Experts Skeptical of Dalmia's Pomace Oil 'Discovery'

It is no longer just in the big cities of India where mod­ern health men­aces like dia­betes are a major prob­lem. The cri­sis is every­where in the coun­try as a culture’s tra­di­tion­ally starchy, sug­ary diet meets ever more seden­tary lifestyles to form a per­fect storm for a health care sys­tem on the brink.

So there is lit­tle won­der mar­keters in the coun­try that is pro­jected to soon over­take China as the world’s most pop­u­lous seize every oppor­tu­nity to high­light the health ben­e­fits of their prod­ucts, even if some claims might be a stretch.

Last September, Leonardo Olive Pomace Oil, one of India’s lead­ing brands, was served a notice by the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) to with­draw its print adver­tise­ments that claimed the prod­uct ​“helps fight cho­les­terol and heart dis­ease, low­ers blood pres­sure, con­trols and pre­vents dia­betes and fights can­cer.”

In its deci­sion, the ASCI said, ​“Pomace olive oil is pro­duced by sol­vent extrac­tion and has poly­cyclic aro­matic hydro­car­bons (PAHs) which are both muta­genic and car­cino­genic. This is con­tra­dic­tory to the claim made for olive pomace oil in fight­ing can­cer. Additionally, the health ben­e­fits of olive oil are from extra vir­gin olive oil due to its antiox­i­dant con­tent, which is not present in pomace olive oil. Hence mis­lead­ing claims are por­trayed about the ben­e­fits of con­sum­ing pomace olive oil.”

Since extra vir­gin olive oil is unre­fined, meets cer­tain chem­i­cal para­me­ters and is free of taste defects, it is widely con­sid­ered to be richer in nutri­ents than the refined grades which have under­gone indus­trial pro­cess­ing. Now, in yet another effort to lift the sta­tus of olive pomace oil, India’s largest olive oil com­pany says that’s not always the case.

In an email sent last week to the International Olive Council (IOC), VN Dalmia, chair­man of Dalmia Continental, which sells Leonardo brand oils, touted the ​“dis­cov­ery of micro-nutri­ents in olive pomace oil.” Dalmia, who is also the pres­i­dent of the Indian Olive Association, pro­duced lab reports that showed a higher amount of the com­pound toco­pherol in a sam­ple of olive pomace oil than in any of nine sam­ples of extra vir­gin olive oil tested. Dalmia pointed out that the olive pomace oil tested had no added vir­gin oil that would pre­sum­ably con­tribute some of the com­pound.

Dalmia has been crit­i­cized for focus­ing his mar­ket­ing efforts on olive pomace oil — the low­est edi­ble grade made by chem­i­cally extract­ing the last bit of oil from left­over olive pits and pulp, that is shunned by much of the world where it is rel­e­gated to use in food­ser­vice.

Speaking in April at a sem­i­nar that was part of the New York International Olive Oil Competition, Dalmia laid out what some atten­dees called con­vinc­ing rea­sons for ask­ing Indians to con­sider the grade that can’t even be legally called ​“olive oil.”

Traditional Indian cook­ing often calls for oil to be added to a hot pan, which would elim­i­nate the sought-after tastes and many of the nutri­ents in extra vir­gin olive oil. Olive pomace oil costs far less than other grades, and what Indians really need is the ​“low­est hur­dle” to a monoun­sat­u­rated fat that can replace the unhealthy polyun­sat­u­rated seed oils that have been con­tribut­ing to their early deaths, Dalmia argued.

Tocopherols are among the ben­e­fi­cial chem­i­cal com­pounds in olives and olive oil, and Dalmia cited in his email to IOC Executive Director Jean-Louis Barjol lab reports show­ing that the sam­ple of olive pomace oil had higher lev­els of both alpha- and beta-toco­pherol than the nine sam­ples of Italian extra vir­gin olive oils tested in 2012 that included the brand names Colavita, Colonna and Monini.

Barjol responded by ask­ing Dalmia for a sam­ple of the olive pomace oil that was tested so he could have an IOC lab con­duct a sep­a­rate analy­sis, but con­firm­ing the high lev­els of toco­pherol in the one, or as one chemist called ​“mirac­u­lous,” sam­ple of olive pomace oil might serve lit­tle pur­pose.

