[StephN]

Some time back we had a really good discussion on the benefits of the higher quality olive oil. Can't find it, seems to be gone. Can't even find my old posts on it either.

Here is a great link to a very good (to my mind) explanation of the processing and what you get with each method:

http://www.living-foods.com/articles/oliveoil.html

The GIST of this long article is:

" Almost all olive oil is processed in ways that result in the loss of nutrients which are essential to health. "

Also:
"These modem factories extract more oil more cheaply, but their processing methods substantially reduce the nutritional quality of the oil.
To reduce costs, olives are machine harvested along with leaves and twigs. Olives that have dropped on the ground, which can be said to contain bad oil, are often mixed with the good ones. They are shipped in all kinds of containers, many of which are poorly ventilated, and heaped in large piles where the olives are stored for too long and often become moldy. The oil is then extracted in a continuous centrifuge where hot water is used to help separate out the oil.
Antioxidant polyphenols are soluble in water and are washed away in this process, thereby lowering the shelf life and the nutritional quality of the oil. Italy alone produces 800,000 cubic meters of waste water per year from this process. Because substantial amounts of antioxidants are washed away, factory produced olive oils have a short shelf life of only months, whereas real olive oil lasts for two to three years. Factory produced olive oil is filtered and looks clear. Real olive oil is not filtered and looks cloudy. "

Then the last insult that has been uncovered is that the large olive oil "factories" have for years been cutting their OLIVE oil with cheap hazlenut oil from Turkey.

You get what you pay for. Buyer beware.