Olive Oil Health Benefits

Olive oil has long been con­sid­ered the health­i­est fat around. The Greek poet Homer called it ​“liq­uid gold,” while Hippocrates, widely con­sid­ered the father of med­i­cine, referred to it as ​“the great healer.”

However, not all olive oil is cre­ated equally. Most cel­e­brated health ben­e­fits of olive oil belong to a sin­gle grade: extra vir­gin olive oil (EVOO).

Extra vir­gin olive oil is made solely by mechan­i­cal meth­ods, with­out heat or pow­er­ful petro­chem­i­cal sol­vents used to pro­duce refined olive oil and nearly every other edi­ble oil. As a result, extra vir­gin olive oil retains the com­pounds that endow its numer­ous health ben­e­fits.

Thousands of stud­ies have been pub­lished link­ing extra vir­gin olive oil con­sump­tion with a wide range of ben­e­fits, from its well-known heart-healthy qual­i­ties to more obscure ones, such as increas­ing testos­terone in men with insuf­fi­cient lev­els.

But what is it that makes extra vir­gin olive oil bet­ter than the rest? And why exactly is Homer’s ​“liq­uid gold” good for you?

Monounsaturated fats pro­mote heart health

For thou­sands of years, the peo­ple of the Mediterranean basin have con­sumed olive oil as the main source of dietary fat.

Anecdotal evi­dence sug­gested they lived longer and health­ier lives than their ani­mal-fat-con­sum­ing neigh­bors to the north and across the Atlantic.

In 1958, Ancel Keys, a phys­i­ol­o­gist at the University of Minnesota, pos­tu­lated a cor­re­la­tion between people’s diets and the observed inci­dents of coro­nary heart dis­ease.

Keys’ land­mark Seven Countries Study was the first to sug­gest that not all dietary fats are cre­ated equal.

The study’s find­ings showed that Greeks had lower rates of heart dis­ease despite their high-fat diet, with olive oil being the main source of fat.

Other coun­tries with high-fat diets from meat had higher rates of heart dis­ease, sug­gest­ing that the type of fat con­sumed made a dif­fer­ence. The find­ings pro­pelled the Mediterranean diet to pop­u­lar­ity and fame out­side of the Mediterranean basin.

Olive oil is about 73 per­cent monoun­sat­u­rated fat by vol­ume. The other 25 per­cent is sat­u­rated fats (14 per­cent) and polyun­sat­u­rated fats (11 per­cent).

Monounsaturated fats are fat mol­e­cules with fewer hydro­gen atoms bonded to their car­bon chain and a curved dou­ble-car­bon bond, which makes them liq­uid at room tem­per­a­ture.

All fats – from sat­u­rated and trans to monoun­sat­u­rated and polyun­sat­u­rated – help the body absorb vit­a­mins and min­er­als, build cell mem­branes and are essen­tial for the mech­a­nisms that cause blood clot­ting, mus­cle move­ment and inflam­ma­tion.

Substituting sat­u­rated and trans fat with monoun­sat­u­rated fat helps to lower low-den­sity lipopro­tein (LDL) cho­les­terol, also known as ​‘bad cho­les­terol,’ which reduces the risk for heart dis­ease and stroke.

In short, the fat type of extra vir­gin olive oil is mostly com­prised is par­tially respon­si­ble for its car­dio­vas­cu­lar health ben­e­fits.

Polyphenols are the pow­er­ful antiox­i­dants that make EVOO supe­rior

While its monoun­sat­u­rated fat con­tent is cer­tainly one of the main dri­vers behind olive oil’s heart health, its myr­iad of other ben­e­fits are ascribed to its phe­no­lic con­tent.

Polyphenols are attrib­uted to 99 per­cent of olive oil’s health ben­e­fits, accord­ing to Nasir Malik, a plant phys­i­ol­o­gist at the United States Department of Agriculture’s research ser­vice.

Polyphenol is an umbrella term for a class of organic chem­i­cals found in sev­eral types of plants and works as a pow­er­ful antiox­i­dant. More than 8,000 polyphe­nols have been iden­ti­fied, and EVOO has 25 dif­fer­ent polyphe­nols.

Hundreds of stud­ies over the years have shown that polyphe­nols are respon­si­ble for a range of ben­e­fits from low­er­ing the risk of prostate and breast can­cer to mit­i­gat­ing the effects of demen­tia.

What does the lat­est research say about the health ben­e­fits of extra vir­gin olive oil?

