from PreventDisease Website
However, in the retail sector, olive oil brands are far from equal in quality. They have come under great scrutiny due to inferior processing and impure formulas, many which contain nut and seed oils, a well kept secret within the industry. Several significant factors impact the antioxidant value of olive oil: late harvest, mechanical agitation, slow to press, high heat and filtering.
Choosing to by-pass these common
trappings ensures our olive oil maintains the highest antioxidant
and energetic value and its status as a "Raw Super Food".
Because of the many scientifically
documented health benefits of extra virgin olive oil, demand for it
has soared the world over. Olive trees have blossomed into money
trees, and this has attracted a small army of unscrupulous
operators.
Asking "what's the best olive oil?" is
like asking "what's the best wine?"
Trained as an engineer, Mr. Rallis, 42,
has invented a new method of processing olive oil, made from olives
grown on his centuries-old family farm and orchard in the
Peloponnese region in Greece, harnessing the latest technology to
revive a traditional food product.
The small, family-run business uses ice-pressing to retain the life-supporting enzymes that typically are compromised when produced by more conventional methods using heat, says Mr. Rallis, who had 11 years under his belt as an engineer specializing in software development before becoming an accidental farmer in 2009.
Ice-pressing yields significantly less oil than heat, Mr. Rallis adds, but it produces a more premium product, deliciously fragrant and flavorful.
Olives are linked to tremendous health
benefits in reducing cardiovascular risk, cancer, pain, allergies
and improving weight loss, digestion, eye health and glutathione
levels.
The
Proof Is In The Tasting.
Factors that cause the olive oil to
breakdown include, the health of the olives, how aggressive you
harvest, time between pressing and heat! Sustainably farming, ice
pressing the same day of hand harvesting, we have produced an oil
with a near flawless acidity. Sold at farmers' markets and foodie boutiques across Canada, Rallis Olive Oil has been winning international food awards since its launch in 2009.
Fans can be found as far away as Los Angeles, where the oil took top prize in the olive oil and raw foods categories at the 2011 Gourmet Products Awards, the first culinary contest Rallis had entered.
Unique Processing
It means making choices that protects the earth, not shareholder values.
The oil is bottled in Windsor after being harvested and produced in Greece using computer-based technology and actual blocks of ice that cool machinery during the extracting process.
The precise methodology, Mr. Rallis says, is proprietary.But he says he and his family make olive oil differently from how it has been produced before.
For millennia, olive oil was made at mills where large stone wheels crushed hand-picked olives, releasing the oils. Traditionally, the paste is then heated with water to increase the yield.
That was how olive oil was being made at the village in Greece where Mr. Rallis's father, Nikolas, was born 69 years ago.
The family farm had a grove that members of the Rallis family had been harvesting for generations.
When Mr. Rallis's grandfather passed away in 1997, he and his brother, Steve, a chiropractor and natural health practitioner in Barrie, Ont., went back to the old country from which their father had emigrated more than 50 years ago, eventually settling in Owen Sound, Ont.
With their father, they went to see how the olive oil was being made at the local stone mill. They were shocked.
Even though the olive oil was said to be cold-pressed, it was being cooked at a temperature of 33°C, a common enough process.
The idea was to do cold-pressing, but really do cold-pressing with no heat applied whatsoever.
The villagers thought the brothers were crazy.
It took two years and, as Mr. Rallis describes it, a lot of tweaking to figure out the right process that would retain all the embedded nutritional value of the olive during the oil extracting process.
The first step in the process was to buy the old stone mill and then do away with the stone in it.
The stone, says Mr. Rallis, was effective, but it was damaging the olive.
Instead of the stone, he determined to use machinery automated by a computer program of his own creation. That machinery, in turn, was slowed down to a snail's pace to ensure the preservation of the olive. Ice was applied to the mechanism to cool it down further, eliminating any heat that might boil away nutrients.
The net result?
Mr. Rallis says the olive oil is so delectable that the villagers now come armed with their own olives to be processed using the new technology.
Mr. Rallis cites a scientific study that has determined that the colder the process in making olive oil, the higher the immune-boosting properties.
The protective effects of olive oil on cognitive function was part of a study conducted by Miguel Martinez-Gonzalez of the University of Navarra in Spain and reported in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry (Mediterranean Diet Improves Cognition - The PREDIMED-NAVARRA Randomised Trial) last May.
Encouraged by these recent findings, Mr. Rallis and his brother will be participating in a neuroscience research project in Quebec in the new year on the healing effects of olive oil on the brain.
We produce olive oil for our children to eat.
Our vision is to create a healing food of the highest biological value. To reconnect with the an ancient land and its people. To build a sustainable farming model that supports the earth and heals those living on it.
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