Is Olive Oil Actually Good for You? The Honest Answer from Australian Olive Oil Producers

Is Olive Oil Actually Good for You? The Honest Answer from Australian Olive Oil Producers

The short answer

Olive oil is consistently associated with better cardiovascular outcomes and lower all-cause mortality across a large body of observational research, and one major randomised trial supports a causal role for a Mediterranean dietary pattern that includes it. The effect is real but moderate. It is not a medicine, it does not cure anything, and it is not a weight-loss product.

The more interesting finding, and the one that actually matters when you're choosing a bottle, is that not all olive oil is the same. Much of the measurable benefit is attributed to polyphenol content, and polyphenol content varies enormously between oils that carry identical labelling.


What the evidence supports reasonably well

Cardiovascular outcomes

The strongest single piece of evidence is PREDIMED, a Spanish trial of roughly 7,400 people at high cardiovascular risk, randomised to a Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra virgin olive oil, the same diet supplemented with nuts, or a low-fat control diet.

The olive oil group showed a hazard ratio of about 0.70 for major cardiovascular events against the control, roughly a 30% reduction.

The honest caveat: this trial was retracted in 2018 and republished. About 10% of participants had been allocated by household or clinic rather than individually, which is a genuine protocol deviation. The republished analysis reported a hazard ratio of 0.69, essentially unchanged, and secondary analyses excluding the affected participants pointed the same way. Some researchers have argued the trial's findings can't be fully trusted regardless. Our read: the randomisation fault was real, the correction was handled transparently, and the result survived it, but anyone citing PREDIMED without mentioning the retraction is not giving you the full picture.

A separate PREDIMED analysis of cumulative intake found that participants in the highest third of extra virgin olive oil consumption, averaging around 49 g per day, had a 25% lower risk of a composite cardiovascular outcome.

Mortality

The observational evidence is broad and reasonably consistent. A 2022 meta-analysis of 13 prospective cohorts found higher olive oil consumption associated with reduced cardiovascular disease risk (RR 0.85) and reduced all-cause mortality (RR 0.83). The dose-response analysis suggested roughly a 4% risk reduction per additional 5 g per day.

A 2025 umbrella review in Nutrition Reviews, pooling 17 systematic reviews, concluded that the evidence supports a beneficial association with cardiovascular disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes and all-cause mortality, while noting that the evidence was less definitive for inflammatory markers, oxidative stress, glucose metabolism and blood lipid outcomes.

That last clause matters. The hard outcomes look better than the intermediate biomarkers, which is unusual and worth sitting with rather than glossing over.

Polyphenols and blood lipid oxidation

This is the one health claim about olive oil that a regulator has formally approved after reviewing the evidence.

Under EU Commission Regulation 432/2012, following an EFSA scientific opinion, olive oil polyphenols may be described as contributing to the protection of blood lipids from oxidative stress. The claim is conditional: it applies only to oils containing at least 5 mg of hydroxytyrosol and its derivatives per 20 g of oil, equivalent to roughly 250 mg/kg of total polyphenols, and the stated benefit is tied to a daily intake of 20 g of oil.

Two things follow from that, and both are usually left out.

First, the threshold is a real bar, and most oil doesn't clear it. Research assessing Italian virgin olive oils against the claim criteria found that no more than about 10% of bottled oils on the market carry enough phenolic content to qualify.

Second, EFSA itself noted that concentrations in some olive oils are too low for a person to reach the 5 mg daily amount through normal dietary use. A low-polyphenol oil cannot deliver this effect at any realistic serving size.


What the evidence supports less firmly

Anti-inflammatory activity

In 2005, Beauchamp and colleagues published a finding in Nature that oleocanthal, the compound responsible for the peppery catch at the back of the throat in fresh, high-quality oil, inhibits the COX-1 and COX-2 enzymes, the same enzymes targeted by ibuprofen.

This is genuinely interesting chemistry, and it is frequently overstated. The paper compared enzyme inhibition in the laboratory. It did not compare clinical outcomes, and no trial has established dose equivalence between oleocanthal and ibuprofen. The original estimate was that around 50 g of high-phenolic oil daily delivers roughly 10 mg of oleocanthal, described as equivalent to about 10% of an adult ibuprofen dose.

Ten per cent. Taken as a food, over years, not as an analgesic. Olive oil is not a painkiller and should never be treated as a substitute for one.

Heat stability

A 2018 study by De Alzaa, Guillaume and Ravetti heated ten common cooking oils to 240°C and held them at 180°C for six hours, measuring smoke point alongside oxidative stability, free fatty acids, polar compounds and fatty acid profiles. Extra virgin olive oil produced the lowest level of polar compounds of the oils tested, followed closely by coconut oil. The authors concluded that smoke point does not predict how an oil performs under heat.

