Episode 308: Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil: For Fasting, For Your Microbiome, and for Cellular Health
Today I welcome back one of our most popular guests – the ‘Olive Oil Hunter' himself – TJ Robinson.
TJ's last visit here was all about discovering his special first-harvest, fresh-pressed olive oils. They are magic for fasting, for the appetite, and especially for your cellular health.
Today's episode will be filled with actionable intelligence that will help you optimize your health on the cellular level by harnessing the incredible power of Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil. So get your olive oils ready for tasting and join us! No olive oils? No problem! Check out the link to join the club below at a special price for my CHTV audience.
More about TJ Robinson:
T.J. Robinson is one of the world's most respected authorities on all matters olive oil.
Known for his “platinum palate,” he is one of the few Americans invited to serve as a judge in prestigious Italian olive oil tasting competitions.
He is dedicated to importing rare fresh-pressed olive oil, the most flavorful and most healthful extra virgin olive oil on the planet, until now virtually impossible to obtain year-round in the US. All his oils are independently lab tested and certified for 100% purity.
Show notes:
Pay $1 for a $39 bottle of premium olive oil by signing up at www.PompaOliveOil.com
CytoDetox: total detoxification support where it matters most – at the cellular level.
Order Dr. Pompa's Beyond Fasting book!
Transcript:
Dr. Pompa:
One of my favorite episodes in all of Cell TV is about olive oil. Can you believe it? Look, we discovered a lot about this first-harvest, fresh-pressed olive oil. You can only get it one place. We talk about that in this episode.
We‘ve learned that it is this magic for fasting. It’s magic for controlling appetite and it’s magic for the cells. We discuss that again with expert, TJ. He’s like the wine sommelier, but he is the olive oil som. These experts, they know taste, they know olive oil like they know wine. He brings some really amazing information about the benefits of these particular oils.
Alright, we’re going to talk about Italian oil this time and also some other ways that you may not have thought about for using olive oil. This episode brings it all to life and even why I believe that these oils need to be part of your cooking obviously but part of your health. Stay tuned for a great episode.
Ashley Smith:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m Ashley Smith. Today, we welcome back one of our most popular guests, the “Olive Oil Hunter” himself, TJ Robinson. He is back to discuss and taste a very unique batch of olive oils with Dr. Pompa. This episode will be filled with actionable intelligence that will help you optimize your health on the cellular level by harnessing the incredible power of fresh-pressed olive oil. Get your olive oils ready and let’s welcome back to CHTV, TJ Robinson, and of course, welcome Dr. Pompa.
TJ Robinson:
Thank you.
Dr. Pompa:
Awesome, actionable intelligence, I like that Ashley. That is no doubt what we’re doing—
Ashley Smith:
I didn’t write it actually; TJ’s [00:02:14]. She’s amazing. Thank you
TJ Robinson:
You’re very welcome. No, I think it’s really true. You’re amazing with fats and the detox level. I can’t wait to share a lot about olive oil. I think there is a lot of action that you’ll be able to take after hearing these thoughts.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no, and this is one of my favorite episodes. Why? Because I actually get to ingest these amazing oils. The three we’re going to talk about today, I haven’t tasted, so I will be tasting them with you all for the first time.
We did the last show, and Ashley will put out the link, and I want to dive in a little deeper on this show. I think we need to—you need to watch both shows because I’ve done some Facebook Lives and Instagrams about the olive oil. Some things since the last show that we discovered, one of which, we have a lot of people that are intermittent fasting and trying to fast. We’ve discovered that these oils because they’re, you’ll find out why, because they are so high in something called polyphenols, they seem to curb appetite. People just with a tablespoon of these oils are able to go on in their fast much longer.
We even have what we call a fat fast where we don’t just pure water fast, where we utilize fat is a fasting mechanism. It’s one of the fasts that you can actually do, is what you call a partial fast really, but we call it a partial fat fast. What we know is even in daily fasting, people that just sound like, gosh, I want to go longer in my fast, we’ve learned to use these olive oils. The polyphenol has an effect on a hormone called ghrelin that controls appetites. We learned that. Maybe it was something that you said on the last show, so thank you for that.
TJ Robinson:
You’re welcome.
Dr. Pompa:
We’re also learning just the other benefits since we’ve been using your oils. We’ve been getting a lot of amazing feedback. We have a lot of people who give comments.
TJ Robinson:
Oh, good. That makes me really happy. I’m so honored and just so appreciate your helping us be an ambassador for fresh-pressed olive oil. It’s been a product I’ve devoted the last decade of my life to getting the word out about the healing power of fresh-pressed olive oil. I’m actually an ex-chef and got my start in the kitchen. It was only at culinary—I only thought of it in the beginning in 2004 as a culinary item.
Of course, I thought, olive oil is healthy for you, blah-blah-blah, but I just really had no idea as science started to catch up with this ancient tree that was so special and had such unique healing properties for millennia. Science is catching up with that. There are great studies coming out related to the polyphenols, for the health benefits for the gut biome, for the brain, for a high level of satiety. It just goes on and on. It’s folks like you who helped us get the word out about the healing power of olive oil. We appreciate it.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and you’re doing something unique; hence, your nickname, the “Olive Oil Hunter,” which for our new viewers, I want you to explain that name. You can’t get fresh-pressed olive oil in the store. There’s a reason for that; I want you to tell the reason. That plays into why you’re called the “Olive Oil Hunter” and why I think everyone should join the club because obviously these health benefits you’re only getting in this fresh-pressed, first-pressed olive oil. Explain the name and explain why that ties into this question of why these oils, why these.
TJ Robinson:
Yeah, absolutely. Olives are a fruit. They need to be treated as a fruit, a beautiful fresh fruit. Fresh-pressed olive oil is very much like fresh fruit juice.
