Episode 15 - Food Is Medicine: The Benefits of Olive Oil
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Episode Summary
Managing inflammation and back pain goes beyond taking medication and undergoing surgeries or therapy. It requires overhauling your lifestyle to one that will support your healing, which involve taking care of your mental well-being, regular exercise, and a nutrition-dense diet. One of the food plans that is known for its anti-inflammatory benefits is the Mediterranean Diet, of which olive oil is a key component.
In this episode of Back Talk Doc, Dr. Sanjiv Lakhia speaks to Mary Mori, director for technical services at California Olive Ranch on olive oil. She talks about the olive fruit itself, the different methods of making olive oil and its different variants and how to store it properly in your pantry.
Mary recommends using extra virgin olive oil, for its naturally occurring phenols, as well as the presence of antioxidants, unsaturated fats and fatty acids. These contribute to the anti-inflammatory, cardiovascular and skin benefits that olive oil brings. Additionally, she gives tips on how you can use olive oil in your day-to-day life. Besides cooking with it and adding it to smoothies and ice cream, you can include it in your skincare routine as an exfoliant or moisturizer.
There are many advantages to incorporating olive oil in your everyday diet to minimize inflammation, without adding toxic medications to your body.
Key Moments in the Episode
Process of making olive oil - 07:49
Life cycle of an olive - 11:28
Difference between black and green olives - 12:35
Difference between the fruit and olive oil in terms of taste - 14:02
Regions famous for olive gardens and high-quality olive oil - 15:22
How to determine the quality of the olive oil - 16:57
How to store olive oil - 19:36
Explaining the dates on olive oil bottles - 21:05
Extra virgin olive oil - 22:52
Phenol content in olive oil for health - 26:01
Olive oil's anti-inflammatory benefits - 28:19
Benefits of eating whole olives - 29:53
How to adopt olive oil in your diet - 31:21
Avocado oil as a great alternative - 33:10
Benefits of replacing you roil with olive oil - 33:34
Personal tips to stay healthy - 35:33
Links Mentioned in the Episode
California Olive Ranch
California Olive Ranch Instagram
California Olive Ranch Facebook page
Back Talk Doc: The Recommended Diet to Reduce Inflammation
Back Talk Doc is brought to you by Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates, with offices in North and South Carolina. To learn more about Dr. Lakhia and treatment options for back and spine issues, go to backtalkdoc.com. To schedule an appointment with Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates, you can call us at 1-800-344-6716 or visit our website at carolinaneurosurgery.com.
Managing inflammation and back pain goes beyond taking medication and undergoing surgeries or therapy. It requires overhauling your lifestyle to one that will support your healing, which involve taking care of your mental well-being, regular exercise, and a nutrition-dense diet. One of the food plans that is known for its anti-inflammatory benefits is the Mediterranean Diet, of which olive oil is a key component.
In this episode of Back Talk Doc, Dr. Sanjiv Lakhia speaks to Mary Mori, director for technical services at California Olive Ranch on olive oil. She talks about the olive fruit itself, the different methods of making olive oil and its different variants and how to store it properly in your pantry.
Mary recommends using extra virgin olive oil, for its naturally occurring phenols, as well as the presence of antioxidants, unsaturated fats and fatty acids. These contribute to the anti-inflammatory, cardiovascular and skin benefits that olive oil brings. Additionally, she gives tips on how you can use olive oil in your day-to-day life. Besides cooking with it and adding it to smoothies and ice cream, you can include it in your skincare routine as an exfoliant or moisturizer.
There are many advantages to incorporating olive oil in your everyday diet to minimize inflammation, without adding toxic medications to your body.
Key Moments in the Episode
Process of making olive oil - 07:49
Life cycle of an olive - 11:28
Difference between black and green olives - 12:35
Difference between the fruit and olive oil in terms of taste - 14:02
Regions famous for olive gardens and high-quality olive oil - 15:22
How to determine the quality of the olive oil - 16:57
How to store olive oil - 19:36
Explaining the dates on olive oil bottles - 21:05
Extra virgin olive oil - 22:52
Phenol content in olive oil for health - 26:01
Olive oil's anti-inflammatory benefits - 28:19
Benefits of eating whole olives - 29:53
How to adopt olive oil in your diet - 31:21
Avocado oil as a great alternative - 33:10
Benefits of replacing you roil with olive oil - 33:34
Personal tips to stay healthy - 35:33
Links Mentioned in the Episode
California Olive Ranch
California Olive Ranch Instagram
California Olive Ranch Facebook page
Back Talk Doc: The Recommended Diet to Reduce Inflammation
Back Talk Doc is brought to you by Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates, with offices in North and South Carolina. To learn more about Dr. Lakhia and treatment options for back and spine issues, go to backtalkdoc.com. To schedule an appointment with Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates, you can call us at 1-800-344-6716 or visit our website at carolinaneurosurgery.com.
Intro: 00:01
Welcome. You're listening to Back Talk Doc, where you'll find answers to some of the most common questions about back pain and spine health, brought to you by Carolina Neurosurgery and Spine Associations where providing personalized, highly skilled and compassionate spine care has been our specialty for over 75 years. And now, it's time to understand the cause of back pain and learn about options to get you back on track. Here is your Back Talk Doc, Dr. Sanjiv Lakhia.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 00:32
One of the pleasures I've had in putting together the Back Talk Doc podcast for you guys who are listening, is really connecting with people both in my industry and outside of my industry. For those of you new to the podcast, again my name is Sanjiv Lakhia, and I'm a board-certified physiatrist, a specialist in spine care, and I have always worn a health and wellness hat, and really am passionate about sharing health and wellness tips with my patients.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 01:00
On today's show, we have the pleasure of interviewing an individual who is an expert on the topic of olive oil. Today, I welcome to the show Mary Mori. Listeners, let me give you a little background about how Mary and I got connected. As I said before, I'm currently a fellow in the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine fellowship program, and we've been going through the nutritional modules, particularly the Anti-Inflammatory Food Plan. It was during that coursework, I began to research some of the benefits of olive oil. I just looked in my pantry and cabinets, and noticed that we had been using a California Olive Ranch olive oil really for quite some time.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 01:42
It found its way into our pantry years ago, and it's our preferred product. So, I decided just to look them up and send out an email just to learn a little more about the science of the olive oil that they produce. I was really pleased to be connected with Mary, and they even sent me out a couple of bottles, which I've been able to sample and just really enjoy. I feel like a breakdown of olive oil is an important topic for listeners who deal with any sort of pain. You may be wondering why are we going to talk about olive oil when this is a show about back pain.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 02:10
As you've heard me say many times before, food is medicine and I really promote an anti-inflammatory food plan and lifestyle. I think it can correlate directly with reduced pain levels. Olive oil should be a staple of that food plan. Without further ado, let's go ahead and begin our interview.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 02:29
Mary has an interesting background. She's been in the food industry for 13 years, eight years in the olive oil industry, and is currently the Director of Technical Services for California Olive Ranch. In her role, she manages quality, compliance, research, and new product development, and has a key role in developing compliance for the olive oil industry. Prior to California Olive Ranch, she's had experience in the tomato and consumer packaged goods industry, and has a lot of knowledge in quality assurance, regulatory compliance, and implemented food safety systems for various regulatory requirements.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 03:03
Yes, folks I am reading her bio. It is extensive. I could not do this off the top of my head. She's one smart woman. She knows her stuff about food, oils, dressings, sauces, herb rubs, granola. She has a degree from UC Davis, a degree in food science. So, welcome to the show, Mary.
Mary Mori: 03:19
Thank you. Thank you for having me today.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 03:20
Elaborate for our listeners a little more on just your background and kind of your path to becoming Director of Technical Services at California Olive Ranch.
Mary Mori: 03:30
Yeah. For me, California Olive Ranch, I really started about eight years ago, a little over eight years ago, as a QA Manager. For those of you who don't what that is, it's a Quality Assurance Manager, and really was in charge of all of the quality regulatory auditing, laboratory testing for the company. Pre that, I worked in a few different food companies, as Sanjiv had said, studying food science, and really had a passion for food. My passion was really around food and kind of finding a company where it was fully integrated, from the farming to the finished product. That's what really drove me to California Olive Ranch.
Mary Mori: 04:10
We grow the olives. We meld the olives to the oil, and then we bottle it and sell that. It was really something that I loved about it. Over the eight years that I've been here, as really been growing in my role, I started at the company when we were less than 50 employees. It was a really small family operation of sorts in California farming. Over the time as we've grown, and as the product has grown, and our consumers have grown, really has helped me kind of fall into this new role of managing the full Department of Technical Services, which encompasses quality assurance, our laboratory and testing, our product innovation and new products, and our R&D team.
Mary Mori: 04:50
The biggest thing that I've been able to contribute to over the last probably four to five years is heavily in our industry. We're very industry-involved. It's very important to us to have the regulations and the transparency in our industry. So, we've been leading up a lot of the commission work with the Olive Oil Commission of California authoring and helping write the quality and sensory standards for our California industry, as well as being very involved in other industry-related events really has helped me learn even more about our product and the quality of olive oil out there.