New research on the health ben­e­fits of olive oil is con­stantly being pub­lished by both pub­licly funded and pri­vate enti­ties. We’ve included some of the most salient points below to help parse the vast amount of infor­ma­tion avail­able on the topic.

Extra vir­gin olive oil and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease

According to the World Health Organization, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease is the lead­ing cause of death glob­ally.

In 2019 alone, an esti­mated 17.9 mil­lion peo­ple died from car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases, includ­ing heart attacks and strokes. The World Health Organization esti­mated car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease was respon­si­ble for nearly one-third of global deaths that year.

However, an April 2020 study pub­lished in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology con­cluded that con­sum­ing just a half-table spoon (8.8 mil­li­liters) of olive oil daily could lower the risk of con­tract­ing heart dis­ease by 14 per­cent. Researchers arrived at this result after mon­i­tor­ing health and diet data from 93,000 adults for 24 years.

Although the researchers told Olive Oil Times that it was impos­si­ble to know what grade of olive oil the par­tic­i­pants con­sumed (i.e., refined, vir­gin or extra vir­gin), they said that the ben­e­fits were more likely to have come from EVOO.

Extra vir­gin olive oil con­sump­tion helps to lower the risk of con­tract­ing car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease in a few key ways.

EVOO improves endothe­lial func­tion

One small-scale study pub­lished by the Yale-Griffin Prevention Center at Yale University in February 2021 found that high-polyphe­nol extra vir­gin olive oil con­sump­tion improved endothe­lial func­tion in adults at risk of con­tract­ing type 2 dia­betes.

Endothelial func­tion mea­sures how well blood ves­sels expand when blood is pumped through them and is an inde­pen­dent pre­dic­tor for car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease.

The polyphe­nols in the extra vir­gin olive oil mod­u­lated oxida­tive stress in the blood ves­sels, low­er­ing inflam­ma­tion, a com­mon symp­tom in many heart dis­ease and stroke patients.

Extra vir­gin olive oil con­sump­tion reduces blood pres­sure

A sep­a­rate study from researchers in Australia found that con­sum­ing four table­spoons (60 mil­li­liters) of high-polyphe­nol extra vir­gin olive oil ​“sig­nif­i­cantly reduced” periph­eral and cen­tral sys­tolic blood pres­sure.

Previous research pub­lished in The Lancet demon­strated that low­er­ing sys­tolic blood pres­sure reduced car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, coro­nary heart dis­ease, stroke and heart fail­ure risk.

EVOO low­ers ​‘bad’ cho­les­terol and raises ​‘good’ cho­les­terol

Cholesterol is a waxy sub­stance that cir­cu­lates in the blood and helps to con­struct cells, make vit­a­mins and pro­duce hor­mones. There are two types of cho­les­terol: LDL or ​‘bad’ cho­les­terol and high-den­sity lipopro­tein (HDL) or ​‘good’ cho­les­terol.

High LDL cho­les­terol lev­els are bad for the car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem because they con­tribute to fatty buildups in the arter­ies – known as ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis – which increases the risk of heart attack and stroke.

On the other hand, HDL cho­les­terol car­ries LDL cho­les­terol away from the arter­ies and takes it to the liver to be bro­ken down and removed from the body.

As pre­vi­ously men­tioned, the monoun­sat­u­rated fat in extra vir­gin olive oil also helps to lower LDL cho­les­terol.

However, a 2015 study deter­mined that the polyphe­nols found in extra vir­gin olive oil also play a sig­nif­i­cant role by pre­vent­ing HDL cho­les­terol from being dam­aged by oxida­tive stress, which improves its abil­ity to trans­port LDL cho­les­terol away from the arte­r­ial walls.

Extra vir­gin olive oil helps reg­u­late blood glu­cose lev­els

An esti­mated 422 mil­lion peo­ple have dia­betes glob­ally. Of these, about 90 per­cent have type 2 dia­betes.

Type 2 dia­betes is caused when cells in the body do not nor­mally respond to insulin, so the pan­creas con­tin­ues to pro­duce more of it to try and elicit a response.

This causes blood sug­ars to rise to unhealthy lev­els, lead­ing to other health prob­lems such as heart dis­ease, vision loss and kid­ney dis­ease.

There is no cure for dia­betes, but extra vir­gin olive oil con­sump­tion has been linked to some ben­e­fits in dia­betic peo­ple.

