I was born in Canada but my body was crafted in the Balkans, just like my family’s extra virgin olive oil. In fact, several millennia of inter-glacial Big Game hunters precede me. When I discovered that my ancestors drank olive oil daily, then sparred with Mammoths and saber-toothed tigers, I simply stopped questioning why people complement me for my radiant confidence and smooth beige skin. Real oils.

It’s been almost a year since I wrote the original article, which blew up on social media.

In that article I unveiled the lies that many North American olive oil importing companies tell their customers in order to make more money delivering inferior product.

Many of the myths and lies surrounding olive oil, particularly as they relate to storage and extraction, have been carefully designed to maximize profits from unsuspecting consumers unfamiliar with the inner workings of extra virgin olive oil production.

How many “olive oil cabinets” have you come across?

I come from a family that owns nearly 8,000 olive trees on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia, and I can tell you, I’ve never come across a single, gold-plated olive oil display case.

When you look beyond the very modern, very masturbatory awards shows and sommelier schools that have cropped up in just the past few decades, olive oil generally doesn’t become more interesting the more money you make.

In the past 70 years, Industrial Vegetable & Seed Oils have been produced in greater quantities than they ever have been in human history, even when adjusting for changes in manufacturing capacity. This is a phenomenon that must be viewed with a great deal of suspicion.

Nobody talks about forearm strength these days.

Yesterday, I slammed a bottle of olive oil onto the counter and some of it splashed back into my eye. I forgot to put the lid back on…

Not gonna lie. It stung. Selo, of course, is packed with the antioxidant Oleocanthal, which gives its powerful peppery kick.