My job, I’m basically an olive oil sommelier and an olive oil concierge. It gets people access to best olive oil in the world. I travel the plant following the seasonal harvest which is in the Mediterranean in our fall, a northern hemisphere fall. Then I also travel to the southern hemisphere in May and July looking for—July, August, depending on mother nature, looking for southern hemisphere oils which are also fresh.
My club members get four harvest-fresh oils each year. We’re a quarterly club. I’m the “Olive Oil Hunter.” I land in country; I taste about 100 olive oils. I find the farms, the microclimates that are producing the best fruit. In Italy alone, there are 550 olive variety, so just searching through, finding the most flavorful, finding the ones with polyphenols, finding the microclimate that did—where it didn’t rain too much so it preserves the polyphenols in the fruit so they’re bursting with flavor and I can produce oils with master millers who make great oil. We can go further into that as we go on.
Essentially, yeah, I’m the “Olive Oil Hunter.” I travel around; I found the world’s greatest olive oil. I put it on a jet and I send it directly to my club members. There’s no middleman in the middle to muck up anything. It’s not on a slow cargo boat. It’s not sitting on a shelf getting fluorescent light.
It’s not on the top shelf in the supermarket where it’s getting a lot of heat. It’s in a dark glass bottle. There’s a lot of different—basically, we cut all the mistakes you can make with olive oil by working directly with the producer and me being there on the ground. Yeah, I’m very blessed to have 16,000 members now across the US that every quarter, they get three bottles of amazing fresh-pressed olive oil.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, we love it. On this episode here, I really want to focus on my favorite country. That’s Italy and not because it’s my favorite country honestly. I’ve been there several times. Most of the oil that we’re getting this quarter is from Italy, at least two of the three are from Italy that I’m seeing here; one is from Greece.
TJ Robinson:
That’s right.
Dr. Pompa:
Italian olive oil, that’s my heritage right. I want to pull into this region because if you join, and I hope you do, I know we have an amazing deal. It’s if you join, if you go to pompaoliveoil.com, you’ll join actually your club, but you’ll do it through me. That’s awesome.
TJ Robinson:
That’s right.
Dr. Pompa:
Anyways, they get the first bottle for a penny, correct?
TJ Robinson:
A dollar.
Dr. Pompa:
A dollar, darn.
TJ Robinson:
The bottle’s free, the dollar’s shipping.
Dr. Pompa:
[00:09:22] I guess, sorry.
TJ Robinson:
Yeah, no worries. Absolutely, because when we taste these oils, you’ll see—when you hear us talk about these oils as a listener and you see the color and just how much flavor we’re receiving from this amazing oil and fruit, you’re going to want to taste it yourself. What I typically invite people to do is take the oil out of their pantry that they’re currently consuming and do a side by side taste test. That’s why we do it. We’re educating pallets.
We have a big mission and a lot of people to reach. We send out 4,000 sample bottles every quarter for a dollar to try to educate pallets and to train people how to test olive oil, how to compare it, how to analyze it, and see the health benefits for themselves. That’s exactly what you’re offering. I appreciate you helping us get the word out.
Dr. Pompa:
Again, I want people to understand. You can go to a Whole Foods, your grocery story, you can get some decent olive oils, but there is a difference. Before we go on, I want you to reexplain the difference of this oil. You did a little bit there, but there is a difference of this first-pressed oil that most of the families keep for themselves. Obviously, the polyphenols are way higher. The reason you can’t get it in your store is because most of the families keep it for themselves. Explain why this fresh-pressed. Now, you actually had to start this club.
TJ Robinson:
Sure, well, I feel in love with it in Sicily myself. I’m a southern boy. I didn’t grow up around olive trees. Most olive oil in the US is imported by boat and then distribution. I started this mission back in about 2004 and founded the club after that, slightly after that.
Really, it was my first time in visiting Sicily. I was invited to a harvest party with this family. They said, come, harvest fruit with us. We’ll take it to the mill. Then we’ll have dinner after. The moment when I saw the passion, and care, and love that these members of the family were putting into this fruit that belonged to their great-great-great-great grandparents, these trees and how they were treating their fruit so gingerly and beautifully, kept it out of the sun, covered it with leaves, they took it immediately to the mill and pressed it immediately, this level of love and care was really just amazing.
Then for the first time, I actually stood in front of the press and tried fresh oil from a very early harvest fruit. We can talk more about early harvest, but that was when my life changed. I had never tasted this product before as a professional chef, and a wine writer, and travel writer. I’d never had the opportunity to try fresh oil.
The moment I tried it, I immediately took some home to my friends and family and chef friends in New York. They flipped out over it. I think we were sheltered as Americans. We were only growing about 3% of our US consumption back in those days. Now, we’re up to maybe 7, 8% of our consumption. We’re still importing very high levels of it. Around that time, there were also a lot of studies coming out around fraud in olive oil.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no, lots. There’s been a lot there.
TJ Robinson:
Yeah, there’s a great book by a wonderful writer, Tom Mueller is the author, a book called, Extra Virginity. He really follows this trail of fraud in olive oil all the way back from Roman times. The Romans were responsible, even Spanish olive oil, there’s the south of Spain in this area of [Heian]. The Romans actually planted most of those trees. They were for the Roman empire. In Rome, there’s actually a hill that’s built with Anfora clay pots that olive oil was brought from Spain back to Rome. There’s a massive hill in Rome that’s all made out of clay pots.
The Italians have been involved with olive oil for a long time. A lot of times as American consumers, we buy things with an Italian flag on the front. They’re very deceptive in marketing sometimes, but when you look at the back of the label, you see it’s from ten different countries of origin. That’s bulk low love olive oil versus a highly curated fresh-pressed oil that starts with a very green fruit.
That’s the first step. The fruit itself is harvested when it’s super green. In fact, the Italians, people used to have this assumption that Tuscans made the best olive oil. One of the reasons—and you know the geography of Italy pretty well, Dr. Pompa, but for example, in Tuscany, which is more central, northern—
Dr. Pompa:
Northern-central.
