Let’s make one thing clear 

Very few people are familiar with the difference between EVO oil and olive oil. This is why it’s important to clarify that only EVO, because of its direct bond with the healthy fruit, can be identified as a health condiment. Indeed, only this oil is obtained using mechanical processing only and, when performed to perfection, can ensure veritable nourishment to the human organism. This is why it is important to underline the fact that the term ‘olive oil’ certainly indicates oils made with olives, but those olives reach the mill in terrible condition: unhealthy, overripe, picked off the ground, not whole, and sometimes with worms (the so-called ‘fly’), all showing lesions that open the way to possible bacterial infections and moulds.

These fruits give rise to a type of olive oil that not only has no nutritional properties but is also classified as inedible.
For market purposes, this kind of oil is called ‘lampante’, i.e. ‘lamp oil’. By law, this term identifies a type of oil that is too acidic and that gives very unpleasant organoleptic sensations. This means that it can only be refined. Once it was used as lamp oil (hence the name). At the refinery, lamp oil is subjected to chemical and physical treatments that turn it into an odourless, tasteless and colourless mass and with a drastically reduced acidity level. The oil treated and transformed in this manner is a raw material that re-enters the production chain as ‘olio raffinato’, i.e. ‘refined oil’.

Refined oil, that should be classified as a by-product of olive processing, is used to make over 90% of the volume of bottles of olive oil sold under the name ‘olio d'oliva’ i.e. ‘olive oil’.