Mary Mori: 05:24
As we've grown and had our products with importing oils from other countries, really working with those companies, working with our family farmers in Chile, Argentina, Portugal, and kind of making it... It's really like a partnership. It's almost like an extension of us, and that's been really fun over the years of just learning from them and teaching them what we know. That's kind of how we've become what I am now today at California Olive Ranch.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 05:48
All right, tell our listeners a little bit more about California Olive Ranch, and its core products. Give us a sense of kind of the scope of the company, and as it pertains to other companies within the industry. Are you guys small, medium, large?
Mary Mori: 06:02
ure, we're considered on the larger size now as we've been growing. We are California farmers, with a deep connection of the land. We do have our own ranches, and work with other family farmers in California. We were founded in 1998, over 20 years ago, by Spanish families that had a new way of creating olive oil. They wanted to bring it to the United States. We have a unique way in how we grow. We grow our olive trees much closer. They look a little different. They look more like bushes, kind of wine grapes are grown on trellises, but it was kind of a unique way of bringing innovation to the industry in the United States.
Mary Mori: 06:39
This has allowed us to mechanically harvest, and that was really kind of our evolution here. Then as we've grown over the years with the imports and the different products that we offer, and with our sister brand, we have grown to a larger size. We're kind of more diverse, but we enjoy that side of it because it allows us to provide a very diverse product, different products for different needs to all the consumers. We are the number four brand out on the market in the olive oil category, and the number one best selling olive oil over the last two years.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 07:09
Which is what? Which one of your product line is the number one best seller?
Mary Mori: 07:13
That is one of our Destination series. We call it our Everyday Blend, which it's a balance of kind of... What the Everyday for us means is really just a balanced flavor, so you can use it on anything. It has the health properties of olive oil, but also it's not going to be intrusive on flavor, but it will have some flavor.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 07:32
Okay, and that's the one I keep in my pantry and we use it basically on everything. All right, so let's get down to some basics here. Most individuals, myself included, really have no idea how olive oil is made and processed. Can you kind of walk us through a simplified version of how olive oil is made?
Mary Mori: 07:49
Yeah, and it's kind of funny because it is very simple. The complexity comes into there's a lot of detail in the processing side of monitoring and maintaining different things, but it is a very fundamentally simple process. It's very similar to, if you think about orange juice, it's fruit grown on trees, and a lot of the process is monitoring that and seeing how the fruit is growing over time on the tree. And then when it's ready to be picked, you pick it, we take it to our mill, and then the fruit is pressed or crushed to release all the oil. Then it gets centrifuged, so then the oil separates from the other byproducts, we call them is the olive and skin pits, which we call pumice.
Mary Mori: 08:31
Then we have our oil, and then we have water, which is the leftover moisture from the fruit. The pumice then goes back into the fields to help with our soil, and goes along with some regenerative agriculture practices we follow, as well as it's sold to animal feed. The water is then filtered back into irrigation ponds for the trees. Then the end product, the olive oil, gets stored into tanks, and that's what we bottle.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 08:58
Okay, wow. So, pretty self-sustaining process it sounds like. Not a lot of waste for that process.
Mary Mori: 09:03
Yeah, and a lot of it is important to us. About 20% of an olive is actually oil. So, most of what we are harvesting is not the finished product, not the olive oil that you guys consume. So, it's in our best interest to reuse what we can of that 80% that's left over in a meaningful way that will go back to the land, go back to the animals, to be sustainable and not be just another thing added to a pile somewhere.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 09:32
Is it accurate to say olive oil is a form of basically fruit juice?
Mary Mori: 09:37 Yes. That is typically how we describe olive oil, is similar to a fruit juice, like you would orange juice or apple juice. It's the juice of an olive.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 09:47
Okay, so that's a pretty good description of how the olive oil is made. Are there other different kind of manufacturing processes that people should be aware of?
Mary Mori: 09:56
Yeah, what's different is not as much in the manufacturing. There are different ways you can crush, different crushers you can use to get different results. But what's more different is actually in the growing side of things. There's a method called the traditional method of growing trees, where there's 35 to 40 feet between each tree. That's what you would think. If you think of an olive tree and an olive orchard, you see trees and they're very separate.
Mary Mori: 10:21
There are other methods. What we use is more of a modern method, which is called super high density, where the trees were planted intentionally very close to each other. There's a lot more trees per acre, and they end up looking more like bushes or like grapes grown on a trellis system. The difference there is allowing us to have a harvester go over the trees, versus a traditional method. You can't have a harvester go over that tree, so they're all hand harvested. They're more labor intensive, but they do still produce a good quality olive oil. But in our method, we're able to harvest quicker, harvest more olives at a time, get them to the mill faster, and maintain that quality.
Mary Mori: 11:00
So, the most important thing is the second the olive comes off the tree is when the clock starts ticking and you need to get the oil out of that olive as fast as possible to maintain the quality.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 11:11
It sounds like you're telling me that social distancing for olive trees is not so good.
Mary Mori: 11:16
Yes, exactly.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 11:18
Okay, very good. Talk to me a little bit about kind of the life cycle of an olive. Also, hit on if you can for our listeners, the difference between black and green olives.
Mary Mori: 11:28
Definitely. Here in California, the tree bloom takes place around spring, around March time. What spring bloom means, is that's when the flowers start growing off the tree, and that's really when the lifecycle starts. Once blooms starts, small little olives start to grow and it takes a few months for those grow. Then what we, with all of the data that we track, is around June/July is what we call Pit Hardening, where the olive is really starting to take form. It's a green fruit on the tree.
Mary Mori: 11:56
Starting at that time, we test and we monitor regularly to find the right time to harvest because there's an optimal time to harvest for flavor, for quantity, for all these sorts of things, for ease of processing, and it's dictated based on what you at the mill want out of your crop. What we would typically do is we look for a certain color. The olives will change color as they grow, and we want to look for a certain color that gives us indication of when the fruit is at optimal maturity to start harvesting, and then we harvest them. Olives start green, and they all go through a color change called veraison. It goes from green to purple.
Mary Mori: 12:36
It all depends on when you harvest them what color they are, and if you leave them on the tree long enough they will all turn purple and be that color. The interesting fact you bring up the black olives. Black olives are actually an invention out of California brining. So, there's a chemical that they add to certain brined olives, and it was actually invented in California back in I believe the '40s where they add lye. They would take yellowish to purple olives, and you add lye and it changes the color to a black olive and gives it that distinctive black olive taste.
Mary Mori: 13:08
There's the same thing, you can have a Kalamata olive. Typically, they harvest them purple, and that's why they look purple in the jar. You have the olives that you use for martinis, where they're green. They're intentionally harvesting those really early. In olive oil production, we like a balance because that color very much dictates the natural taste that the oil is going to have, and the amount of phenols that are going to be in the oil. So, we pay close attention to that color. We want a mixture of green and purple in our fruit for the different parameters we're looking for in oil.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 13:38
So why is it that I can take your olive oil and enjoy it on pretty everything, but if you asked me to eat black or green olives whole, I just can't do it. I just can't stand the taste. I can't put them on salads. No matter how hard I try, I can't train my pallette. Are they more bitter? What's the difference between the whole fruit and the fruit juice?
Mary Mori: 14:02
Yeah, they are very different. It's funny, my husband's the same way where he loves olive oil, but he hates olives themselves. It is very distinctive. Olives are inherently very bitter. So, if you actually tried to eat an olive off the tree, your face would pucker more than it ever did with a lime. It is just bitter. It's that bitterness that we are not attuned to, and we're inherently not designed to like their flavors.
Mary Mori: 14:29
The table olives, that we call the brined olives, you can enjoy and want to put on a salad. Brine them with vinegar or salt to cut around a lot of that bitterness so that they're a little more edible. But then you have to really like more of the acidic flavors, and some people don't really like that high acidity that olives or pickled peppers, things like that have, because there's a lot more salt and vinegar, and you end up getting more of that flavor than you do get of the olive flavor. In olive oil, you really get the olive flavor without all that harsh extra bitterness.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 15:05
Yeah, okay that makes sense. All right, so we know now that California has olive gardens. In the wine industry, most people know that there're regions in the world where great wines are developed. What are the regions in the world that are famous for olive gardens and producing high quality olive oil?
Mary Mori: 15:22
It's a fun thing. It's very similar to the wine industry, but really great tasting olive oil can come from anywhere in the world. We've pride ourself in California that we make great olive oil here, but it is really all over the world. Since biblical times, as far back as 4500 BC, olives have been grown. It's been a root of the Mediterranean Diet in Italy, Spain, Greece. One of the main promotions of the Mediterranean Diet is the olive oil and olives in that diet.
