Avocados, hazelnuts, sunflower: the ingredients still used to adulterate olive oils today
Despite the exhaustive controls that extra virgin olive oil undergoes, there are some who try to reach the market by mixing it with other, lower-priced oils.
BarcelonaThese are exceptional cases, when they exist at all, because extra virgin olive oil is one of the foods that undergoes the most analytical controls and is subject to European legislation. However, Frauds are becoming increasingly sophisticated. And some cases can go undetected in controls, as confirmed by scientist Alba Tres Oliver, professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Science and Gastronomy at the University of Barcelona (UB). That's precisely why they have developed an advanced analytical tool to detect it. The news is that this validated and tested tool, created at the UB's Torribera Campus, has been agreed to be shared with the Department of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food of the Government of Catalonia. Until now, they worked separately; next year they will join forces.
And now let's get down to brass tacks. Why might a producer want to adulterate extra virgin olive oil? "Because they don't have enough, because they want to sell more, and because they want to put it on the market at lower prices than other producers, who sell it at higher prices," says the scientist. Although this year, Extra virgin olive oil has not risen to 10 euros per literIt is still considered an expensive product, especially when compared to its price years ago, when it didn't exceed five euros per liter. Thus, "the first recommendation we always make to consumers is to be wary of extra virgin olive oil that has a very low price, because it's impossible for it to be cheaper than the average price," says Alba Tres.
The reason for the adulteration of the oil
To continue, what ingredients can be used to adulterate it? "With lower quality oils, for example, sunflower, hazelnut, and even avocado oil," he explains. All of these are detectable with standard control methods, but it's not so easy with avocado juice, "because the green fruit has nutritional properties very similar to olive oil, hence the great difficulty."
In the collective imagination, the adulteration of extra virgin olive oil is linked to the memory of the great rapeseed oil fraud (a plant that turns yellow when it flowers, from whose seeds oil is extracted) that caused more than a thousand deaths and serious illnesses among the population. In Andalusia, wanting to talk about what happened is like reopening a wound that hasn't healed despite the passage of time. Silence and, above all, evasion are constant. as the ARA MENGEM proved in January 2025The population dodged the questions, and many referred to the book of the worker Juan Moreno Anaya, who recounted the information he knew in his volume. It happened just like the storyHe himself was prosecuted for the fraud because he had been the manager of the refinery from which the adulterated oil allegedly originated. He was acquitted.
"The rapeseed oil fraud was a double fraud because, to begin with, rapeseed oil was being sold as if it were olive oil, and, furthermore, that rapeseed oil was not fit for human consumption because a toxic dye, common in industrial uses and lethal to people, had been added. Bottles and jugs that people bought with a label that said 'olive oil'? A very low price compared to others. From a criminological point of view, the fraud fulfills all the elements of a crime: there is a victim (the consumer), a motive (the economic gain), and an opportunity (which arises when surveillance is insufficient). Moreover, simply by having the control tool, the temptation to commit crimes is discouraged," says Alba Tres.
In other news, regarding olive oils, the most common practice is the deception of trying to sell virgin olive oil as extra virgin, and then extra virgin, and then extra virgin, and then, due to storage, it loses quality. Furthermore, the scientist maintains that when someone intends to deceive with olive oil, "it's not to cause health problems in the population, but to sell more and obtain a financial gain."
In other words, there would be deception in the labeling of categories of the same extra virgin olive oil. "These go more unnoticed socially, and perhaps the population underestimates their importance; the most scandalous are the adulterations with other ingredients, but, although they exist, they are always exceptional," concludes Professor Alba Tres.