A 2017 study found that par­tic­i­pants who con­sumed high lev­els of polyphe­nols had a 57 per­cent lower chance of devel­op­ing type 2 dia­betes over two to four years.

One of the rea­sons why the con­sump­tion of polyphe­nols low­ered the chances of an individual’s devel­op­ing type 2 dia­betes may be that polyphe­nols help stim­u­late insulin secre­tion, which moves sugar from the blood­stream and deposits it into cells. This keeps blood sugar lev­els sta­ble.

Furthermore, a 2017 meta-analy­sis of four cohort stud­ies com­pris­ing 15,784 par­tic­i­pants found that peo­ple who con­sumed the high­est lev­els of olive oil had a 16-per­cent reduced risk of type 2 dia­betes com­pared to those who con­sumed the low­est amounts.

Polyphenol-rich diets are linked to lower fast­ing blood sugar lev­els and higher glu­cose tol­er­ance, reduc­ing the risk of con­tract­ing type 2 dia­betes.

Olive oil and can­cer pre­ven­tion

Along with car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, can­cer is one of the lead­ing causes of death world­wide. According to the WHO, 10 mil­lion peo­ple died from can­cer in 2020.

However, land­mark research in 2015 demon­strated that oleo­can­thal, a polyphe­nol found in extra vir­gin olive oil, can dis­rupt and even kill can­cer cells.

Oleocanthal does this by caus­ing a rup­ture in part of the can­cer­ous cells, which releases an enzyme that causes the cel­l’s death with­out harm­ing healthy cells.

EVOO-based treat­ments show promise in fight­ing breast and colon can­cer

This study had a snow­balling effect in the can­cer research world and has led to the devel­op­ment of oleo­can­thal-based treat­ments against cer­tain forms of breast can­cer.

Researchers at the University of Louisiana-Monroe pre­vi­ously found that an oleo­can­thal-based treat­ment may sup­press the ini­ti­a­tion and pro­gres­sion of triple-neg­a­tive breast can­cer, the most deadly kind.

Previous epi­demi­o­log­i­cal stud­ies of Mediterranean pop­u­la­tions fol­low­ing a tra­di­tional Mediterranean diet rich in extra vir­gin olive oil found lower cases of breast can­cer and colon can­cer than other European or North American pop­u­la­tions.

A study pub­lished in 2014 demon­strated that in a lab­o­ra­tory set­ting, hydrox­y­ty­rosol, sec­oiri­doids and lig­nans, three types of polyphe­nols, inhib­ited the growth of colon can­cer cells.

The polyphe­nols did so by mim­ic­k­ing the sig­nal sent by estro­gen recep­tor β, which is the body’s nat­ural defense against the growth of can­cer cells in the colon. The dis­ease only begins to pro­lif­er­ate when the sig­nals this recep­tor sends fade.

According to the WHO, breast can­cer is the most com­mon type of can­cer and the fifth-most deadly. Colon can­cer is the third most com­mon and sec­ond most deadly.

Mediterranean diet asso­ci­ated with lower risk of blad­der and prostate can­cer

Since the dis­cov­ery of the role of polyphe­nols in fight­ing can­cer devel­op­ment in the mid-2010s, plenty of research has been ded­i­cated to the role of the Mediterranean diet in fight­ing can­cer.

Along with EVOO, the Mediterranean diet includes con­sum­ing plenty of fruits, veg­eta­bles, seeds and whole grains, many of which con­tain other polyphe­nols.

A meta-analy­sis of 13 stud­ies con­ducted in 2019 found that medium to high adher­ence to a tra­di­tional Mediterranean diet appeared to have a pro­tec­tive effect against blad­der can­cer.

While the researchers could not iso­late any par­tic­u­lar food that appeared to be hav­ing the desired effects against blad­der can­cer, experts sug­gested how the foods com­bined dur­ing diges­tion and their anti-inflam­ma­tory prop­er­ties played a role in yield­ing the results.

Consuming a Mediterranean diet has also been asso­ci­ated with a decreased risk of prostate can­cer in men. Diets high in trans fats and sat­u­rated fats lead to oxida­tive stress in blad­der cells, lead­ing to DNA dam­age. This DNA dam­age may lead to cell muta­tions, caus­ing can­cer­ous tumors.

However, the polyphe­nols found in EVOO and other foods of the Mediterranean diet have the oppo­site effect, pre­vent­ing oxida­tive stress in these cells and, there­fore the devel­op­ment of can­cer­ous tumors.