Mary Mori: 15:50
Italy is very well known for their good quality olive oil, but so is South America. It really comes down to the climate. It's that Mediterranean climate. In the southern hemisphere, Argentina and Chile are very similar climate structure where olives actually grow really well, and it's increasing their... Just Argentina produces some of the best Malbec wines, they're starting to produce some of the best olive oil.
Mary Mori: 16:16
Someone once told me that where wine flows the olives grow, and it really is true.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 16:22
I'll tell you what, you get great tasting olive oil, red wine, chocolate. This is why I recommend the Mediterranean Diet. It's got nothing to do with the health benefits. These are delicious foods. All right, so very good. Moving on here, let's talk a little bit about how a consumer can tell if the quality of the olive oil they've purchased is any good. Maybe you can touch a little bit on things like tasting tips, shelf life, aging, storage. Lastly, when you're done with that, I want to really hit on some of the concerns that have been out there in the media about doctored up olive oil and poor quality olive oil.
Mary Mori: 16:57
I'd love to emphasize here, when I get asked this question, of how can I determine the quality of my olive oil. What can you control is a consumer, and there is a lot that goes into it, that myself as a producer, manages and maintains in terms of the different chemistry. But not everybody has a spectrometer out there at their house to be able to do the testing that we do. So, I really like to focus on educating people in how you can actually detect it, and it really comes down to the taste, of really learning how to taste olive oil.
Mary Mori: 17:30
We have some tasting tips we call the Four S's, which is called smell, sip, swirl, swallow, which is very similar again if you have ever experienced wine tasting. It's very similar. What's interesting about this is part of it is really to get the aroma, the taste, and swallowing to get the bitterness. There's three characteristics in tasting an oil. The aroma really tells you a huge story about it of the varietals are, and the aroma is really where you're going to detect quality. If you taste something that you can experience at home, is like smell crayons.
Mary Mori: 18:04
If the oil smells like a crayon, that means that it's rancid. Or if you have some stale walnuts or almonds at home in your pantry, if you smell that and then you smell your oil and it smells the same, that oftentimes means it's rancid, that it's been not stored well, or it's an older in age. That's the oil that's not going to harm you if you eat that, but it's not going to taste good and it's not going to help accentuate what you're cooking, and really make you feel good about what you're eating. The taste and the swallowing is very important, because that gets down to the bitterness and the pungency.
Mary Mori: 18:38
A more bitter and pungent oil, typically we say is actually higher in phenol content, which phenols are the big claim to fame of why olive oil is so good for you, the phenol content of the oil. So, you do want to have some of that bitterness and pungency in an oil. That will actually tell you that it is a higher quality oil that has some good phenols to it. A good oil, I explained a lot of the defects that you would find, but a really good oil you want to be able to taste green apples or green grass going out to your garden when you freshly cut your grass. That smell, you want to find that in an oil. It's very typical of certain varieties.
Mary Mori: 19:16
A banana, you want to be able to find these notes that remind you of other pleasant smelling and tasting foods, and that's a good thing about olive oil.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 19:26
Okay, so you mentioned there about the storage. I've seen many a person, when I go over to people's homes, have their bottle of olive oil right out by their stove. Is that a good place to keep it?
Mary Mori: 19:36
It's not. Contrary to wine, olive oil does not get better with age, and there's really special controls that consumers can do better at in storing it at home. Your best storage for olive oil is going to be in a cool, dark place. Typically, I always recommend a pantry or your spice cabinet, where it's away from the heat, away from the direct heat. Whenever you're cooking on your stove, that heat is going to resonate and cause that oil to go rancid faster. We also recommend buying the size of the bottle, because it's really important, the size of the bottle that works for you and your family.
Mary Mori: 20:10
Myself and my husband, we go through about a small sized bottle that we sell 16 ounces. We go through one bottle every two weeks. But I prefer to buy that small bottle because over time, every time you open that bottle, you're introducing more oxygen. So, really wanting to control the heat, the oxygen and the light exposure to that oil by buying smaller bottles, and going through them quicker, you're not exposing it as much to that oxygen. If you buy a one liter bottle, and you use that over four months, you're constantly reopening that bottle and exposing it to oxygen, which will make it go rancid faster and cause free radicals to grow, which aren't as great for you.
Mary Mori: 20:47
There's a lot to do with that. Sometimes, it sounds good to buy bulk, but if your family isn't living and consuming quickly bulk then maybe it's better to buy the smaller size.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 20:58
Explain to listeners about the date that is put on the bottle. It's not necessarily an expiration date, is it?
Mary Mori: 21:05
Well, there's two. We typically on our products, we put two dates. One is what we call the Harvest Date, and that's a really important date because that'll show you the freshness of the oil because olive oil doesn't get better with age. Ideally, you want the fresher oil possible. So, this year you don't want to be buying oil that says, 2016 Harvest or 2017 Harvest, because that's very old. You'll look for a bottle that has a harvest date. We also put a Best By date. The Best By date is really helping to show from the bottle date how long this oil will still be extra virgin olive oil and good quality for an extent of time. So, you're really wanting to look for both dates.
Mary Mori: 21:44
The Best By date isn't going to be... It's a little different for our product, where most Best By dates are given because the food can go really bad or it could harm you if you eat it after that. In olive oil, it's a little different. It's not that it's going to harm you if you accidentally consume olive oil after it's Best By date, it's just not going to be as fresh. It's going to start going rancid. It's going to start getting defective, because no matter what, if you stored it perfectly, over time the oil is just going to change.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 22:11
Okay, so that makes a lot of sense. The take home there is don't necessarily buy big containers of the olive oil. Just kind of gauge your usage so you're not having to store the olive oil for so long. You mentioned during your conversation a couple of keywords. You talked about phenols. We talked about the phrase, "extra virgin olive oil." Let's get into a little more of the science and health benefits of olive oil. Part of the discussion, this is where I think it can be so applicable to my patients and people who are listening today if they're considering switching from a canola oil or other vegetable oil to olive oil.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 22:46
Let's start with the term, "extra virgin olive oil." Can you define that for our listeners, and why that's important?
Mary Mori: 22:52
Yeah, there're different grades. Extra virgin really is a grade for us. What a grade means, it's similar to if you think about when you buy meat. You have Grade A, Grade B, USDA Grade, and it all happens to be with just what has been deciphered, what does it mean in quality. For us, an extra virgin category, there is a standard out there in California that's regulated, that dictates this, but depending on where you grow your product there is a varying different standard. For instance, Europe has their own different standard. Just slightly different.
Mary Mori: 23:23
Ultimately, they're all relatively the same, but have slightly different variations. What extra virgin really means, is its more premium. It's typically more of the healthier oils. The ultimate change there is that extra virgin olive oil means it's free of any defect, there's certain chemistry parameters. There are nine different chemistry parameters that we have to test to dictate that grade, but it really does come down to the sensories. Free from defect has pleasant taste and some bitterness and pungency.
Mary Mori: 23:50
There's another grade called Virgin, which is a grade lower, where it'll have some defects. The last grade in the olive oil category is really something we call Crude or Lamponte. Those are really considered not fit for human consumption, moreso of the fact that they usually have a defect taste to them that's very overpowering that needs to get refined out of them.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 24:12
Okay, that's interesting. I didn't know that there's that many grades of the olive oil. But it does behoove people to look at the extra virgin grade if they can?
Mary Mori: 24:20
Yes, and that's what I like to say is really, if you're looking to consume olive oil for the health benefits, it really is look at the grade. If you want to consume olive oil and have it be something that you're finding food is nutrition and for purpose, extra virgin is the category you're going to want to go for. Not a refined olive oil or something else that you see out there, because what happens in the refining process is the olive oil will still be there... One of the most fundamental facts about olive oil is the fatty acid composition. That's the mono and saturated fats, the polyunsaturated fats that they talk about. Oleic acid, for instance, that's good about olive oil.
Mary Mori: 24:59
That will stay the same. But during the refining process, it actually removes the phenols, and in extra virgin olive oil, in those grades that I described, is the only product that will actually have phenols in it naturally occurring. The phenols are really what help, and are associated to the most research of why olive oil is so beneficial to your diet, having to do with the anti-inflammatory benefits, the cardiovascular benefits, skin benefits, is really coming down to those phenols and antioxidants in the oil.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 25:28
I've talked on this show before about a company called ConsumerLabs.com, where they do third party independent testing to look at quality of nutritional supplements. They do have a write up on olive oil products on the market, where they go in and kind of break down the phenol content and have a range. They kind of assign a number, like a 100, 200, 400, 600. Is that number relevant or important in one, that as a consumer, I should care about knowing from olive oil that I consume on a day to day basis in your opinion?
Mary Mori: 26:01
It's tough. It's a big debate in consumers in our industry. What I would personally recommend is it's not as important for you to know that number, because it's arbitrary. There're many methods out there to test phenols, so it depends on what method was used to test it, as well as there's no rule of thumb really out there of how many phenol content is actually good for you. We just know it's certain foods out there that are high phenol content. We know that phenols are good for you, we just don't know at what level.
