Olive oil in the mediterranean diet.

Until recently food habits in the Mediterranean countries were not held in high repute. Spanish people in particular were considered short in height at a time when this parameter was synonymous with health and therefore a reflection of our supposedly poor diet. Consumption of some staple foods included in this diet, such as olive oil, was not well considered, despite the fact that the Mediterranean Diet itself originated in countries known as the "cradle of civilization". Some methods of cooking our foods were not easily understood either, such as deep frying in oil, which used to be, and still is, one of the principal features of the Mediterranean Dieta.

Luckily though, these ideas have changed nowadays. In the fifties, doctors Ancel and Margaret Keys, from the School of Public Health in the University of Minnesota (USA), observed that in the Mediterranean countries there was a lower incidence of cardiovascular diseases compared to other countries in the north of Europe and the American continent. This was supposedly related to their eating habits. This fact was confirmed later in the Seven Countries Study by Professor Grande Covián. Results obtained after fifteen years of follow-up showed the dramatic difference in coronary mortality rates in countries like Finland compared to Crete. Later epidemiological studies that included Spain showed that our country is the penultimate in Europe, after Portugal, in terms of death from infarct of the myocardium.

After the comprehensive analysis of these studies, the dramatic differences in cardiovascular health of the Mediterranean area inhabitants compared with other countries participating in the studies were mainly put down to the different type of fat consumed. Countries with a lower death incidence of infarct of the myocardium had a higher monounsaturated fatty acids intake, in particular oleic acid, and a low consumption of saturated fats. These qualitative differences in the fat intake were mainly as a result of the high consumption of olive oil. .

Virgin olive oil has been produced for thousands of years in the Mediterranean countries. At first it was used essentially for religious reasons. When a person had to fast, for example, it was used as a substitute for butter (but this was 120 days a year). It was also used for candles in churches. Its main characteristic is that, unlike refined oils, it is a natural food product since manufacturing only requires pressing (a non-chemical physical process)..