L'ARRIGO
EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL
Italians have the longest life span of any population in the world, and many attribute their longevity to their Mediterranean diet.
Italians consider Olive Oil to be as healthy as Mother's Milk.
Olive Oil is used abundantly in every Italian recipe. Butter is never used, except for making cakes and during the holiday season when it is served with toast and smoked salmon. Otherwise, olive oil is served with bread, on salads, in all pasta sauces, on fish and poultry. It is the one ingredient that is always present in an Italian meal.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil is a antioxidant and it is recognized by doctors throughout the world for its reduction of cholesterol.
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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced the availability of a qualified health claim for monounsaturated fat from olive oil and reduced risk of coronary heart disease (CHD).
There is limited but not conclusive evidence that suggests that consumers may reduce their risk of CHD if they consume monounsaturated fat from olive oil and olive oil-containing foods in place of foods high in saturated fat, while at the same time not increasing the total number of calories consumed daily.
"With this claim, consumers can make more informed decisions about maintaining healthy dietary practices," said Dr. Lester M. Crawford, Acting FDA Commissioner. "Since CHD is the number one killer of both men and women in the U.S., it is a public health priority to make sure that consumers have accurate and useful information on reducing their risk."
A qualified health claim on a conventional food must be supported by credible scientific evidence. Based on a systematic evaluation of the available scientific data, as outlined in FDA's "Interim Procedures for Qualified Health Claims in the Labeling of Conventional Human Food and Human Dietary Supplements", FDA is announcing the availability of this claim on food labels and the labeling of olive oil and certain foods that contain olive oil.
Although this research is not conclusive, the FDA intends to exercise its enforcement discretion with respect to the following qualified health claim:
Limited and not conclusive scientific evidence suggests that eating about 2 tablespoons (23 grams) of olive oil daily may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease due to the monounsaturated fat in olive oil. To achieve this possible benefit, olive oil is to replace a similar amount of saturated fat and not increase the total number of calories you eat in a day. One serving of this product [Name of food] contains [x] grams of olive oil."
This claim is the third qualified health claim FDA has announced for conventional food since the process for establishing such claims took effect last year. Additional information about qualified health claims is available online at www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/qhcolive.html.
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from: www.prohealthnetwork.com/library/showarticle.cfm/id/2321/searchtext/Olive%20Oil/
FDA Announces: Olive Oil May Boost Heart Health
www.ProHealthNetwork.com
11-08-2004
Source: The New York Times (11/01/04)
Food containing olive oil can carry labels saying they may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, the government says, citing limited evidence from a dozen scientific studies about the benefits of monounsaturated fats.
As long as people don't increase the number of calories they consume daily, the Food and Drug Administration confirmed a reduction in the risk of coronary heart disease when people replace foods high in saturated fat with the monounsaturated fat in olive oil.
That means a change as simple as sautéing food in two tablespoons of olive oil instead of butter may be healthier for your heart.
"Since CHD is the No. 1 killer of both men and women in the United States, it is a public health priority to make sure that consumers have accurate and useful information on reducing their risk," Lester M. Crawford, acting FDA commissioner, said in a prepared statement.
"It's good news for consumers," said Bob Bauer, president of the North American Olive Oil Association, which sought the qualified health claim on Aug. 28, 2003. "Olive oil is a healthy product to help them fight heart disease."
Recent research has underscored the heart benefits from so-called Mediterranean diets high in unsaturated fats from vegetable oil, nuts and such fish as salmon and tuna. Mortality rates dropped by more than 50 percent among elderly Europeans who stuck to such diets and led healthy lifestyles, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in September.
The North American Olive Oil Association included 88 publications to back its claim for the heart-healthy benefits of olive oil. The group wanted to make the claim for monounsaturated fats contained in just one tablespoon of olive oil per day.
Olive oil and certain food containing olive oil can now indicate that "limited and not conclusive scientific evidence suggests that eating about two tablespoons (23 grams) of olive oil daily may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease due to the monounsaturated fat in olive oil," the FDA concluded.
"I think FDA just took a more conservative view," Bauer said. Manufacturers waited for the FDA's precise wording before revising labels. "I expect, over time, most every container of olive oil will have this," he said.
Already, American restaurants and consumers drive $450 million in olive oil sales per year. Supermarket sales in 2003 accounted for 132 million pounds of olive oil, up by nearly one-third over the past six years. Bauer said he expects the label change to spur a larger uptake in sales.
According to the American Heart Association, coronary heart disease caused 502,189 deaths -- or one in five deaths -- in 2001, the most current statistic available. Another 13.2 million Americans that year survived the heart attacks, chest pains and other ailments caused by coronary heart disease.
Along with lowering cholesterol, cutting out cigarettes and exercising, the group says Americans can boost heart health by eating foods low in saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium. An American Heart Association spokeswoman declined comment on the FDA's action until it reviews the health claim.
The FDA discounted most of the submitted studies because the methodology made it difficult to tease out the effect of the monounsaturated fats in olive oil. Of a dozen studies that survived the cut, four were the most persuasive.
Thirty-three healthy young American men ate diets high in saturated fats from butter or cocoa butter, olive oil's monounsaturated fats or polyunsaturated fats from soybean oil. The soybean and olive oil groups significantly lowered total and bad LDL cholesterol.