TJ Robinson:
Central-ish is definitely colder than it is in Sicily. The people in Tuscany were picking their fruit off the trees when it was not quite ripe. It didn’t get as ripe up in Tuscany as quickly as it did in—so they needed to catch it before the frost. They would pick it very green. They started making this really green olive oil that the world just fell in love with.
Tuscan trees, in general, are small; they don’t get very large like they do in southern Italy. It’s a lower yield, but it created this we’ll call it a style of olive oil, this early harvest style that some boutique producers all over the world follow. It’s like a protocol we’ll call it that just happened naturally in Tuscany. Then around the world, people started to appreciate this flavor profile. They could feel it’s more flavorful and healthy for them. It’s trickled around the rest of the world.
Even with producers I work in Spain—I work with in Spain, or Australia, or Chile, they all are very early harvest. It has a very low amount of oil inside the fruit, about 10% yield versus if you let that same fruit hang on the tree for another say two months. It could get up to 30% oil for the same individual fruit. People that are bulk buyers and sellers, they’re in the market of let the fruit hang on the tree. Let it get more oil.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s all about money.
TJ Robinson:
More money. The health-promoting qualities, the polyphenols, obviously go down. They don’t have harvest costs. They let it fall to the ground. They vacuum it up. They make oil, then send it to a refinery to strip out all the defects. It’s a very slippery business to say the least.
Dr. Pompa:
Slippery, yeah. You’re right about that, too. Okay, all of those, if you managed to get 100% olive oil product, all of those factors are still factors. The product you’re getting even if it’s organic, blah-blah-blah, very little low polyphenols because it’s not coming from the first-pressed to your point.
Now, the other thing is that they’re getting cut oil. Most of the oils, even in health food stores, are being cut. That’s the other issue obviously; you breezed across that. To get real olive oil today is hard, let alone these high polyphenol oils from the first fresh-press.
TJ Robinson:
That’s right. You have to be a detective because it will say olive oil in big letters, but if you look, it will say, blended with other oils and especially in the restaurant industry.
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, it’s terrible.
TJ Robinson:
Oh, that is a mess because they get—because it’s so price-oriented. They go for the lowest cost. They’ll be supplied with real “olive oil,” but then a lot of times, things are mixed in and it will be a blended oil. I know you and Merily are very particular about the oils you consume. You talked about that a little bit last time, but please expand on that.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no, we pound them. When we go to dinner, we will not make exceptions; as a matter of fact, we use the word allergic. My wife is allergic to canola oil and vegetable oil, so we make sure, is your olive oil pure? We got that because you use the word allergic, then they take it very seriously.
TJ Robinson:
That’s really smart.
Dr. Pompa:
If you say, hey, we want fresh, oh, yeah, we use olive oil. I can tell by the smell, the color, and the taste right away if you get a real good oil. It is very tough. We know our restaurants well. We know the questions to ask.
TJ Robinson:
Yeah, that’s really smart.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, the reason why I’m such a stickler here is because these bad oils come in. There was just a great article recently talking about canola oil. It’s rapeseed oil, but it is the most inflammatory of all oils. You literally ingest it. It makes its way right into your cell membranes, which is critical for detoxing. Your hormone health, your health in pure, how you feel, your energy, brain fog, all of that comes from your membranes of your cells. These bad oils make their way into the membranes and create dysfunction for 132 days on average.
TJ Robinson:
Wow.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s why I don’t screw it up. When I see very sick people, one of the first things we have to fix is their membrane health. You can’t fix it if they’re ingesting bad oil. We have to get rid of vegetable oil, canola oil, and again, a lot of the olive oils, especially in restaurants, are being cut. Now, there’s a rumor too that a lot of the Italian oils are coming over because the mafia’s taking over, they’re cutting their oils with some of these things. It’s bad.
Let’s say you get the perfect oil, olive oil that is. Let’s say you get an uncut olive oil. You’re still not getting the polyphenol levels high enough to really have that health benefit again to protect those cell membranes and to have all those effects that you said. That’s the point of your club is you have to travel different hemispheres to get these fresh first-pressed oils. I want to make a point here because the reason is—and people would say, well, can’t I just buy a bunch from you and just keep them in my closet? No, because the polyphenols drop in half in six months. You want to [00:20:04].
TJ Robinson:
You’ve got it. Honestly, you took the words right out of my mouth.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, you want to ingest these in six months. That’s why four times a year, you’re traveling to different places on the Earth. Okay, so the question I have now is where I’m at and why Italian and Greece right now?
TJ Robinson:
Italy and Greece, they experience—Sicily started probably late September. It’s still going on in some places in Italy actually. They’re in the middle of harvest; well, it’s just past probably. In October, November, I was in Italy. I always go there. It’s one of my favorite places to visit.
Dr. Pompa:
I saw your pictures by the way; they look spectacular.
TJ Robinson:
We have a lot of fun. For me going back to Italy every year, most of the producers I work with, it’s a relationship game. To get access to the best stuff, I have to maintain those relationships. I see them in good years; I see them in bad years. They know that my palette will be—my parameters, my palette, my profile for the club of the oils has to be meet before I purchase.
I’ve worked with them for many years. For us to go and be with our friends—our friends now because I’ve been working with most of these people for over 10 years. I leveraged those relationships to get the very best fruit and make the grade oil. Then I place it on a jet and I fly it back to America. I cut out all those things that you were talking about in the middle there where things get—potential fraud happens.
Sixty-Minutes did a great expose on olive oil fraud in the last couple of years. Actually, since the last time we talked, Wall Street Journal published in late November, they said, “Don’t sleep on this game-changing ingredient. When it comes to olive oil, the younger, the better, vibrant, flavorful, Olio Nuovo or nuevo,” because olive oil we’re talking about, “is a pantry pick me up you should purchase pronto.” It’s nice to see that in the Wall Street Journal.
