thinking something else.

I remember one story in particular, and this is totally anecdotal, but I think
it makes a good point. During the cold war, supposedly, there was a foot race
between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. The story goes that the U.S. athlete won the
race. The Russian newspapers published, "U.S.S.R. takes second place. U.S.
athlete finishes next to last." I don't know if it's true or not, but it makes
a good point.

------
sparkpeasy
I find it's easiest to avoid a lot of these scammy practices without the
mental load of double- and triple-checking labels by only shopping at places
that stake their reputation on the quality and curated nature of what they
carry.

Costco and Trader Joes are two great examples.

~~~
skh
The Aldi brothers have their share of scandals in Germany when it comes to
tainted and mislabeled food. I wouldn’t be so confident that Trader Joe’s is
what it claims to be. They are very secretive about where their food comes
from and have shunned independent food tracking services to verify the non GMO
status of their foood. I’m not opposed to GMO food so this doesn’t bother me
but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that their honey or olive oil isn’t pure.
It’s hard to find non adulterated products these days.

------
crankylinuxuser
The website is non-responsive for me, but archive.org saves the day

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190204090155/https://www.mouse...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190204090155/https://www.mouseprint.org/2018/11/12/slick-
olive-oil-label-designed-to-deceive/)

But this is what happens when the government doesn't impose strict ethics on
companies. You get phrases "Up to..." or "save up to X or more", or text and
color games, or plenty of other ~~dark patterns~~ fraud on the populace.

But it makes some people lots of money that they can then turn around and fend
off these legal attacks. Might makes right, I guess.

------
dotancohen
I actually fell for this scam two weeks ago. In fact, the bottle in question
was a dark _plastic_ bottle shaped like a traditional square olive oil glass
bottle. It is also from one of the reputable national Israeli brands, whose
products I had no problem paying a premium for.

So now that brand's reputation is shot for me, and I'll buy either less
familiar brands or imported olive oil. However, I feel that the experience was
worth the cost. My ten-year-old daughter was the one who caught the fact when
she tried to use the oil while cooking, and she learned a life-long lesson to
trust, but verify, at age ten. I'm learning it at forty one.

------
chooseaname
It says right on the bottle, "premium blend". That should have been the very
first clue this wasn't 100% olive oil.

~~~
dfxm12
Why? Premium blended scotch doesn't blend scotch with vodka.

~~~
chooseaname
Fair enough, but I don't recall ever seeing that on a bottle of olive oil.

------
dkoston
What's funny is that you don't need a label like this to not be olive oil,
most "olive oil" in the US isn't really olive oil, it's a blend with a bunch
of additives and it's actually spoiled and been packaged up for US-based
suckers:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/cathyhuyghe/2014/03/05/the-
scam...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/cathyhuyghe/2014/03/05/the-scam-of-
olive-oil-and-its-antidote/#589abf785cc1)

You should also NOT BE COOKING with olive oil in most cases. It has a very low
smoke point compared to things like Grapeseed Oil or refined Safflower Oil so
it's not good for baking, pan frying, or other common cooking techniques.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point)

If you are going to go through the effort to use Olive Oil, find a store that
carries olive oil from trusted producers with a batch date. NOTE: This is most
likely not a supermarket.

One of the big challenges with eating food in the US is that the FDA does
little to nothing to make sure consumers are aware of what's good quality and
good for you.

If you weren't already aware of it, a large percentage of things found in US-
based supermarkets have little to no nutritional value and are bad for your
body. You should generally stick to things that spoil in the outer isles but
there's a lot of research to be done to find proper foods in the US.

Often, local chefs will teach classes about shopping. They can be incredibly
valuable and save you thousands of dollars over the next few years on your
grocery bill.

------
caffed
I buy a small bottle of unknown brands first and don't buy italian olive oil
[0].

I mainly buy local Californian EVOO as it is high quality and reasonable
priced.

[0] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-crime-
food/italian-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-crime-food/italian-
police-break-mafia-ring-exporting-fake-olive-oil-to-u-s-idUSKBN1602BD)

~~~
illegalsmile
I too buy direct from Californian farms as you know the press date which is
generally more fresh, you can interact with the owners, it goes through far
less travel than something from Europe and you're essentially guaranteed a
high quality oil.