Mary Mori: 26:31
What I recommend to consumers, instead of worrying about that number, is if you really want to eat an oil and consume an oil in your diet purposefully get that phenol attribute, is you want to look for an oil that has a more robust taste because that more bitterness, the pungency, that is actually the phenols doing that to you, where it tastes a little more bitter, it burns your throat a little bit. Those are all really good things, and that means there're more phenols in the oil, which in turn you're going to be consuming those higher phenolic oils that are going to give you more of that phenolic health attribute.
Mary Mori: 27:04
The downfall to that is not everybody enjoys bitter taste, so you have to go into it knowing you might be consuming something that the bitterness you have to get used to.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 27:14
Yeah, but I think when you put it in the context of your food and other flavors from the food, that it certainly can become... You can train your taste to enjoy it, and even look forward to it. What was the name of the specialty blend that you guys sent me?
Mary Mori: 27:30
Our higher product, I believe, it was the Miller's Blend, where it has a higher phenolic content in it, attributed mostly to the varietal, the Arbosana and Koroneiki that are in those.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 27:41
Yeah, so I took that and I put it into a five teaspoon holder that you can get from the pharmacy for liquids to give your kids. I kind of did a little shot of that, and swished it in my mouth, and chewed it, and let it get into the back of my throat. I will tell you, wow, that had a strong kind of peppery sensation that was... I just found it very powerful. It kind of opened up my sinuses and was amazing. That would be a sign of a very healthy olive oil, would it not?
Mary Mori: 28:11
Yes, that is correct.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 28:13
Yeah, so that one was great. Also, just for the listeners' benefits, does olive oil have anti-inflammatory benefits?
Mary Mori: 28:19
Yeah, there's been actually a lot of research out there showing olive oil acts very similar to Ibuprofen. It was interesting you mentioned about in your background of helping bodies and the pain, where Ibuprofen a lot of times people will diagnose and say, "Oh, take some Ibuprofen. Take some pain medicine." Well, olive oil is found to be very commonly an alternative of food as your medicine counter to that. One of those interesting things would be if you ever actually mixed Ibuprofen with water and drank it, that bitterness, that robustness you were describing in your throat, you would get the same effect because it's the same similar compounds: the oleocanthal in olive oil is very similar to what is used in making Ibuprofen.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 29:07
Now that just made my episode. That's a very interesting tidbit. Folks, I hope you're listening and writing that down. Again, it doesn't make any sense if your body is in a state of inflammation to really overburden it with toxic medications if you can avoid it beyond a short term course. Living a lifestyle, and that's what we're talking about, it's a lifestyle that's healthy and based upon good nutritional intakes will definitely serve you well. So, just another feather in the cap for olive oil here.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 29:37
All right, so Mary you've covered quite a bit of information. I think it's been very informative for our listeners, and I appreciate that. A couple of other questions that I want to kind of wrap up, and then we'll get to the end. Can you get the same health benefits by simply eating whole olives?
Mary Mori: 29:53
Regretfully, no. While olives are very healthy, if you tried to eat them off the tree, you could potentially. But they're so overbearing that nobody really would ever want to eat a fresh olive off the tree like you would an apple, or an orange. What they end up doing is, we call them Table Olives. You take those olives and you brine them. While the olive will still have that fatty acid composition, it'll have some protein, it'll have the mono and polyunsaturated fats, some of the phenols.
Mary Mori: 30:21
But when you brine an olive, you do lose some of those health benefits because it does mute the phenol content as well as you increase the salt, where the olive will be healthy but in order to consume the insane amount of health benefits that olive oil would have, you'd have to consume a lot of olives. In consuming those olives, you're also consuming a lot of salt, which isn't as great. You do need some salt in your diet, but having too much salt will actually counteract what those phenols would do to your blood, and actually cause hypertension.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 30:55
That makes sense. I think the taste of whole olives is self-limiting. No, you can't really make it a huge staple of your diet. What are some great ways to kind of integrate olive oil into a nutrition plan? So, if people are listening out there and they're thinking, "You know what, I want to really have more olive oil, but I don't cook Mediterranean. I'm not a good cook or chef. I'm pretty limited in my skill set," what are some ways that people can start to adopt the practice of purchasing and using olive oil?
Mary Mori: 31:21
Yeah, I love to recommend is really think about it as... Use it on everything, and cook with it often. There is this myth out there that you can't fry with olive oil, but a good quality olive oil is actually very good for frying, and you do get those same health benefits. So, I always recommend breakfast. You fry an egg with it, instead of butter. Add it to your smoothies. Or, make pancakes with olive oil instead of butter. There's great recipes out there for that. Lunch, with a salad, with toast and with some tomatoes with some vinegar. Really, it can be used on anything throughout your dinner and your snacks, if you snack.
Mary Mori: 31:59
Dessert, we have so many options and recipes on our website. An example of desserts, we do say it sounds crazy, some people think that putting olive oil on your ice cream, but you've got to try it and then you'll really understand why we say that. One I love personally at our house is we do strive to have a healthy lifestyle diet, and sometimes you just need something that'll satisfy that need. We'll do popcorn. It's a small little snack, and instead of cooking popcorn in butter, we throw olive oil on it, and it tastes near identical.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 32:30
Okay, I'm smiling now because after I talked with you before, I went off my Mediterranean Diet for one night, and had some vanilla ice cream while my wife and kids were staring at me, pouring the olive oil on it. I got to tell you, it was really delicious. It was a somewhat of a unique combination of the sweet and then the olive oil, a little pepperyness. Now, if you would tell me it would negate all the negative effects of ice cream, then I might buy stock in the company. It's an interesting, flavorful combination.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 32:59
In terms of the popcorn, I like to use avocado oil in place of butter. I know we've talked briefly that your company actually has an olive oil/avocado blend. Is that correct?
Mary Mori: 33:10
That is correct. Avocado oil is another very similar health quality as olive oil is. It's very similar fatty acid composition. That would be a great substitute for that as well.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 33:19
Would you agree with the statement that most Americans should consider replacing the canola oil, the coconut oil, the sunflower oil, the soybean oil in their diet with olive oil and maybe a little avocado oil?
Mary Mori: 33:34
Absolutely. I know the biggest rule of thumb, and I know the FDA did release back in 2015 some new dietary guidelines to reduce your saturated fats. All those oils that you described, minus coconut oil, they're all considered unsaturated fats. So, they do have healthier fats in them than say butter or coconut oil, which are more saturated fats solid at room temperature. But the one thing that's different about them is olive oil specifically, especially extra virgin olive oil with the phenol content, the different dynamics of the actual fatty acids in them is really healthy for you, and where avocado is very similar to that.
Mary Mori: 34:09
The other oil is coconut oil, or canola oil, sunflower oil, they have different unsaturated fats in them that make them unique. So, we do always recommend replacing those where you can where you feel comfortable with olive oil or avocado oil.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 34:25
Why is it that almost any packaged item that you get from a grocery store, whether it's a bag of chips, or something else, almost 90% of them when I look on the labels, they're made with canola oil? Is it just a low cost oil?
Mary Mori: 34:38
Yes, that is really the ultimate reason, is canola oil is usually a lower cost product. So, you're able to use it in higher quantity. We're starting to see that change, with people using other products like sunflower oil, and olive oil in some cases. Another one that's lower cost is soybean oil, very similar to canola oil where it's lower cost, easier to find in higher quantities.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 35:05
In terms of your health, you kind of get what you pay for at times. So, hopeful to see a little more transition to some better quality oils in this country. All right, very good. I think you did a fantastic job breaking down kind of everything you want to know about olive oil. I hope people listening can really think about adding it into their diet.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 35:21
I want to wrap up just with some kind of personal questions. Obviously, you endorse and it sounds like you practice a very healthy lifestyle. Can you share with our listeners any of your daily routines or tips that you use to stay healthy?
Mary Mori: 35:33
I do. Being in the food industry has really helped this hone in for me, and really learning and being educated on nutrition I find is helping me with my lifestyle and my husband's lifestyle. It's threefold. It really comes down to eating healthy, exercising and having that mind/body health. For me, starting with it is needing the mind/mental separation, because anxiety and stress can really get to you. When you have that, it really makes it difficult to have a healthy lifestyle because you gravitate towards those comfort foods.
Mary Mori: 36:07
Once thing I always start with is really knowing what are my passions and habits, and what do I enjoy doing, and making sure I incorporate those in my every day where I water the garden every day after work, I take the dogs on a walk. I have a routine of mixing those things that I love into helping me stay eating healthy. Exercise is extremely important. You can't eat healthy and not exercise, and vice versa. If you exercise but don't healthy, it's not going to bode well.
Mary Mori: 36:35
It really comes down to the eating healthy. I kind of see it a lot, it sounds kind of crazy, but originally n UC Davis, I started as an animal science major where I had a lot of animal nutrition classes. From that, I kind of got this learning method of how they develop pet food. In developing pet food, they really focused on very loaded meals. We're talking about nutrition as medicine, food as medicine. They do that in animal feed and animal food, is trying to impact all these nutrients and healthy products into food so you can feed your animals less, but they get the same nutrients. So, there's not a lot of what they call filler.