The New York Times recently said, “The world of olive oil is murky.” That’s a good headline. “Here’s help for the home cook. Don’t try to parse every word on the label. The key to good flavor—or sorry. “The keys to good flavor are seeking out the freshest oil and using it generously. Olive oil should be poured lavishly and used up quickly. Experts say that freshness more than color, price, place of origin determines it’s quality.”
Thank goodness, major media, for years they’ve been reporting on all the fraud and all the issues with bulk, low-quality olive oil. They’re finally catching on to this freshness. Our mission, what you’re helping—the word you’re helping get out there on the street is just really helpful. We appreciate you because it’s paying dividends. We appreciate it.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely. I have a lot of people, health seekers. Real olive oil that we’re talking about this first-pressed, young oil is the magic, these polyphenols. You have to understand that the Omega-6 is this pivotal fat in the membranes. I’ve heard people say, yeah, but this monosaturated fat isn’t one of the main fats in the membranes. It’s true; however, the fact is that these high polyphenols protect these membranes, protect the fats.
As a matter of fact, we even—like I said, my wife and I bring our olive oil when we go out to eat a lot of the times. If you do get exposed, it actually even had a protective effect there to your cell membranes. It has an effect on the membrane. It downregulates this oxidative stress, even toxic input that creates inflammation to the cell. It has many other benefits as we mentioned at the top of the show.
Okay, let’s pull this conversation into Italy here, my favorite place. What other advantages does Italy have? Because again, maybe I’m biased, but I just love these Italian oils.
TJ Robinson:
Yes, I do, too.
Dr. Pompa:
Are there some other advantages that they have that they put out some of the best oils in the world?
TJ Robinson:
Most of the best machinery for producing olive oil, high-quality olive oil—let’s focus on high-quality in Italy. Most of the great equipment for processing olive oil from transforming it from the tree into pressing it into the oil itself, most of that equipment, at least the high-level stuff was designed in Italy. You have people who are responsible for building the Ferrari. These are Italians; they’re into their machines. They know, they’re really good at this kind of tech. What they do, they have over the years continued to step up and be on the forefront and the frontier of trying the next thing. Let’s make sure our fruit—maybe I should step back a little bit and just talk about the how olive oil is made and then we could understand a little bit more?
Dr. Pompa:
Yes, to your point we are going to make is, okay, not getting the right oil at the wrong times, that’s a pitfall, cutting the oils, all that.
TJ Robinson:
Yes, absolutely.
Dr. Pompa:
Now, many pitfalls are how they make the olive oil. You can make a great oil bad, right?
TJ Robinson:
Oh, absolutely.
Dr. Pompa:
It could be over oxidation. That’s what you’re going to talk about.
TJ Robinson:
Exactly; and I’ll talk about best practices. Ideally, you have trees that were well loved and well cared for the whole season. You’ve taken care of them. You don’t just walk in on harvest day and expect good stuff. It usually doesn’t work. You have people that take really good care of their orchard. Olives are fruit; they need to be treated as that.
This fruit is picked and placed in small bins. Again, this is an Italian way. They use very small bins. They don’t use industrial systems or whatever, so these small bins.
Usually, when they’re picked around away, handed with sticks or with cones, which take the olives off the tree on these nets. When they fall to the nets, they put them in these bins. They normally put them in the shade because sun and heat will start to deteriorate the fruit. Then they rush them directly to their mill.
I do single-estate oils. Everyone I work with has their own mill; well, there are examples here or there where they don’t, but complete control over the mill they’re using. They have them, onsite mills. They rush them to the mill.
In the milling process, first the olives are washed. Then the fruit goes through what’s called a—the actual mill itself is called the crusher. Think of the crusher as being a food processor. They take the whole fruit. They run it through this crusher. They’re different kinds of crushers they can use to get different aromas, and different flavors, and different mouthfeel on the fruit. This crusher is Step One.
Then it flows immediately over to this thing called a malaxer. I like to think of the malaxer as this stand mixer in the kitchen, the KitchenAid stand mixer. What’s happening in there, the olive paste is just turning. During that time, an enzymatic breakdown happens between the parts of the fruit. There’s nothing added here, but while this malaxes for approximately 20 to 40 minutes depending on the fruit, a lot of things can happen in there if the mill’s not clean, if they use too much heat, if there’s too much oxygen inside. Things can not keep the antioxidant levels where you want it. They’re very protective over that. They keep the malaxing time short.
Then the third phase is simply a centrifuge. This paste, looks like pesto, is placed into a centrifuge, which separates that paste into three different parts. There’s the water, and waste, there’s the oil, and then there’s the pits essentially that are ground up at that point. It essentially separates that into three parts. This fresh oil, you get about 10% oil at a very early harvest. You get about 10% oil out of the fruit. Literally, if you see a bottle of olive oil, it takes ten—a high-quality olive oil, it takes ten times as many olive fruits in volume to produce this bottle.
Dr. Pompa:
Give me an idea bucket-wise. If I picture a bucket of olives, how many buckets does it take to produce this?
TJ Robinson:
I would guess at least a five-gallon bucket to do that one bottle. Yeah, it’s a lot.
Dr. Pompa:
You picture that on a tree. That's a darn—it's a small olive tree, maybe, that it produced, or half of an olive tree. I don’t know. That’s a lot.
T.J. Robinson:
Yeah, it's a lot. These characters around the world that I work with, I'm very blessed to have these relationships with the top producers around the world. Many of them follow the practices that were started in Italy of this higher quality oil. Yeah, differences of the milling equipment, a lot of the science keeping the oxygen out of the process that reduces oxidative stress on the oil itself to keep the aromas and flavors and polyphenols intact.
