New Study Shows Benefits of Daily Shot Of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Updated 4th December 2023
Summary:
- New report says consuming 20 mls of extra virgin olive oil a day made a noticeable difference to heart health.
- The study from the University of Glasgow shows a reduction in coronary artery disease (CAD) markers following six weeks of consumption of olive oil with differing levels of phenolics.
- In comparison to the extra virgin olive oil findings, consuming similar quantities of rapeseed and sunflower oil had no impact whatsoever.
- Consuming extra virgin olive oil regularly as part of a healthy Mediterranean Diet can improve your overall heart health.
Contents:
- New Report Shows Link Between Daily Consumption of Olive Oil And Heart Health
- Previous Findings Show Effect Of Olive Oil On Heart-Health-Related Biomarkers In Urine.
- Benefits of Consuming Extra Virgin Olive Oil Daily
- What Makes Morocco Gold Extra Virgin Olive Oil So Special?
New Report Shows Link Between Daily Consumption of Olive Oil And Heart Health
Consuming four teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil a day could have a significant improvement on your heart health, according to a new study.
The report, which adds to previous findings from Dr Bill Mullen, a senior research fellow of cardiovascular and metabolic health at the University of Glasgow, finds olive oil to be the only common cooking oil with a positive impact on heart health.
Researchers at the Glasgow based study found that just six weeks of consuming 20 mls of olive oil a day made a noticeable difference to heart health. In comparison, consuming similar quantities of rapeseed and sunflower oil had no impact whatsoever.
Dr Mullen told Huffpost:
[The olive oil] results were like hitting the jackpot as far as I was concerned. Although I knew the science, it is extremely rare in nutritional research to see such strikingly positive results.
Dr Bill Mullen
Both extra virgin olive oil and olive oil produced significant changes after only six weeks, a change of 0.3 in the coronary artery disease biomarker score.
Previous Findings Show Effect Of Olive Oil On Heart-Health-Related Biomarkers In Urine.
According to a report in Sytlist.co.uk, Dr Mullen and his team had previously shown that olive oil can have a tangible impact on the presence of heart-health-related ‘biomarkers’ in urine. These biomarkers are protein fragments which can indicate the development of coronary artery disease (CAD) before symptoms have even started.
Researchers for this 2014 study recruited 69 healthy volunteers who were split into two groups and asked to consume 20ml of olive oil either low or high in phenolics every day over a six-week period. A particular feature of the study was the target group studied: healthy individuals who did not regularly consume olive oil.
The results showed that both groups saw a big improvement in scores for CAD – the most common form of heart disease. The proteomic biomarkers developed for clinical diagnosis by private firm Mosaiques Diagnostics produces a CAD scoring system from 1: the ultimate case of CAD to -1: the ultimate healthy artery.
The group taking the low phenol olive oil saw a drop in CAD score from -0.5 to -0.8 while the high phenol group saw a reduction from -0.6 to -0.8.
Of these results, Dr Bill Mullen said: “If we are able to identify the early signatures of diseases before they have had a chance to take hold we can start to treat them before they become a problem requiring costly medical intervention.
However, the team had not applied this measurement technique to other cooking oils – and that’s what the new study set out to do.
Benefits of Extra Virgin Olive Oil Daily
Extra virgin olive oil is a healthy fat that has numerous health benefits. It’s important to consume extra virgin olive oil every day, and the recommended amount is one shot (tablespoon), which equals approximately 23 grams. extra virgin olive oil can be used in cooking, as a dressing for salads, or simply taken alone as a shot. Extra virgin olive oil is also a good source of antioxidants. So make sure to include extra virgin olive oil in your diet every day (ideally four teaspoons of olive oil)!
If you want to get the health benefits of olive oil such as reduced risk of heart disease, lower ldl cholesterol and others, you can include extra virgin olive oil as part of a healthy diet, like the Mediterranean Diet or increasingly popular Keto Diet. You can also have ‘a shot’ first thing in the morning.
What Makes Morocco Gold Extra Virgin Olive Oil So Special?
The high polyphenol content of Morocco Gold extra virgin olive oil is dependent on three factors. First is the variety of the olive, secondly the climate and terroire of the growing region and thirdly the actual time in the growing season that the crop is harvested.
Morocco Gold is pressed from the Picholine Marocaine, the only type of olive to go into Morocco Gold. Oil from this variety is renowned for it’s high polyphenol count, oxidative stability and longevity.
Our olives are grown in a valley that is about 2,000 feet above sea level. This helps to create the additional climatic challenges that encourage polyphenol uptake within the olive tree. It is also an area with naturally occurring high phenols in the soil itself.
In soils, phenols are released over extended period of time from decomposing plant materials. This causes complex organic compounds to be slowly oxidized or to break down into simpler forms of sugars, amino sugars, aliphatic and phenolic organic acids. These are further transformed into microbial biomass or are reorganized, and further oxidized, into humic assemblages (fulvic and humic acids), which bind to clay minerals.
There has been a long debate about the ability of plants to uptake humic substances through their root systems and to metabolize them. There is now a consensus about how humus plays a hormonal role rather than simply a nutritional role in plant physiology. Olive trees grown in ‘challenging’ conditions encourage the uptake of naturally occurring phenols in the soil. This in turn aids the circulatory system within the olive tree, with the phenols eventually finding their way to the olive fruit itself.
Thirdly, our olives are picked when the fruit is young and green. As the olives age on the tree, the colour of the olive changes to red and then black, the size of the olive increases thus producing more oil, but the polyphenol level decreases. There is a great deal of expertise within the farming community where we source our oil to ensure that the harvest is collected at the optimum time to maximise the polyphenol level.
Extra Virgin olive oil is the go-to cooking oil for health-conscious food lovers and those wanting to cook healthily and lose weight. Mostly everyone who has ever read about a diet or has looked up for healthy food recipes is familiar with olive oil and its heart-healthy properties.