Mary Mori: 37:13
I kind of felt that I pulled that into my own life of really understanding and knowing what foods are considered filler and not nutritious, and focusing on what I'm eating and cooking, and making food for myself and my family, is what is highly packed with nutrients and trying to eat more of that, and what you'll find in turn is if you eat more very nutritious foods, your body is fulfilled and satisfied quicker, so you don't need all that filler food. You would even see in our house, we don't have potatoes. We don't have rice. We want to stay with the nutritious high vegetables, protein, meats, adding a lot of spices to give that flavor so that you don't have to have the satisfaction for the sugars and the carbs that your body ends up craving and craving more of.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 38:01
Yeah, I don't have much to add to that. That's a fantastic philosophy. Nutrient dense food as a staple of your diet will definitely serve you well as you move about in life and promote your longevity. Thank you for sharing that as well. Just wrapping up now, how can listeners learn more about yourself or your company in general? Do you want to share your website?
Mary Mori: 38:21
Yeah, always visit our website. Our website is www.CaliforniaOliveRanch.com. We're excited to announce that launching in June is a new revamped website, so it'll be exciting to go and see the new site. We also have an amazing social media community on Instagram and Facebook. So, looking us up, California Olive Ranch, on either of those and liking us, and seeing all the news and different things we post and talk about. We have a blog as well that you can sign up on our website to receive tips, recipes and health facts that we like to promote about olive oil and other products.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 38:56
I want to thank you for taking the time to do the podcast today, and sharing your information. This is just fantastic information. Also, I want to just express some gratitude to you and your company and employees for putting out such a terrific product that promotes the health and wellness of myself and my family. I'm really glad we got connected, and I look forward to talking with you further down the road. Thank you again for your time.
Mary Mori: 39:19
Thank you, and it was a pleasure to be on here. I was so happy to have this opportunity and talk a little bit about olive oil. Thank you so much.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 39:26
All right, thank you.
Outro: 39:29
Thank you for listening to this episode of Back Talk Doc, brought to you by Carolina Neurosurgery and Spine Associates, with offices in North and South Carolina. If you'd like to learn more about Dr. Lakhia and treatment options for back issues, go to backtalkdoc.com. We look forward to having you join us for more insights about back pain and spine health on the next episode of Back Talk Doc. Additional information is also available at carolinaneurosurgery.com.
Welcome. You're listening to Back Talk Doc, where you'll find answers to some of the most common questions about back pain and spine health, brought to you by Carolina Neurosurgery and Spine Associations where providing personalized, highly skilled and compassionate spine care has been our specialty for over 75 years. And now, it's time to understand the cause of back pain and learn about options to get you back on track. Here is your Back Talk Doc, Dr. Sanjiv Lakhia.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 00:32
One of the pleasures I've had in putting together the Back Talk Doc podcast for you guys who are listening, is really connecting with people both in my industry and outside of my industry. For those of you new to the podcast, again my name is Sanjiv Lakhia, and I'm a board-certified physiatrist, a specialist in spine care, and I have always worn a health and wellness hat, and really am passionate about sharing health and wellness tips with my patients.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 01:00
On today's show, we have the pleasure of interviewing an individual who is an expert on the topic of olive oil. Today, I welcome to the show Mary Mori. Listeners, let me give you a little background about how Mary and I got connected. As I said before, I'm currently a fellow in the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine fellowship program, and we've been going through the nutritional modules, particularly the Anti-Inflammatory Food Plan. It was during that coursework, I began to research some of the benefits of olive oil. I just looked in my pantry and cabinets, and noticed that we had been using a California Olive Ranch olive oil really for quite some time.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 01:42
It found its way into our pantry years ago, and it's our preferred product. So, I decided just to look them up and send out an email just to learn a little more about the science of the olive oil that they produce. I was really pleased to be connected with Mary, and they even sent me out a couple of bottles, which I've been able to sample and just really enjoy. I feel like a breakdown of olive oil is an important topic for listeners who deal with any sort of pain. You may be wondering why are we going to talk about olive oil when this is a show about back pain.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 02:10
As you've heard me say many times before, food is medicine and I really promote an anti-inflammatory food plan and lifestyle. I think it can correlate directly with reduced pain levels. Olive oil should be a staple of that food plan. Without further ado, let's go ahead and begin our interview.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 02:29
Mary has an interesting background. She's been in the food industry for 13 years, eight years in the olive oil industry, and is currently the Director of Technical Services for California Olive Ranch. In her role, she manages quality, compliance, research, and new product development, and has a key role in developing compliance for the olive oil industry. Prior to California Olive Ranch, she's had experience in the tomato and consumer packaged goods industry, and has a lot of knowledge in quality assurance, regulatory compliance, and implemented food safety systems for various regulatory requirements.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 03:03
Yes, folks I am reading her bio. It is extensive. I could not do this off the top of my head. She's one smart woman. She knows her stuff about food, oils, dressings, sauces, herb rubs, granola. She has a degree from UC Davis, a degree in food science. So, welcome to the show, Mary.
Mary Mori: 03:19
Thank you. Thank you for having me today.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 03:20
Elaborate for our listeners a little more on just your background and kind of your path to becoming Director of Technical Services at California Olive Ranch.
Mary Mori: 03:30
Yeah. For me, California Olive Ranch, I really started about eight years ago, a little over eight years ago, as a QA Manager. For those of you who don't what that is, it's a Quality Assurance Manager, and really was in charge of all of the quality regulatory auditing, laboratory testing for the company. Pre that, I worked in a few different food companies, as Sanjiv had said, studying food science, and really had a passion for food. My passion was really around food and kind of finding a company where it was fully integrated, from the farming to the finished product. That's what really drove me to California Olive Ranch.
Mary Mori: 04:10
We grow the olives. We meld the olives to the oil, and then we bottle it and sell that. It was really something that I loved about it. Over the eight years that I've been here, as really been growing in my role, I started at the company when we were less than 50 employees. It was a really small family operation of sorts in California farming. Over the time as we've grown, and as the product has grown, and our consumers have grown, really has helped me kind of fall into this new role of managing the full Department of Technical Services, which encompasses quality assurance, our laboratory and testing, our product innovation and new products, and our R&D team.
Mary Mori: 04:50
The biggest thing that I've been able to contribute to over the last probably four to five years is heavily in our industry. We're very industry-involved. It's very important to us to have the regulations and the transparency in our industry. So, we've been leading up a lot of the commission work with the Olive Oil Commission of California authoring and helping write the quality and sensory standards for our California industry, as well as being very involved in other industry-related events really has helped me learn even more about our product and the quality of olive oil out there.
Mary Mori: 05:24
As we've grown and had our products with importing oils from other countries, really working with those companies, working with our family farmers in Chile, Argentina, Portugal, and kind of making it... It's really like a partnership. It's almost like an extension of us, and that's been really fun over the years of just learning from them and teaching them what we know. That's kind of how we've become what I am now today at California Olive Ranch.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 05:48
All right, tell our listeners a little bit more about California Olive Ranch, and its core products. Give us a sense of kind of the scope of the company, and as it pertains to other companies within the industry. Are you guys small, medium, large?
Mary Mori: 06:02
ure, we're considered on the larger size now as we've been growing. We are California farmers, with a deep connection of the land. We do have our own ranches, and work with other family farmers in California. We were founded in 1998, over 20 years ago, by Spanish families that had a new way of creating olive oil. They wanted to bring it to the United States. We have a unique way in how we grow. We grow our olive trees much closer. They look a little different. They look more like bushes, kind of wine grapes are grown on trellises, but it was kind of a unique way of bringing innovation to the industry in the United States.
Mary Mori: 06:39
This has allowed us to mechanically harvest, and that was really kind of our evolution here. Then as we've grown over the years with the imports and the different products that we offer, and with our sister brand, we have grown to a larger size. We're kind of more diverse, but we enjoy that side of it because it allows us to provide a very diverse product, different products for different needs to all the consumers. We are the number four brand out on the market in the olive oil category, and the number one best selling olive oil over the last two years.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 07:09
Which is what? Which one of your product line is the number one best seller?
Mary Mori: 07:13
That is one of our Destination series. We call it our Everyday Blend, which it's a balance of kind of... What the Everyday for us means is really just a balanced flavor, so you can use it on anything. It has the health properties of olive oil, but also it's not going to be intrusive on flavor, but it will have some flavor.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 07:32
Okay, and that's the one I keep in my pantry and we use it basically on everything. All right, so let's get down to some basics here. Most individuals, myself included, really have no idea how olive oil is made and processed. Can you kind of walk us through a simplified version of how olive oil is made?