Machinery is key, microclimates with really special fruit. In Italy we talked about 550 varieties of olives there. It's what I talked about in the pressing report. Some of them are used for curing to make table fruit. Some are used for olive oils of the 550. Some are used for both. Really, these are very special heritage, old varietal, and old varieties of olive fruit all around Italy that have adapted very specifically to those microclimates.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that's awesome. Are there disadvantages, I should say, in Italy. I mean climate-wise. I mean when you look at different regions and you've seen them, obviously, all the different regions. What are some of the disadvantages you see there?
T.J. Robinson:
I mean there is definitely—people, it's really sad. There's some places in Sicily. In fact, I was just talking to my family about this yesterday. You see those ads where you can buy a house in Italy for one Euro. There are places in Sicily, for example, where these—many people, many local Italians who grew up in these remote villages, they leave for the larger cities. They actually have quite a bit of abandon olive groves in Italy.
To see this in Sicily—there's a family I worked with there that is rescuing groves, essentially, leasing them from other people who basically abandon them, and are producing incredible olive oil. They are definitely things that are happening in the culture where their—it's hard to get a lot of Italians that want to harvest olive oil. They're having to bring in more immigrants to help with that.
There are definitely things happening in the culture, but in general it's a very special place for olive oil. It's very deep in the culture. They celebrate that harvest. They understand new oil, and the freshness of new oil, and how good it can be if you're trying to follow a Mediterranean style diet, or you're trying to get the benefits of the Mediterranean diet. Probably the ultimate would be Mediterranean keto if you could go in that direction to try to get all the benefits of both those amazing diets.
Dr. Pompa:
You can. It's easy to stick to the higher fat foods. Listen, so let's jump into this. You can probably answer some of these questions when we're actually tasting. I can't let these oils sit here [00:33:30] about tasting.
T.J. Robinson:
I know.
Dr. Pompa:
There's two Mediterranean regions here, Greece and Italy. One of the questions that are going to answer at some point is the difference. I've had amazing oils, olive oils from Greece, that I thought were absolutely incredible. What are some of the differences that you can cover that as we taste them? Where are we starting with this tasting?
T.J. Robinson:
We’re going to start with the Greek oil, the no N oil. This oil is from a single—it's a single varietal oil made from an olive variety called Amfissa, A-M-F-I-S-S-A.
Dr. Pompa:
It means one variety of olive.
T.J. Robinson:
That’s right, one—
Dr. Pompa:
Sometimes wine is a blend of three different grapes like in olive oil.
T.J. Robinson:
Yes, you're such a great teacher. I appreciate you adding explanations because that really helps. Thank you, but yes, absolutely. Before we taste, I might want to pour all three. The first one we're going to be pouring up. We have these small tasting cups, or I have these little three white Solo cups. Doctor Pompa has great little espresso cups. That's perfect.
Noen is going to be the first one and the second one I want to pour up in this lineup. This is a great way to assess different oils is when you try them together. When you get a sample bottle at home, when you try the offer, you want to line up your olive oil against these, or against your fresh pressed oil so you can really appreciate the differences and see, immediately, the quality. I've poured up all three.
Noen’s in the first position, Coley’s in second, and Hermes is in the third. Color is not a great way to judge olive oil, but as I look down, I see how vibrantly green and beautiful the oils are. It tells me it's most likely from very green fruit, which is ideal. I'd like to just do a quick smell across all three, the first one being the Greek. Let's get a sense of that. That's the mild one from the quarter. It's still quite grassy and quite fresh with things like romaine and that lighter greens, butter lettuce.
The Coley, I'm going to smell that one next. I'm kind of warming it up in the palm of my hand. This tablespoon of oil, I just swirl it around in the bottom of my cup. That warms the oil. That brings all the aromas out in the oil. This one's definitely a little deeper green color. Then the last one—and aroma as well. The last one, the Hermes, I just want to smell that.
Dr. Pompa:
Now, the middle, the Coley.
T.J. Robinson:
Coley, yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
What region of Italy is that from? That’s actually from—just north, it’s Lazio is the region, just north of Rome. This area is where the Etruscans were settled. They predate the Roman Empire. It's really cool. When they're digging in the fields around these trees, and working in the fields, they come across a lot of Etruscan pottery pieces. It's really cool to hang out with these families and see these thousands of year-old pieces of pottery from the Etruscans.
We'll start with Noen, the Greek one. This variety—so there was an Austrian family who bought a piece of property in the Pillion Peninsula which is right between Athens and Thessaloniki. It's this little peninsula that sticks out. This family from Austria bought a vacation home there. There's great skiing, and there's beautiful watersports as well. It's a beautiful Peninsula. There were some olive trees on their property. They didn't really know what to do with them, being Austrian, but they took – they decided to go talk to the local miller about olive oil in the area, and when to pick it, and all that stuff. They struck up a great friendship.
They produced some olive oil together. This family, Austrian family, went on to develop an olive oil brand, which is only sold in Austria, and Germany, I believe, and maybe Switzerland other than my personal selection for the club. Essentially, they created a small co-op. They have 30 producers they work with who bring them beautiful green fruit. This Amfissa olives, these are massive olive fruits. They're also used in table olive production.
They're beautiful green. They look like little granny smith apples. They produce a very food friendly oil. You'll see when we taste that. Just to walk through the tasting again, the way we taste, professionally taste, olive oil. First, we're looking at the aromas even before we taste it. We take a nice whiff of the oil. It should be green, and fresh, and vibrant. It should be grassy and and—
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, this one actually, I mean, has a grassy, really grassy nose to it. What's the polyphenol in this olive oil?
T.J. Robinson:
I printed those out. I knew you were going to ask. That's right at 300, 297, so right at 300. That's the mild selection. For this variety, like I said, it's a table fruit, but they made olive oil out of it. It’s a very low yield. This Austrian family, they work with a great miller there who makes this oil. Step one is smell, step two is taste. When we taste the oil, when you're assessing the quality of olive oil, you're looking for bitterness. That tells you the oil—the fruit was actually picked when it was very green. Bitterness is very important, and then a little spiciness as well.
