"Olive Oil for Dummies" Seeks to Educate Consumers, Dispel Common Myths

Olive Oil for Dummies is the lat­est addi­tion to the For Dummies fran­chise, a pop­u­lar instruc­tional and ref­er­ence book series with over 6,000 titles, includ­ing 80 ded­i­cated to food and cook­ing.

Co-authors Simon Poole and Amy Riolo, who have a long his­tory of writ­ing about olive oil, said the time had come to pub­lish an easy-to-under­stand and com­pre­hen­sive resource on the topic.

Poole, a med­ical doc­tor who has exten­sively stud­ied the health ben­e­fits of olive oil, and Riolo, an award-win­ning chef spe­cial­iz­ing in cook­ing with olive oil, pre­vi­ously col­lab­o­rated on three For Dummies books about dia­betes.

“Despite its play­ful and cheeky titles, For Dummies trans­lates quite com­pli­cated sci­en­tific con­cepts in a very under­stand­able and respect­ful way to a gen­eral read­er­ship,” Poole said.

He and Riolo believe the book is a suit­able mes­sen­ger at a time when influ­encers and online com­men­ta­tors are dis­cussing the olive oil world and health ben­e­fits with their audi­ences, some­times spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion.

“It was really impor­tant to give a gen­eral audi­ence a broad per­spec­tive on some of the detailed sci­ence and also to pro­vide them with some won­der­ful recipes,” Poole said.

“We wanted to write that one book that could be a resource for every­body,” Riolo added.

The co-authors cred­ited Leandro Ravetti, the head of the Australia-based Modern Olives tech­ni­cal team and co-chief exec­u­tive of Cobram Estate, for his role as the book’s tech­ni­cal edi­tor.

“He is so widely respected in the olive oil world,” Poole said. ​“We have been very for­tu­nate to have his input and that of the other experts at the Olive Wellness Institute.”

Olive Oil for Dummies cov­ers sim­i­lar ground to an intro­duc­tory olive oil course in 288 pages. It includes infor­ma­tion about olive oil grades, dif­fer­ent pro­duc­tion meth­ods, his­tory and lore, health ben­e­fits, com­mon myths, tips for buy­ing and stor­ing olive oil, and 40 recipes.

Poole and Riolo empha­sized that the book will pro­vide plenty of prac­ti­cal advice for con­sumers who may know lit­tle, if any­thing, about olive oil.

“We have a whole chap­ter on the labels, how to read them and what peo­ple should look for,” Riolo said.

For exam­ple, the chap­ter explains the rel­e­vance of har­vest dates and why they are more infor­ma­tive than expi­ra­tion or best-before dates.

The authors also address the dif­fer­ent types of qual­ity cer­tifi­cates, includ­ing geo­graph­i­cal indi­ca­tions and those admin­is­tered by trade groups.

The chap­ter fur­ther dis­cusses what organic olive oil means and defines com­mon but con­fus­ing pre­fixes, such as ​‘light’ and ​‘first cold pressed,’ explain­ing their lack of rel­e­vance com­pared to ​‘extra vir­gin,’ and ​‘vir­gin.’

Another chap­ter explains how dif­fer­ent trans­port and stor­age con­di­tions impact olive oil qual­ity over time, advis­ing con­sumers to store it in a cool, dark place.

Poole and Riolo also spent con­sid­er­able time dis­pelling com­mon myths about olive oil in mul­ti­ple sec­tions of the book so read­ers would not be able to miss them.

Among the main ones is that olive oil can­not be used for fry­ing. ​“That’s the big one: you can’t fry with olive oil or cook with olive oil; it can only be used raw,” said Riolo, point­ing out that olive oil is safe to fry up to 410 ºF (210 ºC). ​“We don’t need to fry at tem­per­a­tures above about 385 ºF (196 ºC),” she added.

The authors clar­i­fied this point in a sec­tion on dis­pelling myths and a sec­tion about cook­ing. ​“We were wor­ried that if we just put it in one place, peo­ple would miss it,” Riolo said.

Another myth the authors work to dis­pel is that fol­low­ing the Mediterranean diet is expen­sive.

“It’s quite nice to illus­trate that, for exam­ple, that a good qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil is often a sim­i­lar amount to what peo­ple spend on a bot­tle of wine they might con­sume in an evening,” Poole said.

“But to get the rec­om­mended amount of extra vir­gin olive oil a day to achieve the Mediterranean diet, it costs less than a cou­ple of cups of cof­fee from your favorite cof­fee house a week,” he added.

While Poole and Riolo ded­i­cate most of the book to inform­ing curi­ous con­sumers, no book about olive oil is com­plete with­out a cook­ing sec­tion.

“All of the recipes use olive oils from all of the con­ti­nents,” Poole said. ​“We use indi­vid­ual oils and briefly describe them. Of course, we say that you can use other olive oil. Still, we like high­light­ing and cit­ing exam­ples of great qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils from var­i­ous places world­wide and acknowl­edge their pro­duc­ers.”

Poole and Riolo dis­cuss the dif­fer­ent olive vari­eties in the con­text of cook­ing, high­light­ing the range of cul­ti­vars grown across the olive oil world and their dis­tinc­tive organolep­tic qual­i­ties.

“We try to get the heavy hit­ters from all coun­tries that pro­duce olive oil,” Riolo said. ​“This shows the impact that olive oil has in the world and not just here where it orig­i­nated.”

Ultimately, Poole and Riolo hope that Olive Oil for Dummies, which goes on sale in October and is already avail­able for pre-order, will be an acces­si­ble entry point for any­one inter­ested in olive oil.

“We are intro­duc­ing our read­ers to how to taste at home; how to become famil­iar with the dif­fer­ent tastes of extra vir­gin olive oil and rec­og­nize an oil that’s lam­pante from one that tastes good,” Poole con­cluded.