Mary Mori: 07:49
Yeah, and it's kind of funny because it is very simple. The complexity comes into there's a lot of detail in the processing side of monitoring and maintaining different things, but it is a very fundamentally simple process. It's very similar to, if you think about orange juice, it's fruit grown on trees, and a lot of the process is monitoring that and seeing how the fruit is growing over time on the tree. And then when it's ready to be picked, you pick it, we take it to our mill, and then the fruit is pressed or crushed to release all the oil. Then it gets centrifuged, so then the oil separates from the other byproducts, we call them is the olive and skin pits, which we call pumice.
Mary Mori: 08:31
Then we have our oil, and then we have water, which is the leftover moisture from the fruit. The pumice then goes back into the fields to help with our soil, and goes along with some regenerative agriculture practices we follow, as well as it's sold to animal feed. The water is then filtered back into irrigation ponds for the trees. Then the end product, the olive oil, gets stored into tanks, and that's what we bottle.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 08:58
Okay, wow. So, pretty self-sustaining process it sounds like. Not a lot of waste for that process.
Mary Mori: 09:03
Yeah, and a lot of it is important to us. About 20% of an olive is actually oil. So, most of what we are harvesting is not the finished product, not the olive oil that you guys consume. So, it's in our best interest to reuse what we can of that 80% that's left over in a meaningful way that will go back to the land, go back to the animals, to be sustainable and not be just another thing added to a pile somewhere.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 09:32
Is it accurate to say olive oil is a form of basically fruit juice?
Mary Mori: 09:37 Yes. That is typically how we describe olive oil, is similar to a fruit juice, like you would orange juice or apple juice. It's the juice of an olive.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 09:47
Okay, so that's a pretty good description of how the olive oil is made. Are there other different kind of manufacturing processes that people should be aware of?
Mary Mori: 09:56
Yeah, what's different is not as much in the manufacturing. There are different ways you can crush, different crushers you can use to get different results. But what's more different is actually in the growing side of things. There's a method called the traditional method of growing trees, where there's 35 to 40 feet between each tree. That's what you would think. If you think of an olive tree and an olive orchard, you see trees and they're very separate.
Mary Mori: 10:21
There are other methods. What we use is more of a modern method, which is called super high density, where the trees were planted intentionally very close to each other. There's a lot more trees per acre, and they end up looking more like bushes or like grapes grown on a trellis system. The difference there is allowing us to have a harvester go over the trees, versus a traditional method. You can't have a harvester go over that tree, so they're all hand harvested. They're more labor intensive, but they do still produce a good quality olive oil. But in our method, we're able to harvest quicker, harvest more olives at a time, get them to the mill faster, and maintain that quality.
Mary Mori: 11:00
So, the most important thing is the second the olive comes off the tree is when the clock starts ticking and you need to get the oil out of that olive as fast as possible to maintain the quality.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 11:11
It sounds like you're telling me that social distancing for olive trees is not so good.
Mary Mori: 11:16
Yes, exactly.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 11:18
Okay, very good. Talk to me a little bit about kind of the life cycle of an olive. Also, hit on if you can for our listeners, the difference between black and green olives.
Mary Mori: 11:28
Definitely. Here in California, the tree bloom takes place around spring, around March time. What spring bloom means, is that's when the flowers start growing off the tree, and that's really when the lifecycle starts. Once blooms starts, small little olives start to grow and it takes a few months for those grow. Then what we, with all of the data that we track, is around June/July is what we call Pit Hardening, where the olive is really starting to take form. It's a green fruit on the tree.
Mary Mori: 11:56
Starting at that time, we test and we monitor regularly to find the right time to harvest because there's an optimal time to harvest for flavor, for quantity, for all these sorts of things, for ease of processing, and it's dictated based on what you at the mill want out of your crop. What we would typically do is we look for a certain color. The olives will change color as they grow, and we want to look for a certain color that gives us indication of when the fruit is at optimal maturity to start harvesting, and then we harvest them. Olives start green, and they all go through a color change called veraison. It goes from green to purple.
Mary Mori: 12:36
It all depends on when you harvest them what color they are, and if you leave them on the tree long enough they will all turn purple and be that color. The interesting fact you bring up the black olives. Black olives are actually an invention out of California brining. So, there's a chemical that they add to certain brined olives, and it was actually invented in California back in I believe the '40s where they add lye. They would take yellowish to purple olives, and you add lye and it changes the color to a black olive and gives it that distinctive black olive taste.
Mary Mori: 13:08
There's the same thing, you can have a Kalamata olive. Typically, they harvest them purple, and that's why they look purple in the jar. You have the olives that you use for martinis, where they're green. They're intentionally harvesting those really early. In olive oil production, we like a balance because that color very much dictates the natural taste that the oil is going to have, and the amount of phenols that are going to be in the oil. So, we pay close attention to that color. We want a mixture of green and purple in our fruit for the different parameters we're looking for in oil.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 13:38
So why is it that I can take your olive oil and enjoy it on pretty everything, but if you asked me to eat black or green olives whole, I just can't do it. I just can't stand the taste. I can't put them on salads. No matter how hard I try, I can't train my pallette. Are they more bitter? What's the difference between the whole fruit and the fruit juice?
Mary Mori: 14:02
Yeah, they are very different. It's funny, my husband's the same way where he loves olive oil, but he hates olives themselves. It is very distinctive. Olives are inherently very bitter. So, if you actually tried to eat an olive off the tree, your face would pucker more than it ever did with a lime. It is just bitter. It's that bitterness that we are not attuned to, and we're inherently not designed to like their flavors.
Mary Mori: 14:29
The table olives, that we call the brined olives, you can enjoy and want to put on a salad. Brine them with vinegar or salt to cut around a lot of that bitterness so that they're a little more edible. But then you have to really like more of the acidic flavors, and some people don't really like that high acidity that olives or pickled peppers, things like that have, because there's a lot more salt and vinegar, and you end up getting more of that flavor than you do get of the olive flavor. In olive oil, you really get the olive flavor without all that harsh extra bitterness.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 15:05
Yeah, okay that makes sense. All right, so we know now that California has olive gardens. In the wine industry, most people know that there're regions in the world where great wines are developed. What are the regions in the world that are famous for olive gardens and producing high quality olive oil?
Mary Mori: 15:22
It's a fun thing. It's very similar to the wine industry, but really great tasting olive oil can come from anywhere in the world. We've pride ourself in California that we make great olive oil here, but it is really all over the world. Since biblical times, as far back as 4500 BC, olives have been grown. It's been a root of the Mediterranean Diet in Italy, Spain, Greece. One of the main promotions of the Mediterranean Diet is the olive oil and olives in that diet.
Mary Mori: 15:50
Italy is very well known for their good quality olive oil, but so is South America. It really comes down to the climate. It's that Mediterranean climate. In the southern hemisphere, Argentina and Chile are very similar climate structure where olives actually grow really well, and it's increasing their... Just Argentina produces some of the best Malbec wines, they're starting to produce some of the best olive oil.
Mary Mori: 16:16
Someone once told me that where wine flows the olives grow, and it really is true.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 16:22
I'll tell you what, you get great tasting olive oil, red wine, chocolate. This is why I recommend the Mediterranean Diet. It's got nothing to do with the health benefits. These are delicious foods. All right, so very good. Moving on here, let's talk a little bit about how a consumer can tell if the quality of the olive oil they've purchased is any good. Maybe you can touch a little bit on things like tasting tips, shelf life, aging, storage. Lastly, when you're done with that, I want to really hit on some of the concerns that have been out there in the media about doctored up olive oil and poor quality olive oil.
Mary Mori: 16:57
I'd love to emphasize here, when I get asked this question, of how can I determine the quality of my olive oil. What can you control is a consumer, and there is a lot that goes into it, that myself as a producer, manages and maintains in terms of the different chemistry. But not everybody has a spectrometer out there at their house to be able to do the testing that we do. So, I really like to focus on educating people in how you can actually detect it, and it really comes down to the taste, of really learning how to taste olive oil.
Mary Mori: 17:30
We have some tasting tips we call the Four S's, which is called smell, sip, swirl, swallow, which is very similar again if you have ever experienced wine tasting. It's very similar. What's interesting about this is part of it is really to get the aroma, the taste, and swallowing to get the bitterness. There's three characteristics in tasting an oil. The aroma really tells you a huge story about it of the varietals are, and the aroma is really where you're going to detect quality. If you taste something that you can experience at home, is like smell crayons.
Mary Mori: 18:04
If the oil smells like a crayon, that means that it's rancid. Or if you have some stale walnuts or almonds at home in your pantry, if you smell that and then you smell your oil and it smells the same, that oftentimes means it's rancid, that it's been not stored well, or it's an older in age. That's the oil that's not going to harm you if you eat that, but it's not going to taste good and it's not going to help accentuate what you're cooking, and really make you feel good about what you're eating. The taste and the swallowing is very important, because that gets down to the bitterness and the pungency.
Mary Mori: 18:38
A more bitter and pungent oil, typically we say is actually higher in phenol content, which phenols are the big claim to fame of why olive oil is so good for you, the phenol content of the oil. So, you do want to have some of that bitterness and pungency in an oil. That will actually tell you that it is a higher quality oil that has some good phenols to it. A good oil, I explained a lot of the defects that you would find, but a really good oil you want to be able to taste green apples or green grass going out to your garden when you freshly cut your grass. That smell, you want to find that in an oil. It's very typical of certain varieties.