Dr. Pompa:
Which you see on the back.
T.J. Robinson:
Exactly, a little pinch in the throat, which you'll get as we go in the—up higher in polyphenols.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that's the polyphenol test is the cough test.
T.J. Robinson:
That's right.
Dr. Pompa:
It was one cough, two cough, three coughs. When it gets you in the back, that is that engage of polyphenols.
T.J. Robinson:
Yes, so that's a hallmark of fresh oil. Again, that really dissipates in the first six months. That's why we fly it in by jet. Let's try this Amfissa. In the glass, I mean, it is very grassy, like you were saying.
Dr. Pompa:
[00:40:14]
T.J. Robinson:
You already started, oh gosh. That's good. Yes, wonderful aroma coming out of the glass, of green apple, banana. It's very nice. It's very artichokes and almonds. Then I'm going to take a small sip.
Dr. Pompa:
It tastes higher phenols than 300 to me.
T.J. Robinson:
It does.
Dr. Pompa:
Doesn’t it?
T.J. Robinson:
Yeah, it totally does. The mouthfeel is so beautiful. It’s just a soft entrance and then just really opens up and blooms in the mouth.
Dr. Pompa:
It's not too overpowering. Even though the polyphenols feel high to me, in the front of my palate, it's not overpowering.
T.J. Robinson:
That the beauty of Amfissa. It's got this lemon meringue pie flavor to it. It's sweet, and spicy, and green, a little lime zest, a touch of arugula or bitter greens in there like radicchio. It's a very special oil that is really well made, well cared for by the producer. Yeah that one was—Italy, in some ways, had a tough season this year. In the spring, there was some frost that killed some of the buds.
Certain varieties, this year, because most producers, when they have a field, they don't produce all one varietal because for cross pollinization, and just historically that's the way it's been planted, they’ve planted in a way so that they can rotate the harvest. Not everything's ripe all at once. Some varieties this year, that were the late bloomers, they survived. The early bloomers, they got hit with the frost. There were no fruit on those trees, no fruit—no flower, no fruit.
It's a finicky plant, but at the same time it really can be prolific. The olive tree produces—it's an alternate bearing tree like most fruit trees. What happens is one year they have a bumper crop; the next year less, much less. It's one of those tricky trees, but thank goodness this year, in Greece, the Amfissa tree gave a lot of fruit because last year they had zero olives. Last year zero olives, but this year an abundance. What God took away last year—
Dr. Pompa:
That business got a labor of love.
T.J. Robinson:
It is, it totally is. Anyway, that's the Greek one. We can move on to the two Italians because that's where we're going. This Coley that—
Dr. Pompa:
I’m going to Italy, here, folks.
T.J. Robinson:
Yes, we're on our way to Italy. This Coley—
Dr. Pompa:
Now we’re [00:43:08] little central Italy right now.
T.J. Robinson:
Yes, that's right, central Italy, the Etruscan area of Italy, just a little north of Rome. This oil, I mean the color is just so impressive. You can't really –
Dr. Pompa:
It’s actually the darkest of the three, wouldn’t you say?
T.J. Robinson:
It is.
Dr. Pompa:
Not by much, the last one is pretty darn dark. Again, you’re not judging it by the color completely.
T.J. Robinson:
Yeah, that's right. In fact, professional tasters, we taste out of blue cups because we don't want the color to trick our brains into thinking it's more green harvest fruit.
Dr. Pompa:
However, I will say this. At a restaurant, I can tell by sight whether it's been cut. I mean because it's ridiculously light. I mean, on these orders you don’t judge it by the color, but when you cite that like just that really gold color.
T.J. Robinson:
No, not touching it. Let’s do a nose test on the Coley, see what we come up with.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, I learn well, folks. You see me in between; I'm doing a little bit of green apple. He told me that's what I should use, green apple.
T.J. Robinson:
Absolutely, it's perfect. That's what us professional tasters do. The nose on this one, it's green and sweet. This one has a lot of sweet aromas. I like a little marzipan, a little almondy, definitely a little bit of romaine. It's also grassy, a little bit of lime zest. It's a beautiful just green. I think of herbal things with this one. I think of basil and rosemary. I think of green – if I've just had fresh herbs, and rubbed them in my palms, and smelled my palms, that's what I get on this oil, on the nose.
Dr. Pompa:
The first ones actually smelled grassier. This one smells, to your point, a little bit more herbally I would say.
T.J. Robinson:
Yeah, herbally, yeah, I agree.
Dr. Pompa:
I do pick up fruit tones in there. Again, I'm used to smelling wine more than olive oil.
T.J. Robinson:
Right, well they do – wine—people have this association. They think that olive oil ages like wine. It does not age at all.
Dr. Pompa:
[00:45:28]
T.J. Robinson:
I’m going to take a sip of the Coley real quick. Immediately, you can feel the—this oil’s richer, heavier. You feel more bitterness.
Dr. Pompa:
I have more on the front of my palate.
T.J. Robinson:
There it is. That one said—319 is the polyphenol count on that one. Yeah, I'm probably going to get a little cough, here, too. That oil has a very long finish. This oil I really like with foods that are bitter on their own, like arugula salad or radicchio. I love bitter foods in general. I've heard people talk about bile production related to eating foods that are more on that bitter spectrum. Can you explain that to me?
Dr. Pompa:
It helps actually push bile from the liver, which bile, if it stays in the liver, can actually become more and more toxic. We call it hepatic, meaning liver, biliary bile, sludge, meaning toxic. We want to move bile from the liver, and bitters is a way of pushing bile out, which is a very healthy thing to do to for it to be recycled and cleansed.
