This is yet another example of what I have termed the “Academic-Media Complex,” in which bad studies are given hyped up reviews by the media, leading to more funding for research universities and more sales/clicks for news organizations, but poor information for the public.
If you read the original study (which you can by clicking here) the results are – shocking, I know – hardly what they are hyped to be.
What in fact did the study show?
Well, for one thing you might assume that the study was done in humans. But nope. It was done in mice.
For another, you might assume that since the headlines darkly hint at evidence that olive oil is bad for you, the researchers fed the mice olive oil. But nope. They fed the mice an extract of one chemical compound derived from olive oil. This is important because nature is very clever, and has a way of frequently containing the right doses of the right compounds in the right ratios to promote our health. Absolutely no informed person would assume that a high dose extract of one compound from olive oil would in any way have the same impact on a living body as actual olive oil.
Finally, you might assume that if the researchers didn’t actually study humans, and they didn’t actually study olive oil, then at least they did study fat accumulation. But nope. They studied a signaling molecule that COULD lead to fat accumulation in certain circumstances.
In other words, the headline “Too much of this ‘healthy fat’ could be adding to your waistline” should more accurately be re-worded to “Too much of artificial compound derived from olive oil and fed to mice in extremely high doses that would be almost impossible to consume when eating actual olive oil could be causing a signalling molecule associated with fat accumulation to be upregulated in those mice”
Nah. “Olive Oil Will Make You Fat” gets more clicks.
The point of this blog post is not about olive oil per se, but about the way that the media continually distorts research in a way that causes confusion and mistrust amongst the public. However, just as a quick aside, there is in fact a lot of prior research – including in well designed studies on actual human beings – to show that olive oil, if anything, has beneficial effects on body fat and body composition. Which isn’t to say that it’s a free pass, calorically speaking. Like any oil, olive oil is a calorically dense food, and eaten in abundance it can contribute to weight gain. But if we control for calories, olive oil has been consistently shown to, if anything, be less likely to lead to fat storage than other common dietary fats such as butter or other vegetable oils. Which is why headlines like this are not just annoyingly inaccurate, but actually dangerous as they could lead people to make harmful choices about their diet.
