Greeks Are Consuming Less Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Researchers in Greece con­ducted a cross-sec­tional sur­vey of Greek house­holds to assess their pref­er­ence for olive oil and eval­u­ate their aware­ness of olive oil qual­ity char­ac­ter­is­tics.

They also inves­ti­gated to what degree opti­mal domes­tic stor­age prac­tices were applied.

They found that, while the vast major­ity of the house­holds use olive oil in food prepa­ra­tions, their level of knowl­edge about the olive oil’s health ben­e­fits varies depend­ing on fac­tors includ­ing loca­tion, con­nec­tion with olive oil pro­duc­tion and level of edu­ca­tion.

The sur­vey, pub­lished in the MDPI Nutrients Journal, also revealed that con­sumers in Greece have sig­nif­i­cantly low­ered their pref­er­ence for extra vir­gin olive oil over the last decades: only 57 per­cent of the house­holds said that they opt for extra vir­gin olive oil com­pared to 70 per­cent in 1996.

“The use of extra vir­gin olive oil in the coun­try is lower than pre­vi­ous sur­veys had found, and lower than the use in other Mediterranean coun­tries,” Antonios Zampelas, pres­i­dent of the Hellenic Food Authority (EFET) and one of the researchers who con­ducted the sur­vey, told Olive Oil Times.

“This may be attrib­uted to the lack of knowl­edge about the var­i­ous olive oil cat­e­gories and to the finan­cial cri­sis as well since the cri­te­ria of those buy­ing branded olive oil are pri­mar­ily the price and then other fac­tors such as the acid­ity and ori­gin of the olive oil,” he added.

A total of 857 house­holds par­tic­i­pated in the sur­vey, con­ducted through tele­phone inter­views in 2020. The ques­tions cov­ered basic per­sonal and sociode­mo­graphic char­ac­ter­is­tics, level of income, type of olive oil con­sumed and per­cep­tion of olive oil cost, and stor­age habits.

The researchers col­lected and ana­lyzed the responses of the house­holds region by region, sep­a­rat­ing the coun­try into four large areas: Crete and the other islands, north­ern Greece, cen­tral Greece, and the Attica region, which is home to almost half of the coun­try’s pop­u­la­tion.

The house­holds in Crete and the islands received the high­est score for using extra vir­gin olive oil and under­stand­ing its qual­i­ties.

On the other hand, all inter­viewed house­holds said they exclu­sively use olive oil in sal­ads and almost exclu­sively in casse­role dishes, while fre­quent or occa­sional usage of olive oil in mak­ing pies and desserts ranged high among the respon­dents (92 per­cent and 84 per­cent, respec­tively).

When it comes to fry­ing, only 66 per­cent of the Greek house­holds reported they use olive oil as their def­i­nite type of fry­ing oil, and another 19 per­cent said that they use it occa­sion­ally.

However, olive oil is more resis­tant to dete­ri­o­ra­tion when reused in fry­ing com­pared to veg­etable oils like sun­flower oil, the researchers noted, sug­gest­ing that this should be widely com­mu­ni­cated to Greek con­sumers.

The researchers also found that, in all four regions, a bet­ter under­stand­ing of olive oil qual­ity, the higher cor­re­lated with an increased prob­a­bil­ity of con­sumers choos­ing extra vir­gin olive oil and per­ceiv­ing olive oil retail prices as low.

“[Domestic] olive oil pro­duc­ers and those of a higher edu­ca­tional level were more informed about olive oil,” Zampelas said. ​“It is also inter­est­ing that the con­sumers with a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the mer­its of extra vir­gin olive oil were less likely to con­sider its price high, prov­ing this way that they have a clear grasp of its high nutri­tional value.”

Further analy­sis of the results showed that most of the par­tic­i­pants (78 per­cent) knew that extra vir­gin olive oil is of higher qual­ity than refined olive oil, and almost half of them (43 per­cent) said they can tell the dif­fer­ence between the two based on their organolep­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics.

However, only a small per­cent­age of the respon­dents could iden­tify and explain the effects of olive oil’s polyphe­nols.

“Given that four out of five house­holds [in Greece] use olive oil bought from fam­ily and friends, it was nec­es­sary to fur­ther assess the knowl­edge of the con­sumers on olive oil,” Zampelas said.

“We found that, while more than half of the respon­dents knew that extra vir­gin olive oil has an acid­ity lower than 0.8, only 19 per­cent of them knew that the ben­e­fi­cial phe­nols in olive oil can make it taste bit­ter or pun­gent,” Zampelas said.

Almost three-quar­ters of the par­tic­i­pat­ing 857 house­holds (74 per­cent) reported that they use olive oil obtained from rel­a­tives or friends or of their own pro­duc­tion, leav­ing a small mar­ket share for branded olive oil.

Consequently, olive oil fraud proved a minor con­cern among Greek con­sumers, Zampelas explained.

“Since most of the house­holds obtain olive oil from friends or fam­ily, it is no sur­prise that con­sumers trust the olive oil mills and don’t really worry about any adul­ter­ation,” he said. ​“Even more, con­sumers seem to have con­fi­dence in the super­vis­ing author­i­ties, whereas they trust the indus­try of branded olive oil and olive oil mer­chants less.”

The major­ity of house­holds (61 per­cent) also said that they pre­fer to store olive oil in large tin con­tain­ers, pos­si­bly due to prior expe­ri­ence of buy­ing olive oil in the clas­sic 17-liter tin can­is­ters fre­quently used in Greece.

However, stor­ing olive oil in large con­tain­ers is prob­lem­atic, the researchers said, since with time the atmos­pheric oxy­gen fills the con­tain­er’s head­space and can grad­u­ally dete­ri­o­rate the qual­ity of the stored olive oil, min­i­miz­ing its health effects.

Only 38 per­cent of the respon­dents reported that they store olive oil in dark places away from sun­light and in dark-col­ored glass con­tain­ers or in con­tain­ers as sold (for branded olive oil), receiv­ing the high­est score for proper stor­age prac­tices.

“Less than four in 10 house­holds store olive oil prop­erly – in a cool and dark place and in the con­tain­ers as bought for branded prod­ucts, or in dark glass bot­tles when pur­chas­ing from fam­ily and friends,” Zampelas said. ​“This demon­strates the need to bet­ter inform Greek con­sumers.”

The sur­vey stressed the fact that most of the house­holds that par­tic­i­pated in the sur­vey exhib­ited a low level of under­stand­ing of the healthy attrib­utes of olive oil. Even more, most Greek con­sumers use bulk olive oil of dubi­ous qual­ity obtained from fam­ily and friends.

“This sur­vey con­firmed that although most Greek con­sumers use olive oil irre­spec­tive of brand, not all use extra vir­gin olive oil, which is of supe­rior value and has the poten­tial to pro­mote mul­ti­func­tional and sus­tain­able agri­cul­tural mod­els,” the researchers con­cluded.

They sug­gested that nation­wide edu­ca­tional pro­grams are nec­es­sary to fill the knowl­edge gaps about the qual­ity char­ac­ter­is­tics of olive oil, such as learn­ing to appre­ci­ate the bit­ter and pun­gent taste of extra vir­gin olive oil, since bet­ter knowl­edge was asso­ci­ated with higher con­sump­tion of extra vir­gin olive oil.

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