The conflict of interest here is significant, and we're not going to bury it. That research was conducted and funded by Modern Olives Laboratory Services, a subsidiary of Boundary Bend Limited, one of Australia's largest olive oil producers, and the owner of Cobram Estate. It is an accredited laboratory, the methodology is published, and independent work has broadly supported the direction of the finding. But it is industry-funded research favourable to the industry that funded it, and you should weigh it accordingly. We're a competitor of theirs, and we still think the finding is probably right.


What the evidence does not support

That olive oil alone produces the PREDIMED result. PREDIMED tested a dietary pattern — vegetables, legumes, fish, nuts, less red meat and less processed food — with olive oil as one component. Attributing the whole effect to the oil is not what the trial showed.

That olive oil prevents or cures any disease. Observational associations with lower cancer and diabetes risk exist, but observational data cannot establish cause. People who consume more olive oil tend to differ from those who don't in income, overall diet, smoking and exercise. Statistical adjustment reduces this problem; it does not eliminate it.

That olive oil causes weight loss. It is 100% fat, at roughly 120 kcal per tablespoon. Substituting it for less favourable fats has evidence behind it. Adding it to an unchanged diet does not.

That drinking it on an empty stomach detoxifies anything. There is no mechanism and no evidence. See the gallstone myth below.

That any of this is medical advice. If you have high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease or any other condition, that is a conversation for your GP, not for a producer's website.


Five myths worth retiring

You can't cook with extra virgin olive oil because of its smoke point.

Smoke point is easy to measure and easy to explain, which is why it became the headline number. It is a poor predictor of what actually happens to an oil under heat. Oxidative stability, driven by polyphenol content and by the high proportion of monounsaturated oleic acid, is the more relevant property. Fresh extra virgin olive oil sits somewhere around 190–210°C, which covers sautéing, roasting and baking comfortably.

"Light" olive oil is lower in calories.

It isn't. "Light" refers to colour and flavour, not energy content. It's refined oil with the flavour compounds and the polyphenols largely stripped out. Identical calories, substantially less of what the health evidence is actually about.

Olive oil works like ibuprofen.

Same enzyme target, vastly different dose. Roughly a tenth of a single adult dose from about 50 g of high-phenolic oil, and no clinical trial establishing equivalence. Treating it as an analgesic is a misreading of a laboratory finding.

An olive oil and lemon juice flush passes gallstones.

It doesn't. A 2005 Lancet letter by Sies and Brooker examined the green "stones" a patient passed after such a regime. They had no crystalline structure, contained no cholesterol, bilirubin or calcium, and melted at 40°C. The authors reproduced them in the lab from oleic acid, lemon juice and potassium hydroxide. They were soap, formed by gastric lipases acting on the oil and then saponifying with potassium from the lemon juice. The patient's actual gallstones were still there and were surgically removed.

"Extra virgin" tells you the oil is high in polyphenols.

It doesn't. Extra virgin is a grade defined by free fatty acid level, peroxide value and sensory assessment. It sets no minimum for polyphenol content. Two oils can both be legitimately extra virgin while differing by an order of magnitude in the compounds the health research is about. This is why the EFSA threshold exists as a separate measure, and why most bottled oil doesn't meet it.


What actually varies between oils

If the polyphenols are doing much of the work, then the variables that determine polyphenol content are the ones that matter:

Harvest timing

Earlier harvest generally means higher phenolic content and a more pungent oil. It also means lower yield per tonne of fruit, which is why it costs more.

Cultivar

Different olive varieties produce substantially different phenolic profiles.

Extraction

Time and temperature during malaxation measurably affect the phenolic composition of the finished oil.

Age and storage

Polyphenols degrade. Heat, light and oxygen accelerate it. An oil that qualified at pressing may not qualify eighteen months later on a lit supermarket shelf.

Verification

Polyphenol content can only be established by laboratory analysis — commonly HPLC. If a producer hasn't tested and published the number, nobody knows what's in the bottle, including the producer.


The honest summary

Olive oil is a well-evidenced component of a dietary pattern associated with better cardiovascular outcomes and longer life. The strongest causal evidence concerns the pattern rather than the oil in isolation. The one formally approved health claim concerns polyphenols and blood lipid oxidation, and it only applies to oils above a specific measured threshold that most oils do not reach.

It's a good fat, best understood as a replacement for less favourable ones rather than an addition. Its benefits accrue over years, not weeks. And the difference between a high-polyphenol oil and a supermarket bottle is not marketing; it's measurable, and it's the part of the story worth paying attention to.

Explore our range of high-polyphenol olive oils


Sources

This article is general information about published research. It is not medical advice and does not describe the effects of any particular product. Speak to your doctor about your own health.