Olive oil is an essential component of the Mediterranean diet, being its primary fat source. Depending on the processing of the olives, different categories of olive oil are obtained, all having a high content of monounsaturated fatty acids, mainly oleic acid. OPO is rich bioactive compounds like squalene, pentacyclic triterpenes, tocopherols, sterols and aliphatic fatty alcohols.
A recent randomized, controlled, blind, crossover study investigated the effect of dietary consumption of olive pomace oil (OPO) on blood lipids and other cardiovascular disease risk factors in healthy and at-risk (hypercholesterolemic) subjects. Participants consumed daily 45g of OPO or high-oleic acid sunflower oil (HOSO) as control oil for 4 weeks. They found OPO significantly reduced low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and apolipoprotein B serum concentrations, and LDL/HDL ratio in healthy and at-risk volunteers.
Do these results corroborate previous findings looking at other categories of olive oil? Share your thought and experience here!
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Replies
Thanks for posting @Sarah. This is interesting as we are usually talking about Extra Virgin olive oil (EVOO) which is the highest quality olive oil. Olive Pomace oil is actually the one of the lowest quality and still, it helped to lower the LDL. It is possible though that the OPO participants had a different diet/lifestyle overall which might be another contributing factor?