Extra vir­gin olive oil and demen­tia

Researchers warn that by 2050, more than 153 mil­lion peo­ple could have demen­tia world­wide, nearly triple that of 2019.

However, lower lev­els of demen­tia have been observed in pop­u­la­tions liv­ing in the Mediterranean region for many years.

Observational and con­trolled tri­als have shown that adher­ence to the Mediterranean diet and extra vir­gin olive oil con­sump­tion is asso­ci­ated with improved mem­ory and cog­ni­tion in the elderly.

Alzheimer’s dis­ease is the most com­mon type of demen­tia. It begins to occur when deposits of beta-amy­loid pro­teins form plaque in the brain that even­tu­ally dis­rupts nerve cell func­tions and causes neu­rons to die.

Laboratory and ani­mal exper­i­ments have both demon­strated that oleo­can­thal pro­motes the pro­duc­tion of two other pro­teins that play an impor­tant role in pre­vent­ing plaque buildup in the brain.

Further research also showed that oleo­can­thal mod­u­lates the com­ple­men­tary pep­tide C3a recep­tor 1 (C3AR1).

In Alzheimer’s patients, C3AR1 over­works and causes inflam­ma­tion that impairs the func­tion of the innate immune sys­tem. The oleo­can­thal’s anti-inflam­ma­tory prop­er­ties pre­vent C3AR1 from over­work­ing and reduce the inflam­ma­tion linked to Alzheimer’s and other neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases.

EVOO has other health ben­e­fits too

While extra vir­gin olive oil’s health ben­e­fits are most widely asso­ci­ated with mit­i­gat­ing the risk of car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease and demen­tia and pre­vent­ing can­cer, numer­ous other stud­ies show a range of ben­e­fits from its con­sump­tion for other parts of the body.

For exam­ple, a 2021 study found that fol­low­ing the Mediterranean diet may delay the onset of Parkinson’s dis­ease by up to 17 years for women and eight years for men.

Parkinson’s dis­ease is a degen­er­a­tive dis­ease of the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem that has no cure. Researchers said that the polyphe­nols found in extra vir­gin olive oil pro­tect against the dis­ease by reduc­ing oxida­tive stress in the brain.

Another study pub­lished last year showed that diets high in monoun­sat­u­rated fast, such as the Mediterranean diet, boosted testos­terone lev­els in men with insuf­fi­cient amounts. Low lev­els of testos­terone in men have been linked in pre­vi­ous stud­ies to depres­sion, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, dia­betes and demen­tia.

Researchers in Spain also pub­lished a study in 2021 that found sys­temic lupus ery­the­mato­sus patients who fol­lowed the Mediterranean diet expe­ri­enced an improve­ment in the course of the dis­ease.

Lupus, an autoim­mune dis­ease, has no cure, but patients who fol­lowed the Mediterranean diet had lower rates of obe­sity and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, both of which are com­mon comor­bidi­ties for patients.

This arti­cle sec­tion could be extended into a book, if not an ency­clo­pe­dia. Some stud­ies link adher­ence to the Mediterranean diet with lower lev­els of rheuma­toid arthri­tis in smok­ers, decreased risk of the small for ges­ta­tional age con­di­tion in new­borns, improved stress man­age­ment and restored healthy gut bac­te­ria in the diges­tive tract, which helps with weight loss.

Summing it all up

Extra vir­gin olive oil’s monoun­sat­u­rated fat con­tent and its polyphe­nols pro­vide innu­mer­able health ben­e­fits.

EVOO is the key­stone ingre­di­ent of the Mediterranean diet. It is no coin­ci­dence the eat­ing pro­gram was just named the best over­all diet for the fifth year run­ning by U.S. News & World Report.

Consuming between one and four table­spoons (18 and 70 mil­li­liters) of EVOO per day will begin to pro­vide the many health ben­e­fits asso­ci­ated with Homer’s ​“liq­uid gold.”

However, EVOO is far from a sil­ver bul­let. To enjoy its health ben­e­fits, EVOO con­sump­tion should be part of a nour­ish­ing diet along with plenty of exer­cise and other healthy lifestyle choices (i.e., drink­ing alco­hol in mod­er­a­tion, not smok­ing and find­ing ways to destress).

Where to find the best extra vir­gin olive oil

The retail finder on the Official Guide to the World’s Best Olive Oils makes it easy to find award-win­ning extra vir­gin olive oils near you or through online retail­ers.