"Extra virgin" - a characteristic used to denote the quality of olive oil. It is based on determining the value of one of the main parameters of this useful food product - acidity.
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Extra virgin oil
Olive oil is a valuable food product that contains a large amount of healthy unsaturated fatty acids. Scientists claim that their regular use in food helps to activate the cleansing processes in the body, lowers cholesterol and thereby prevents the development of atherosclerosis and other cardiovascular diseases.
However, it should be borne in mind that not every olive oil has such properties. The fact is that today there are various technologies for its manufacture, including those in the process of which the olive raw materials are subjected to heat, chemicals and other factors that significantly reduce the usefulness of the finished product.
Therefore, in order to be able to distinguish between themselves the varieties of olive oil created using various technologies, special names for each of them have been developed in the international community of manufacturers. So, the cheapest and low-quality oil is made from olives, which have already been squeezed once: it is customary to designate it with the marking "Pomace olive oil". Refined oil, referred to as "Refined", is subjected to additional chemical cleaning, so that it can be used for frying, but it loses some of its useful properties. The most high-quality and healthy olive oil, made from olives by the first cold-pressed method, is called "Virgin": in the process of its manufacture, the raw materials are never heated above a temperature of 27 ° C.
In this case, the marking "Extra virgin" is assigned to those varieties of oil of the category "Virgin" that meet the strict expert requirements for the acidity of the finished product: the acid content in olive oil of the sort "Extra virgin" should not exceed 1%. Some companies, famous for their particularly stringent requirements for the quality of the oil they make, set a limit value for the acidity of the oil at 0.8%.