In another trial involving 21 middle-aged Spanish women, those with diets in which olive oil replaced 8 percent of total daily calories from saturated fats lowered their total and bad cholesterol while significantly boosting good HDL cholesterol.
Forty-one young Spanish men lowered total and bad LDL cholesterol with an olive oil diet. Levels of good cholesterol did not drop in the olive oil group, as they did for youthful peers who replaced calories from saturated fats with carbohydrates.
And 22 healthy, middle-aged Spanish men with slightly elevated cholesterol counts were put on a four-week diet high in saturated fat. Those who switched to diets high in olive oil and those who replaced calories from saturated fats with carbohydrates lowered total and bad LDL cholesterol levels.
It's the third time the FDA granted a qualified health claim for conventional food. In March, the agency said "supportive but not conclusive research" shows eating 1.5 ounces of walnuts per day may reduce coronary heart disease risk. In September, it issued a similar qualified claim for the heart-healthy benefits of omega-3 fatty acids.
The FDA press release:
http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/news/2004/NEW01129.html
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from: www.prohealthnetwork.com/library/showarticle.cfm/id/2392/searchtext/Olive%20Oil/
US Researchers Uncover the Science
Behind the Breast Cancer Protective Effect of Olive Oil
ProHealthNetwork.com
01-10-2005
Source: European Society for Medical Oncology
US researchers have uncovered reasons why the Mediterranean diet, with its high intake of oleic acid-rich Olive Oil, seems to protect against breast cancer. They have also found evidence that oleic acid may have a future role in treatment. The findings are reported (Monday 10 January) in Annals of Oncology[1].
The researchers have demonstrated in a series of laboratory experiments on breast cancer cell lines that oleic acid dramatically cuts the levels of an oncogene called Her-2/neu (also known as erb B-2). High levels of Her-2/neu occur in over a fifth of breast cancer patients and are associated with highly aggressive tumours that have a poor prognosis.
Not only did oleic acid suppress over-expression of the gene, other tests on the cell lines showed that it also boosted the effectiveness of trastuzumab (Herceptin), the monoclonal antibody treatment that targets the Her-2/neu gene and has helped to prolong the lives of many breast cancer patients.
Lead researcher, Dr Javier Menendez, assistant professor at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and a research scientist with the Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Research Institute, said: "Our findings underpin epidemiological studies that show that the Mediterranean diet has significant protective effects against cancer, heart disease and ageing."
The strongest evidence that monounsaturated fatty acids such as oleic acid may influence breast cancer risk comes from studies of southern European populations, but animal research to date has thrown up inconsistent results, possibly because Olive Oil has been administered as a mixture of several fatty acids and other natural protections and not on its own.
"To our knowledge this is the first report that a dietary monounsaturated fatty acid previously suggested to be protective against breast cancer significantly down-regulates the expression of Her-2/neu, cutting it by up to 46%. Her-2/neu is one of the most important oncogenes in breast cancer," said Dr Menendez. "Moreover, in our tests, oleic acid's inhibition of Her-2/neu synergistically interacted with Herceptin-based immunotherapy by promoting the death of breast cancer cells exhibiting high levels of the oncogene.
"Additionally, alongside the sensitising effect of oleic acid on the efficacy of Herceptin we found it increased the expression of a protein (p27Kip1), a tumour suppresser protein, which is implicated in the development of resistance to Herceptin treatment."
Dr Menendez said that his team's findings should not only help in understanding the molecular mechanisms by which individual dietary fatty acids regulate the malignant behaviour of breast cancer cells, but also suggested that dietary interventions based on oleic acid may delay or prevent Herceptin resistance in Her-2/neu-postive breast cancer patients.
Dr Menendez and co-researchers Dr Ruth Lupu, director of the Evanston Northwestern Health Research Institute's Breast Cancer Translational Program and Dr Ramon Colomer, head of the Medical Oncology Division at Institut Catala d' Oncologia in Girona, Spain, are now looking to identify the ultimate molecular mechanism through which oleic acid supplementation inhibits the expression of Her-2/neu, as its blocking action appears to work in a different way from that of Herceptin.
They are also seeking funds for a study to see whether a high virgin Olive Oil diet will modulate the expression of the Her-2/neu oncogene in human breast tumours in animals and make the tumours less aggressive. In addition, they want to investigate whether oleic acid-rich diets have any effect on the anti-tumour activity of Herceptin.
Dr Menendez emphasised that while it was important to be cautious about the implications of the study, as laboratory results did not always translate into clinical practice, their findings did present the concept that a higher level of oleic acid in breast tissue could provide an effective means of influencing the outcome of breast cancer in patients carrying high levels of the rogue gene.
"They may also help in designing future epidemiological studies and, eventually, dietary counselling to delay or prevent drug resistance developing in patients taking Herceptin," he said.
[1] Oleic acid, the main monounsaturated fatty acid of Olive Oil, suppresses Her-2/neu (erb B-2) expression and synergistically enhances the growth inhibitory effects of trastuzumab (HerceptinTM) in breast cancer cells with Her-2/neu oncogene amplification. Annals of Oncology. Doi:10.1093/annonc/mdi090.
Notes:
1 Annals of Oncology is the monthly journal of the European Society for Medical
Oncology.
2 Annals of Oncology website: http://www.annonc.oupjournals.org
3 A PDF of the research paper with detailed results is available from Margaret Willson.