[gnicholas]

Perhaps, but unlike truffle oil, which people eat for the flavor (and prestige/faux prestige), many people choose olive oil for health reasons. If you make some other kind of oil taste like olive oil, those people would not buy it.

[MeImCounting]

As far as I know those 'health reasons' are mostly propaganda and come from the new-agey sort of faux health circles. Correct me if I'm wrong I don't know much about the health of various oils this is just the impression I have gotten.

[vel0city]

The ratios of different types of fats in oils (e.g., saturated vs unsaturated, mono- vs polyunsaturated, etc) do have different metabolic processes and effects, that's not any kind of new-agey or faux health stuff.

The level of impact of such things is definitely still actively studied, but some fats do generally seem worse for you to consume than others.

Now, anyone arguing eating a bottle of olive oil a week will cure your cancer is obviously full of it, but choosing different oils because of ratios of saturated fats and what not isn't entirely new-agey fluff.

[bobthepanda]

Yes, while “heart-healthy” is overdoing it a little, there isn’t much of a debate that olive oil is less bad than, say, lard.

[InSteady]

Olive oil is substantially better than many other seed oil alternatives in terms of omega 6 content (too much omega 6 appears to be a problem, especially given how little omega 3 we get in the modern diet) [1] [2]. Extra virgin olive oil also has crazy high phenolic content for an oil, and polyphenols are well studied in their many beneficial impacts on health.

[1] https://www.drfabio.com/healthblog/cooking-oil-comparisons

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8504498/

[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095528630...

[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6724211/

[MeImCounting]

Oh aside from "Dr. Fabio"'s blog these are some great sources about the health benefits of olive oil. Good to know, ill have to keep eating it;)

I am somewhat shocked though to see such strong opinions about the health benefits of olive oil or the lack thereof. Here I thought it was just a tasty oil.

[GeoAtreides]

Just so you know, the burden of proof lies with the person making a claim, in this case you, claiming the health benefits of olive oil are 'propaganda'. If you think you don't know enough to make a claim, that's fine, you can always a nice neutral question, like: What are the health benefits of olive oil?

[thomastjeffery]

That's not "the claim". "The claim" is that olive oil is more healthy!

Someone saying they are suspicious of "the claim" isn't required to back their suspicions.

You are welcome to fact-check the entire narrative: which would boil down to fact-checking the original olive oil diet health claim.

[InSteady]

The notion that olive oil is one of the healthier fat options has abundant coverage in science and health media as well as peer reviewed research. This is widely know to people who are interested in healthy diet and lifestyle stuff. The claim that it's all propaganda requires a stronger burden of proof IMO.

If someone shouts "1+1=2 is propaganda!", the burden of proof should be on them even though almost everyone they meet will not have gone through the mathematical proof that 1+1=2 themselves (a 360 page proof, not an easy task). We're all just taking someone else's word for it + using our own common sense. We can find many other examples, but the gist is if something is well established in society, not just from cultural institutions but from educational and scientific ones as well, a claim that society is lying to us for whatever reason has the much stronger burden of proof.

[thomastjeffery]

> The notion that olive oil is one of the healthier fat options has abundant coverage in science and health media as well as peer reviewed research. This is widely know to people who are interested in healthy diet and lifestyle stuff.

OK.

> The claim that it's all propaganda requires a stronger burden of proof IMO.

Why? If it's so well known, then it should be trivial for you to prove!

The burden of proof is on the claimant, because that's the person who has proof to begin with!

---

> If someone shouts "1+1=2 is propaganda!", the burden of proof should be on them even though almost everyone they meet will not have gone through the mathematical proof that 1+1=2 themselves

The words "is propaganda" are carrying your entire point. The tricky bit is that there are two distinct things begging for evidence in your example:

1. The claim that 1+1=2

2. The claim that claim #1 is propaganda.

Each claim has (or lacks) a separate body of evidence. The burden of proof for each claim is whoever made that claim.

Importantly, propaganda itself does not require falsehood. Both the claim that 1+1=2 and the claim that mathematics are propaganda could be correct regardless of the other.

Because of that, any evidence that MeImCounting would be able to provide that "[olive oil diet] 'health reasons' are mostly propaganda" would fail to answer the pertinent question, "Are there valid health reasons for an olive oil diet?"