Studies have shown that polyphe­nols and micronu­tri­ents are prac­ti­cally elim­i­nated dur­ing the harsh processes of chem­i­cal refin­ing and deodor­iza­tion. ​“Tocopherol is sen­si­tive to the refin­ing process and it breaks down eas­ily,” said Selina Wang, research direc­tor of the UC Davis Olive Center.” In the same way the com­pound fights oxi­da­tion in our bod­ies, Wang explained, it spends itself quickly com­bat­ing the process dur­ing every stage of refin­ing.

Tocopherol and other com­pounds can be added artif­i­cally to olive pomace oil, though pro­duc­ers rarely go through the trou­ble. Wang said the IOC lab could see if the toco­pherol has a struc­ture that would indi­cate it was added after pro­cess­ing. Asked if such an analy­sis would be per­formed on the pomace oil sam­ple he would soon receive from Dalmia, Barjol said, ​“Pomace oils gen­er­ally con­tain higher amounts of toco­pherols than the olive oils obtained from pulp. However, dur­ing refin­ing can see sig­nif­i­cant losses of these com­pounds. That is why in this case being a refined pomace oil, we requested a cer­tifi­cate of full analy­sis to the stake­hold­ers as well as a prod­uct sam­ple in order to study it prop­erly.”

When Wang was asked if she would find it sur­pris­ing to dis­cover higher lev­els of toco­pherols in olive pomace oil than in extra vir­gin olive oils, she responded with lit­tle hes­i­ta­tion: ​“Absolutely.”

“It makes no sense,” said another chemist, olive oil expert Gino Celletti, who also noticed irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the lab reports for the extra vir­gin sam­ples Dalmia pre­sented. One sam­ple, for exam­ple, showed a per­ox­ide value so high that it would have cer­tainly resulted in the detec­tion of ran­cid­ity by taste testers, strip­ping the oil of its extra vir­gin sta­tus, yet no defects were recorded in the lab report. Celletti also ques­tioned why nine extra vir­gin olive oils were tested, but just one pomace oil.

The ele­vated level (370mg/kg) of tocophorols found in the sam­ple of olive pomace oil ​“would make any author­ity laugh,” Celletti said. ​“I have never seen a value of alfa-toco­pherols like that in a pomace oil and I do not know who could be inter­ested in eval­u­at­ing it in a refined pomace oil any­way.” Celletti said toco­pherols lev­els are reduced to just trace amounts dur­ing refin­ing.

“One of our mem­bers tested Olive Pomace Oil (OPO) in his lab and found toco­pherols at a pretty high level,” Dalmia explained. ​“It did not seem illog­i­cal because sev­eral other sol­vent-extracted refined oils have high toco­pherols,” he said. ​“Technologists here explain to me that the rea­son lies in the effi­ciency of the sol­vent extrac­tion process. It seemed log­i­cal, there­fore, that OPO should have some micro-nutri­ents too. So we decided to have a sam­ple tested in an IOC-accred­ited lab. When we got a result that indi­cated a high level of toco­pherols, I asked for an analy­sis of extra vir­gin oils in order to com­pare. So they sent me the results of extra vir­gin oils picked up ran­domly from the mar­ket.”

The Indian Olive Association issued a press release with the title ​“Generous Micro Nutrients Discovered in Olive Pomace Oil,” cit­ing the lab test on a sin­gle sam­ple of olive pomace oil which it said was ​“blast­ing myths and con­tra­dict­ing asser­tions of food writ­ers and nutri­tion­ists.”

“This pio­neer­ing inves­ti­ga­tion blows apart the mis­ap­pre­hen­sions and mis­per­cep­tions of crit­ics prov­ing them to be com­pletely and fac­tu­ally incor­rect. The hum­ble olive pomace oil actu­ally con­tains gen­er­ous quan­ti­ties of antiox­i­dants,” the release said.

The ongo­ing efforts by VN Dalmia to lift the sta­tus of olive pomace oil illus­trates his con­fi­dence that the grade will serve as the entry-level MUFA that will spark a change for 1.3 bil­lion peo­ple whose diets could use the help. However, in an indus­try rife with con­sumer con­fu­sion, what this lat­est ini­tia­tive amounts to, some experts say, is just more mis­in­for­ma­tion.