Mary Mori: 19:16
A banana, you want to be able to find these notes that remind you of other pleasant smelling and tasting foods, and that's a good thing about olive oil.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 19:26
Okay, so you mentioned there about the storage. I've seen many a person, when I go over to people's homes, have their bottle of olive oil right out by their stove. Is that a good place to keep it?
Mary Mori: 19:36
It's not. Contrary to wine, olive oil does not get better with age, and there's really special controls that consumers can do better at in storing it at home. Your best storage for olive oil is going to be in a cool, dark place. Typically, I always recommend a pantry or your spice cabinet, where it's away from the heat, away from the direct heat. Whenever you're cooking on your stove, that heat is going to resonate and cause that oil to go rancid faster. We also recommend buying the size of the bottle, because it's really important, the size of the bottle that works for you and your family.
Mary Mori: 20:10
Myself and my husband, we go through about a small sized bottle that we sell 16 ounces. We go through one bottle every two weeks. But I prefer to buy that small bottle because over time, every time you open that bottle, you're introducing more oxygen. So, really wanting to control the heat, the oxygen and the light exposure to that oil by buying smaller bottles, and going through them quicker, you're not exposing it as much to that oxygen. If you buy a one liter bottle, and you use that over four months, you're constantly reopening that bottle and exposing it to oxygen, which will make it go rancid faster and cause free radicals to grow, which aren't as great for you.
Mary Mori: 20:47
There's a lot to do with that. Sometimes, it sounds good to buy bulk, but if your family isn't living and consuming quickly bulk then maybe it's better to buy the smaller size.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 20:58
Explain to listeners about the date that is put on the bottle. It's not necessarily an expiration date, is it?
Mary Mori: 21:05
Well, there's two. We typically on our products, we put two dates. One is what we call the Harvest Date, and that's a really important date because that'll show you the freshness of the oil because olive oil doesn't get better with age. Ideally, you want the fresher oil possible. So, this year you don't want to be buying oil that says, 2016 Harvest or 2017 Harvest, because that's very old. You'll look for a bottle that has a harvest date. We also put a Best By date. The Best By date is really helping to show from the bottle date how long this oil will still be extra virgin olive oil and good quality for an extent of time. So, you're really wanting to look for both dates.
Mary Mori: 21:44
The Best By date isn't going to be... It's a little different for our product, where most Best By dates are given because the food can go really bad or it could harm you if you eat it after that. In olive oil, it's a little different. It's not that it's going to harm you if you accidentally consume olive oil after it's Best By date, it's just not going to be as fresh. It's going to start going rancid. It's going to start getting defective, because no matter what, if you stored it perfectly, over time the oil is just going to change.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 22:11
Okay, so that makes a lot of sense. The take home there is don't necessarily buy big containers of the olive oil. Just kind of gauge your usage so you're not having to store the olive oil for so long. You mentioned during your conversation a couple of keywords. You talked about phenols. We talked about the phrase, "extra virgin olive oil." Let's get into a little more of the science and health benefits of olive oil. Part of the discussion, this is where I think it can be so applicable to my patients and people who are listening today if they're considering switching from a canola oil or other vegetable oil to olive oil.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 22:46
Let's start with the term, "extra virgin olive oil." Can you define that for our listeners, and why that's important?
Mary Mori: 22:52
Yeah, there're different grades. Extra virgin really is a grade for us. What a grade means, it's similar to if you think about when you buy meat. You have Grade A, Grade B, USDA Grade, and it all happens to be with just what has been deciphered, what does it mean in quality. For us, an extra virgin category, there is a standard out there in California that's regulated, that dictates this, but depending on where you grow your product there is a varying different standard. For instance, Europe has their own different standard. Just slightly different.
Mary Mori: 23:23
Ultimately, they're all relatively the same, but have slightly different variations. What extra virgin really means, is its more premium. It's typically more of the healthier oils. The ultimate change there is that extra virgin olive oil means it's free of any defect, there's certain chemistry parameters. There are nine different chemistry parameters that we have to test to dictate that grade, but it really does come down to the sensories. Free from defect has pleasant taste and some bitterness and pungency.
Mary Mori: 23:50
There's another grade called Virgin, which is a grade lower, where it'll have some defects. The last grade in the olive oil category is really something we call Crude or Lamponte. Those are really considered not fit for human consumption, moreso of the fact that they usually have a defect taste to them that's very overpowering that needs to get refined out of them.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 24:12
Okay, that's interesting. I didn't know that there's that many grades of the olive oil. But it does behoove people to look at the extra virgin grade if they can?
Mary Mori: 24:20
Yes, and that's what I like to say is really, if you're looking to consume olive oil for the health benefits, it really is look at the grade. If you want to consume olive oil and have it be something that you're finding food is nutrition and for purpose, extra virgin is the category you're going to want to go for. Not a refined olive oil or something else that you see out there, because what happens in the refining process is the olive oil will still be there... One of the most fundamental facts about olive oil is the fatty acid composition. That's the mono and saturated fats, the polyunsaturated fats that they talk about. Oleic acid, for instance, that's good about olive oil.
Mary Mori: 24:59
That will stay the same. But during the refining process, it actually removes the phenols, and in extra virgin olive oil, in those grades that I described, is the only product that will actually have phenols in it naturally occurring. The phenols are really what help, and are associated to the most research of why olive oil is so beneficial to your diet, having to do with the anti-inflammatory benefits, the cardiovascular benefits, skin benefits, is really coming down to those phenols and antioxidants in the oil.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 25:28
I've talked on this show before about a company called ConsumerLabs.com, where they do third party independent testing to look at quality of nutritional supplements. They do have a write up on olive oil products on the market, where they go in and kind of break down the phenol content and have a range. They kind of assign a number, like a 100, 200, 400, 600. Is that number relevant or important in one, that as a consumer, I should care about knowing from olive oil that I consume on a day to day basis in your opinion?
Mary Mori: 26:01
It's tough. It's a big debate in consumers in our industry. What I would personally recommend is it's not as important for you to know that number, because it's arbitrary. There're many methods out there to test phenols, so it depends on what method was used to test it, as well as there's no rule of thumb really out there of how many phenol content is actually good for you. We just know it's certain foods out there that are high phenol content. We know that phenols are good for you, we just don't know at what level.
Mary Mori: 26:31
What I recommend to consumers, instead of worrying about that number, is if you really want to eat an oil and consume an oil in your diet purposefully get that phenol attribute, is you want to look for an oil that has a more robust taste because that more bitterness, the pungency, that is actually the phenols doing that to you, where it tastes a little more bitter, it burns your throat a little bit. Those are all really good things, and that means there're more phenols in the oil, which in turn you're going to be consuming those higher phenolic oils that are going to give you more of that phenolic health attribute.
Mary Mori: 27:04
The downfall to that is not everybody enjoys bitter taste, so you have to go into it knowing you might be consuming something that the bitterness you have to get used to.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 27:14
Yeah, but I think when you put it in the context of your food and other flavors from the food, that it certainly can become... You can train your taste to enjoy it, and even look forward to it. What was the name of the specialty blend that you guys sent me?
Mary Mori: 27:30
Our higher product, I believe, it was the Miller's Blend, where it has a higher phenolic content in it, attributed mostly to the varietal, the Arbosana and Koroneiki that are in those.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 27:41
Yeah, so I took that and I put it into a five teaspoon holder that you can get from the pharmacy for liquids to give your kids. I kind of did a little shot of that, and swished it in my mouth, and chewed it, and let it get into the back of my throat. I will tell you, wow, that had a strong kind of peppery sensation that was... I just found it very powerful. It kind of opened up my sinuses and was amazing. That would be a sign of a very healthy olive oil, would it not?
Mary Mori: 28:11
Yes, that is correct.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 28:13
Yeah, so that one was great. Also, just for the listeners' benefits, does olive oil have anti-inflammatory benefits?
Mary Mori: 28:19
Yeah, there's been actually a lot of research out there showing olive oil acts very similar to Ibuprofen. It was interesting you mentioned about in your background of helping bodies and the pain, where Ibuprofen a lot of times people will diagnose and say, "Oh, take some Ibuprofen. Take some pain medicine." Well, olive oil is found to be very commonly an alternative of food as your medicine counter to that. One of those interesting things would be if you ever actually mixed Ibuprofen with water and drank it, that bitterness, that robustness you were describing in your throat, you would get the same effect because it's the same similar compounds: the oleocanthal in olive oil is very similar to what is used in making Ibuprofen.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 29:07
Now that just made my episode. That's a very interesting tidbit. Folks, I hope you're listening and writing that down. Again, it doesn't make any sense if your body is in a state of inflammation to really overburden it with toxic medications if you can avoid it beyond a short term course. Living a lifestyle, and that's what we're talking about, it's a lifestyle that's healthy and based upon good nutritional intakes will definitely serve you well. So, just another feather in the cap for olive oil here.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 29:37
All right, so Mary you've covered quite a bit of information. I think it's been very informative for our listeners, and I appreciate that. A couple of other questions that I want to kind of wrap up, and then we'll get to the end. Can you get the same health benefits by simply eating whole olives?