T.J. Robinson:
We’ve come up with a lot of interesting things that we would like to do some research on anytime I'm on a call with you. It would be really interesting to see the effect of bitter olive oil having on bile production. I don't know how we can figure out a way to test that.
Dr. Pompa:
You know what, you just struck something with me. I’ve never done this before. You would have to tell me which is one of the most bitter oils that you've come across. I do something called the bile push. What we do is we take bind, that's a binder that sits in the gut. Its job is it pulls the toxic bile complex out, which is a really big issue for people as far as opening up their detox [00:47:29].
We take the bind, we take three or four of this product called bind, B-I-N-D. It has four different binders in it that only stay in the gut. It acts as a catcher's mitt to grab this toxic bile complex. We take that. Thirty minutes later, we ingest a fat. Now, we typically use ghee because it's very fatty. It dumps the bile. You're right. We would be able to use the fat of the olive oil to dump the bile because you need bile to digest the fat. The bitter component would actually help dump more bile than, say, even the ghee that we use. [00:48:07]. I'm going to use one of the higher bitter olive oils for this flush. We're going to try it.
T.J. Robinson:
I love it. I'm going to stay tuned because I want to know how that works. My theory is that it would help with bile production. No, that’s super cool. The third one I want to taste is – and the last one we tasted by the way, the Coley is also a single varietal oil. It's kind of special to have two single varietal oils in this. Normally I have more blends because I'm a chef. I like to make sauces. I consider fresh olive oil to be a sauce that mother nature made for you, one of her best products.
Anyway, this last one is actually a blend of one farmer who has a large grove. Not large, it’s probably, I don’t know, 20 acres. He has different olive varieties on the farm. The main one, about seventy percent of this, is from a variety called Dritta. It rhymes with Rita, but it's called Dritta, D-R-I-T-T-A, I believe. It's a great olive variety from Abruzzo, which is just on the other side. If you're in Rome and went directly east, you would go to Abruzzo. It's a beautiful region, undiscovered. People don't seek out Abruzzo. It's not a big tourist place, but oh, it’s a beautiful spot on the planet and only about a couple hours from Rome.
This guy—actually, all the producers I work with are great producers. This guy, there's an Italian guide called Dom Brio Rosa and they route—it's one of the ranking guides of producers, olive oil producers. Last year he won Olive Mill and Olive Miller of the year for the Italian Guide for olive oil. His name is Claudio, a very super nice family. You would love being at his house. He takes everything from his garden. I mean the whole family gets involved. I know how family-oriented your company is.
I love when they get the family involved to produce all these different things, whether it's the oil, or whether it's the salumi that they make, or the cured meats, or anything, whether the yearly tomato sauces they're producing. I love how this this is very family oriented, so this oil is the bold. The polyphenol level on it is a 451, so it's a very bright oil as you'll see when we taste it, but yet it is still very calibrated.
This guy was very frustrated with the system, the local mill that he would take his beautiful fruit to, and it would get destroyed. About ten years ago is when he started his own mill. When he did it, he said, “I want to do it right. I want to find the best machinery in Italy I can buy.” He went up to Tuscany and met with Giorgio Mori who is a producer of great equipment whose real history was in wine but now is working in olive oil as well.
Giorgio produced beautiful small boutique machines where he can make really high-quality oil himself and have complete control from the tree all the way to the bottle. Anyway, Giorgio Mori has a big hand in this oil as well, producing great machinery. That, as you'll see when we smell it, it's fairly abundant in aroma. Giorgio produced a very special crusher that crushes the fruit in a way that really brings out the aromas in the oils.
You'll see that in the mouthfeel as well. On the nose of this one, it's definitely greener, arugula, definitely more spicy, radicchio. This one's definitely stronger on the nose. Then on the palate, you're going to get increased bitterness and increased spiciness. I'm going to take a taste of that as well.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, definitely, yeah, oh my God, yeah, wow.
T.J. Robinson:
Yeah, there's a polyphenol. That oil is so luscious. Bitterness, I love it. It's kind of like a fine whiskey. It’s got a little afterburn.
Dr. Pompa:
That strong of an oil, bitter, bold. You're the chef. What would you do with that one? The other one I can see on salads, raw. This could almost overwhelm certain things, right?
T.J. Robinson:
Yes, I would pair it with arugula because it's one of those oils that—
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, [00:53:04]. That’s a good plan.
T.J. Robinson:
Exactly, so I say of this oil in my Pressing Report. I’ll hold up a copy. Every quarter I send out –
Dr. Pompa:
You get that when you join the club, which is awesome.
T.J. Robinson:
That's right. It's a 16-page newsletter. It's all about the challenge of the season, why I'm in Italy, or wherever I am in the world, and what my challenges to where, how I overcame them, and how I met with—and I introduce you to the three producers. I give you tasting notes. For this last one, I'll just read you – I know your wine guy as well.
My tasting notes, and my tasters, and myself, here's how we describe this last oil, this Hermès. We said, “Beautiful green color, bright and aromatic on the nose. We caught aromas of chopped baby greens, fresh-cut grass, kale, snipped culinary herbs such as thyme, oregano, and mint along with celery, Asian pear, and tomato leaf, a hint of cinnamon and black pepper. This oil is sophisticated, verdant, and exciting on the palate with hints of rosemary, lime zest, Tuscan kale, radicchio, hazelnuts, dark chocolate, and black pepper.
On the finish, anticipate the bitterness and spiciness of arugula,” —sorry, “the spiciness of arugula and the hallmark sign of abundant polyphenols, a mouth warming, tingling sensation that lingers.” In fact, my mouth is still tingling now after that small taste. I said, “Inspired pairings with this bold, well balanced, and remarkably food friendly oil include hearty winter soups, stews and braises, salads with sturdy greens, especially if they include nuts or fresh citrus.
