Is Olive Oil Good for You?
The benefits of adding a drizzle to your diet
Olive oil has been called liquid gold thanks to its lush flavor and rich color, not to mention its high price. But another key reason it’s so prized is because of its health benefits.
Olive oil is the main source of fat in the Mediterranean diet, and often it gets the credit for the diet’s positive effect on your heart, diabetes risk, and weight. While there’s no doubt that olive oil is good for you, just how good is it? Are the different types of olive oil equally healthy? And is it better for you than other oils? We combed through the research to find out.
Olive Oil Benefits
Research links olive oil to lower blood pressure, LDL (“bad” cholesterol), and inflammation; increased HDL (“good”) cholesterol; and a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes and cognitive decline.
You don’t need to consume a lot. A 2022 study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology involving about 92,000 people found that consuming more than 1 ½ teaspoons of olive oil daily reduced the risk of dying early from any cause by 19 percent compared with consuming less.
The Power of Extra Virgin
In the U.S, you’ll see olive oil bottles labeled “extra virgin” and just plain “olive oil.” Both are high in monounsaturated fatty acids, which have been linked to a lower risk of heart disease.
EVOO vs. Other Cooking Oils
So does all this make EVOO a better choice than other oils you might use for cooking, baking, and eating—like canola, safflower, soy, corn, sunflower, peanut, or simply “vegetable” oil?
There’s a consensus among experts that EVOO is one of the healthiest oils you can pick, and some studies have suggested that it has an edge over other oils. For example, researchers found that in Greek men and women over age 70, the exclusive use of olive oil in food prep and cooking was linked to higher scores on a scale of successful aging attributes compared with those who used no olive oil and those who used olive oil and other fats. The study, which was published in 2019 in the journal Foods, analyzed diet data from more than 3,300 people.
Still, it’s not definitive that olive oil is the best. “I’m not aware of any strong data to indicate that olive oil is any better than other mostly unsaturated oils,” says Alice Lichtenstein, DSc, senior scientist at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. A lot of the research on olive oil has been in studies that examined the diets of large groups of people and tracked health outcomes over time. But, Lichtenstein says, while such observational studies are important, they can show only associations, not cause and effect.
“Other parts of the Mediterranean diet likely also contribute to the health benefits ascribed specifically to olive oil,” Lichtenstein says. And other plant oils can also be healthful. Soybean and canola oils, for example, are good sources of alpha-linolenic acid, the plant form of omega-3s, which may protect against heart disease; olive oil has almost none.
What has been established: Replacing saturated fats, like butter or coconut oil, with unsaturated fats in our diets is healthier. A 2017 American Heart Association Presidential Advisory published in Circulation concluded that using either polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fats instead of saturated fat would help to reduce heart disease. So, Lichtenstein says, olive oil is a good choice, but you can use whatever plant oil you like.
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to clarify differences in the processing of extra virgin vs. regular olive oil.