Mary Mori: 29:53
Regretfully, no. While olives are very healthy, if you tried to eat them off the tree, you could potentially. But they're so overbearing that nobody really would ever want to eat a fresh olive off the tree like you would an apple, or an orange. What they end up doing is, we call them Table Olives. You take those olives and you brine them. While the olive will still have that fatty acid composition, it'll have some protein, it'll have the mono and polyunsaturated fats, some of the phenols.
Mary Mori: 30:21
But when you brine an olive, you do lose some of those health benefits because it does mute the phenol content as well as you increase the salt, where the olive will be healthy but in order to consume the insane amount of health benefits that olive oil would have, you'd have to consume a lot of olives. In consuming those olives, you're also consuming a lot of salt, which isn't as great. You do need some salt in your diet, but having too much salt will actually counteract what those phenols would do to your blood, and actually cause hypertension.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 30:55
That makes sense. I think the taste of whole olives is self-limiting. No, you can't really make it a huge staple of your diet. What are some great ways to kind of integrate olive oil into a nutrition plan? So, if people are listening out there and they're thinking, "You know what, I want to really have more olive oil, but I don't cook Mediterranean. I'm not a good cook or chef. I'm pretty limited in my skill set," what are some ways that people can start to adopt the practice of purchasing and using olive oil?
Mary Mori: 31:21
Yeah, I love to recommend is really think about it as... Use it on everything, and cook with it often. There is this myth out there that you can't fry with olive oil, but a good quality olive oil is actually very good for frying, and you do get those same health benefits. So, I always recommend breakfast. You fry an egg with it, instead of butter. Add it to your smoothies. Or, make pancakes with olive oil instead of butter. There's great recipes out there for that. Lunch, with a salad, with toast and with some tomatoes with some vinegar. Really, it can be used on anything throughout your dinner and your snacks, if you snack.
Mary Mori: 31:59
Dessert, we have so many options and recipes on our website. An example of desserts, we do say it sounds crazy, some people think that putting olive oil on your ice cream, but you've got to try it and then you'll really understand why we say that. One I love personally at our house is we do strive to have a healthy lifestyle diet, and sometimes you just need something that'll satisfy that need. We'll do popcorn. It's a small little snack, and instead of cooking popcorn in butter, we throw olive oil on it, and it tastes near identical.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 32:30
Okay, I'm smiling now because after I talked with you before, I went off my Mediterranean Diet for one night, and had some vanilla ice cream while my wife and kids were staring at me, pouring the olive oil on it. I got to tell you, it was really delicious. It was a somewhat of a unique combination of the sweet and then the olive oil, a little pepperyness. Now, if you would tell me it would negate all the negative effects of ice cream, then I might buy stock in the company. It's an interesting, flavorful combination.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 32:59
In terms of the popcorn, I like to use avocado oil in place of butter. I know we've talked briefly that your company actually has an olive oil/avocado blend. Is that correct?
Mary Mori: 33:10
That is correct. Avocado oil is another very similar health quality as olive oil is. It's very similar fatty acid composition. That would be a great substitute for that as well.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 33:19
Would you agree with the statement that most Americans should consider replacing the canola oil, the coconut oil, the sunflower oil, the soybean oil in their diet with olive oil and maybe a little avocado oil?
Mary Mori: 33:34
Absolutely. I know the biggest rule of thumb, and I know the FDA did release back in 2015 some new dietary guidelines to reduce your saturated fats. All those oils that you described, minus coconut oil, they're all considered unsaturated fats. So, they do have healthier fats in them than say butter or coconut oil, which are more saturated fats solid at room temperature. But the one thing that's different about them is olive oil specifically, especially extra virgin olive oil with the phenol content, the different dynamics of the actual fatty acids in them is really healthy for you, and where avocado is very similar to that.
Mary Mori: 34:09
The other oil is coconut oil, or canola oil, sunflower oil, they have different unsaturated fats in them that make them unique. So, we do always recommend replacing those where you can where you feel comfortable with olive oil or avocado oil.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 34:25
Why is it that almost any packaged item that you get from a grocery store, whether it's a bag of chips, or something else, almost 90% of them when I look on the labels, they're made with canola oil? Is it just a low cost oil?
Mary Mori: 34:38
Yes, that is really the ultimate reason, is canola oil is usually a lower cost product. So, you're able to use it in higher quantity. We're starting to see that change, with people using other products like sunflower oil, and olive oil in some cases. Another one that's lower cost is soybean oil, very similar to canola oil where it's lower cost, easier to find in higher quantities.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 35:05
In terms of your health, you kind of get what you pay for at times. So, hopeful to see a little more transition to some better quality oils in this country. All right, very good. I think you did a fantastic job breaking down kind of everything you want to know about olive oil. I hope people listening can really think about adding it into their diet.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 35:21
I want to wrap up just with some kind of personal questions. Obviously, you endorse and it sounds like you practice a very healthy lifestyle. Can you share with our listeners any of your daily routines or tips that you use to stay healthy?
Mary Mori: 35:33
I do. Being in the food industry has really helped this hone in for me, and really learning and being educated on nutrition I find is helping me with my lifestyle and my husband's lifestyle. It's threefold. It really comes down to eating healthy, exercising and having that mind/body health. For me, starting with it is needing the mind/mental separation, because anxiety and stress can really get to you. When you have that, it really makes it difficult to have a healthy lifestyle because you gravitate towards those comfort foods.
Mary Mori: 36:07
Once thing I always start with is really knowing what are my passions and habits, and what do I enjoy doing, and making sure I incorporate those in my every day where I water the garden every day after work, I take the dogs on a walk. I have a routine of mixing those things that I love into helping me stay eating healthy. Exercise is extremely important. You can't eat healthy and not exercise, and vice versa. If you exercise but don't healthy, it's not going to bode well.
Mary Mori: 36:35
It really comes down to the eating healthy. I kind of see it a lot, it sounds kind of crazy, but originally n UC Davis, I started as an animal science major where I had a lot of animal nutrition classes. From that, I kind of got this learning method of how they develop pet food. In developing pet food, they really focused on very loaded meals. We're talking about nutrition as medicine, food as medicine. They do that in animal feed and animal food, is trying to impact all these nutrients and healthy products into food so you can feed your animals less, but they get the same nutrients. So, there's not a lot of what they call filler.
Mary Mori: 37:13
I kind of felt that I pulled that into my own life of really understanding and knowing what foods are considered filler and not nutritious, and focusing on what I'm eating and cooking, and making food for myself and my family, is what is highly packed with nutrients and trying to eat more of that, and what you'll find in turn is if you eat more very nutritious foods, your body is fulfilled and satisfied quicker, so you don't need all that filler food. You would even see in our house, we don't have potatoes. We don't have rice. We want to stay with the nutritious high vegetables, protein, meats, adding a lot of spices to give that flavor so that you don't have to have the satisfaction for the sugars and the carbs that your body ends up craving and craving more of.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 38:01
Yeah, I don't have much to add to that. That's a fantastic philosophy. Nutrient dense food as a staple of your diet will definitely serve you well as you move about in life and promote your longevity. Thank you for sharing that as well. Just wrapping up now, how can listeners learn more about yourself or your company in general? Do you want to share your website?
Mary Mori: 38:21
Yeah, always visit our website. Our website is www.CaliforniaOliveRanch.com. We're excited to announce that launching in June is a new revamped website, so it'll be exciting to go and see the new site. We also have an amazing social media community on Instagram and Facebook. So, looking us up, California Olive Ranch, on either of those and liking us, and seeing all the news and different things we post and talk about. We have a blog as well that you can sign up on our website to receive tips, recipes and health facts that we like to promote about olive oil and other products.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 38:56
I want to thank you for taking the time to do the podcast today, and sharing your information. This is just fantastic information. Also, I want to just express some gratitude to you and your company and employees for putting out such a terrific product that promotes the health and wellness of myself and my family. I'm really glad we got connected, and I look forward to talking with you further down the road. Thank you again for your time.
Mary Mori: 39:19
Thank you, and it was a pleasure to be on here. I was so happy to have this opportunity and talk a little bit about olive oil. Thank you so much.
Sanjiv Lakhia: 39:26
All right, thank you.
Outro: 39:29
Thank you for listening to this episode of Back Talk Doc, brought to you by Carolina Neurosurgery and Spine Associates, with offices in North and South Carolina. If you'd like to learn more about Dr. Lakhia and treatment options for back issues, go to backtalkdoc.com. We look forward to having you join us for more insights about back pain and spine health on the next episode of Back Talk Doc. Additional information is also available at carolinaneurosurgery.com.