Generously splash this oil on white beans, chickpeas, lentils, and grains. Drizzle on bruschetta, hearty tomato-based pasta dishes, or grilled or roasted meats including pork, beef, and lamb; also, cruciferous vegetables, aged cheese's, oily fish, kale, chicory, baked hams, and roasted eggplant. Drizzle over vanilla ice cream or pair with dark chocolate. That bitterness of dark chocolate and the bitterness of this oil are really interesting together. If you have some really nice dark chocolate later, dip that—
Dr. Pompa:
You didn’t prepare me for that, darn.
T.J. Robinson:
Dip it, yeah, dip it, do a little dip. Yeah, we wax poetically about olive oil. It's fun sitting around the table, and people are yelling out descriptors. It's a fun little battle. Those are those are the three oils of the quarter that I was really lucky to get on a jet plane and get those back to the members. Yeah, we're up to about 16,000 members now, and every one of them—
Dr. Pompa:
Wow, let’s add some thousands to that.
T.J. Robinson:
Yes, well, it's really—olive oil, really fresh olive oil, it's like the difference in dried herbs and fresh herbs. The fresh oils are like fresh herbs. They’re filled with essential oils. They're filled with aroma and flavor. They're not dead and dried the way most you know bulk—
Dr. Pompa:
Look, you go to a fine restaurant. Good restaurants are really—they're good because of the freshness of the ingredients. The herbs and the olive oil is key. I've walked out of restaurants just because they literally can't find a non-cut oil or a fresh oil. I'm gone. I've been in Italian restaurants that are considered good. They don't even have real olive oil. I mean, this is remarkable to me.
The key to the ingredients is the freshness. The key, as you know, as a chef, is using the good oil. We use this for everything that we do. One of the things that we talked about last time is this actually takes the heat better because it's protective because of its nature. We just absolutely love it. I’ve turned so many people onto it. It'll change your health. It'll change your cooking, and your pleasure, and happiness on us. Yeah, so that’s why we love oil.
T.J. Robinson:
Yeah, well, people, they really use it. Again, I'm training them to use it like a sauce that mother created, Mother Nature created for them. They really use it as a backbone flavor ingredient. Like most olive oil you'd think of as more of a lubricant, as to keep things from sticking and that sort of thing. You don't really think of it as like this major flavor enhancer.
There are so many—I think I may have mentioned to you that Dr. Andrew Wells, my brother-in-law, and his wife Katie, they're both working their way through your detox book right now. They're actively seeking great healthy fats, ways to stay this high level of satiety the olive oil, especially with the polyphenols, can give them. It's actually a really good, all-around ingredient. It's an easy change. It's a really easy change.
It's not something—you don't have to go to the gym for another hour. You just have to drizzle from the bottle, lift one hand. It is an easy change. I like how you realized—and I know your wife loves to cook. It's very like simple cooking. You don't have to buy 20 ingredients of low quality. Buy five of super high quality. A bottle of olive oil, most of my club members use about a bottle a month. If they cook at home, and they travel some, they—
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that’s—it’s easy.
T.J. Robinson:
It's about a bottle a month. A bottle is around 30 bucks. I can spend that on a bottle of wine at a restaurant and a meal quite easily for a bottle wine to have with my meal and it be gone in 20 minutes. I can literally improve hundreds of plates of food, over the course of a month, with this lovingly made you know hand curated trio of oils. I think it's a no-brainer, honestly.
Dr. Pompa:
It's a hidden biohack. It really is. It's the most affordable of all, like you said. I mean, $30 for a bottle wine, one just in one meal this last, like you said, a month. I mean, we’re pouring it liberally.
T.J. Robinson:
Awesome.
Dr. Pompa:
Honestly, I don't put my mouth on it, but I just pour it into my mouth. I do. I do that. At least once a day my kids can see me just dowsing it. I do that. That's what I do. I use it on everything that I cook. I mean, everything, including my eggs. My wife and I actually use it on our skin. We actually do, especially when we're getting a lot of sun. We use it on our skin.
T.J. Robinson:
That’s fantastic. The antioxidants are really good for—they use a lot of—if you'll see skincare products, they will use olive oil extracts and olive oil polyphenols in skin care products and some high-end skincare lines.
Dr. Pompa:
I would argue that they're probably denatured. They're not getting the fresh press, the first press like this with the polyphenols. The polyphenols is where the magic is, and all the matrix of proteins and fats that are in there. My gosh, anyways, yeah, that's why we use it. I mean, you can just put it on and put a lotion on top of it just to take the oil glaze down if you need to. If it's added to a product you have, it's probably denatured. That's why add it to your product is my suggestion. Ingest it daily on everything you do. We're out of time. This was a great show as always. We love you.
T.J. Robinson:
That’s a fact. We love you, too. Don't spoil any more shirts. Last time I saw Marilee, and you were together, and you grabbed the bottle and chugged it, she's like, “Don't get olive oil on another one of your shirts. Don't ruin another shirt.”
Dr. Pompa:
I do it all the time.
T.J. Robinson:
Be careful, now. You’re going to get us both in trouble if I continue to be your olive oil sommelier.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no, you are our olive oil sommelier, here, on Cellular Healing TV. We love you and appreciate you for that. Join pompaoliveoil.com, pompaoliveoil.com, join the club, man. Take your health to the next level, and your cooking. TJ, thank you.
T.J. Robinson:
Hey, a pleasure, thank you, look forward to next time. Thank you, my friend, big hugs, ciao, grazie mille, ciao.
Dr. Pompa:
Ciao, arrivederci.
T.J. Robinson:
Ci.
Ashley Smith:
That's it for this week. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. This episode was brought to you by Cytodetox. Please check it out at buycytonow.com. We'll be back next week and every Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern. We truly appreciate your support. You can always find us at cellularhealing.tv. Please remember to spread the love by liking, subscribing, giving an iTunes review, and sharing the show with anyone you think may benefit from the information heard here. As always, thanks for listening.