------
thoughtexprmnt
Two things to look for when selecting olive oil at the supermarket - a dark
glass bottle, and a harvest date printed on the label. Granted, this doesn't
_guarantee_ you're getting a high-quality, non-blended EV olive oil, but
without these you most assuredly are not.

~~~
bluGill
Don't go to a supermarket to get good olive oil in the US. There are a few
small stores scattered around that sell good olive oil.

Dark glass is cheap and so cheap oil at a premium price comes in a fancy dark
bottle. You are paying for the fancy bottle (which doesn't cost much more than
a cheap plastic bottle of the same stuff - profit)

A harvest date is useful if you can find one, but doesn't really mean quality.
If the date is more than 3 months ago it means subpar though which is
something.

~~~
Doxin
The main thing about the dark glass bottle is that UV damages olive oil making
it taste worse. If your olive oil is in a container that lets in UV you're
guaranteed that the manufacturer doesn't give half a hoot about quality.

~~~
darkpuma
I'm a bit skeptical of claims like this. All standard transparent soda lime
glass is opaque to short wavelength UV ( _UV-B_ and _UV-C_ ) but is in fact
trasparent to long wavelength UV ( _UV-A_ ) (transmission drops off rapidly
under 350nm). However, what tinting is actually being employed in any
particular bottle and how effective is it at blocking long wavelength UV? To
be sure, there _are_ some tinted glasses that are effective at blocking long
wavelength UV, but can the consumer identify those by sight? Amber glass is
meant to be pretty good at blocking UV, presumably UV-A since regular glass
will block UV-B and UV-C, but amber glass seems to be a fairly complex
formation and it's not clear to me if some formulations are more or less
effective than others. Beer sold in clear glass is relatively rare, but green
glass isn't particularly uncommon and from what I can tell ferric ion green
glass doesn't seem to block UV-A any better than clear glass. Green glass made
with didymium is often used as UV filters, but I don't think that's used in
beer bottles.

I suspect tinted glass has more to do with marketing, consumer expectations
(and maybe cargo cults) than UV protection.

(Also, what brand is in the habit of leaving their bottles of EVO sitting out
in sunlight instead of in warehouses, in shipping containers, in stores, etc?
When you avoid direct sunlight and electric arcs, the UV threat should be
minimal.)

------
Jhndb
Seems like they changed it

[https://www.amazon.com/Iberia-Virgin-Sunflower-Purpose-
Cooki...](https://www.amazon.com/Iberia-Virgin-Sunflower-Purpose-
Cooking/dp/B00MSF7GWA)

~~~
ptaffs
Agreed. The post is from Nov 2018, both Amazon and Target now have different
product images. The post is accurate about deceptive mislabeling, but the
example is out of date.

------
hamsterwiel
We have these in South Africa of a different brand. I wonder how many people
buy it thinking it's the real thing. It's priced quite highly too.

------
cmurf
I only trust California Olive Oil Council products.
[https://www.cooc.com/](https://www.cooc.com/)

I don't even trust the IOC process, or store reputation. It either has the
COOC seal and the testing that backs it, or it doesn't. Pretty binary and
therefore simple.

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buboard
Do they even mix? i would expect a band of olive oil at the bottom of the
container.

seriously though this is ridiculous and please don't use it, buy cheaper
sunflower oil instead (I don't even trust that these guys used actual
sunflower oil).

~~~
Alex888
Modern chemistry: impossible happens!

------
nacs
Mirror (site seems to be unresponsive):
[http://archive.is/ju5ka](http://archive.is/ju5ka)

------
StavrosK
The misleading label notwithstanding, the bottle looks nothing like olive oil,
it's much too light/yellow to be that.

------
einarvollset
Random hack: the most consistently good olive oil i’ve bought in the US has
been Costco own label.

------
rinchik
I call BS, deceive how? I bought 2 of these a couple weeks ago at my local
Walmart for $6.99 ea. It's a great deal, and tastes a lot better than good old
canola and veggi-alts

