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"You can have high quality olives but the processing plant may destroy the quality of olive oil made from them," Vassilis Fradzolas told To Vima. He stresses that the Italian competitors of Greece have much better developed production units which ensure the high quality of the end product.

Olives are stored in plastic boxes rather than in sacks as is still the practice in Greece and the modern plants process them no later than 24 hours after they have been delivered to the warehouse in order to extract from them oil of the highest quality. Half-ripe and ripe olives are divided during the production process in order for the producer not to mix up the quality. To avoid pre-oxidization of olive oil, a lid cooled by liquid nitrogen is used for the cooling of the process in the mill.

Peroxides are primary oxidizing compounds, which are formed due to the presence of oxygen during the processing and storage of olive oil. In the second step of oxidation, peroxides are decomposed into different end products of oxidation. In extra virgin olive oil, the maximum peroxide content must not exceed 20 milligrams of oxygen per kilogram of olive oil. Another indicator of quality is Κ232, which should not be higher than 2.5 and K270> 0.22.

According to Fradzolas, good quality olive oil has the following parameters: acidity < 0.3, peroxide amount < 8; polyphenols > 200 mg/kg. Based on the scale of tasters which ranges from 1 to 10, fruit flavour should be 3 and 5, spiciness - from 2 to 6 and bitterness must be less than 2.

Industrial olive oil is obtained when production problems or poor quality of the raw material do not allow the production of virgin or extra virgin olive oil. Then, the producers subject this olive oil to industrial processing at 220°C which reduces the acidity of the product chemically. Then, they mix it with 10% -15% extra virgin (cold pressed) olive oil to launch the end product on the market. The packaging contains the contents of the high quality olive oil first and then subsequently it indicates the contents of the industrially processed oils.

According to experts, it is a myth that using vegetable or sunflower oil for frying is healthier than using olive oil. This is not true and is the result of a marketing policy developed by other countries that do not have their own olive oil production.

Consumers should be careful and avoid buying olive oil which comes on the shelf in a transparent bottle. Light and heat catalyze more rapid oxidation of olive oil and it quickly loses its taste qualities. In order to produce high quality olive oil, olives should be picked between 20 and 25 October at the latest and processed no later than the middle of December. In Italy, olive picking traditionally starts on 1 October.

Tests show that the longer the olives remain before processing, the more olive oil loses its healthy properties. Four years ago, for example, samples taken on 22 October showed that the content of polyphenols in olive oil was 440 mg/kg. The samples taken 40 days later, on 3 December, from olives that had remained in the warehouse for a long time, showed that the percentage of polyphenols in olive oil had decreased to 209 mg/kg.