Extra Virgin Olive Oil is a super food essential. Not only does good EVOO have the power to make any dish amazingly tasty, study after study consistently confirms its superior health benefits.
Sadly, around 70% of EVOO sold in the USA is counterfeit (cut with other vegetable, nut, and seed oils). With EVOO fraud becoming more public and talked about, good consumers feel the urge to call into question the authenticity of oil they have at home. And rightly so!
In one of “The Dr. Oz Show” episodes, Dr. Oz shared his family’s secret test. According to Dr. Oz and the infamous “Fridge Test,” if you put a bottle of oil in the fridge overnight, only 100% pure Extra Virgin Olive Oil will solidify.
Ladies and Gents, we are here to let you know that this test is NOT accurate. This olive oil fridge test has been proven to be scientifically not accurate by many experts, including Dan Flynn, the executive director of the UC Davis Olive Center.
There are more than 750 varieties of olives in the world, 650 of which are grown only in Italy. The oils derived from each of these olives have their own characteristics, including different levels of natural waxes, fatty acids, and structure. That’s far too much diversity to be able to make a blanket statement like “EVOO will always freeze.”
Another thing to consider is that peanut and canola oil, which are cheap tasteless/odorless oils that are often used to cut olive oil, contain 50-60% monounsaturated fat. Monounsaturated fat is what freezes in the fridge. Therefore, many peanut and canola cut oils will freeze in the fridge.
Basically, the fridge test is nonsense. In fact, UC Davis held a scientific trial which totally invalidated the fridge test. They refrigerated seven oil samples: two extra virgin olive oils, an olive oil, a canola oil, a safflower oil, and two blends. Some samples showed minor congealing at the bottom of the bottles, but NONE solidified completely. “None of our samples showed any signs of congealing after 60 hours in a laboratory refrigerator set to 40.5 degrees Fahrenheit,” said Dan Flynn and “even after 180 hours, the samples never fully solidified.”
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