Coming from the other direction, in terms of a “solid safe cheap supply”… I can find reports of Extra Virgin Olive Oil being sold by Costco under their Kirkland brand that is particularly well sourced and tested, and my priors say that this stuff is likely to be weirdly high quality for a weirdly low price (because, in general, “kirklandization” is a thing that food producers with a solid product and huge margins worry about). I’m kinda curious if you have access to Kirkland EVOO and if it gives you “preflux”?
Really any extra data here (where your sensitive palate gives insight into the current structure of the food economy) would be fascinating :-)
Next time I have a chance to pick up Kirkland olive oil I’ll give it a try and report back.
I made a decision around this time of dietary changes to stop trying to cut so many corners wtih food. As a calorie dense food, even paying an “outrageous” double or triple the cost of cheap olive oil barely dents the budget on a cost per calorie basis. And speaking of budgeting, I had mental resistance to spending more on food so now I guesstimate what percent of my food budget I spend over the “cheapest equivalent alternative” part and I label as “preventative healthcare”.
(And regarding “food cost psychology” this is an area where I think Neo Stoic objectivity is helpful. Rich people can pick up a lot of hedons just from noticing how good their food is, and formerly poor people have a valuable opportunity to re-calibrate. There are large differences in diet between socio-economic classes still, and until all such differences are expressions of voluntary preference, and “dietary price sensitivity has basically evaporated”, I won’t consider the world to be post-scarcity. Each time I eat steak, I can’t help but remember being asked in Summer Camp as a little kid, after someone ask “if my family was rich” and I didn’t know, about this… like the very first “objective calibrating response” accessible to us as children was the rate of my family’s steak consumption. Having grown up in some amount of poverty, I often see “newly rich people” eating as if their health is not the price of slightly more expensive food, or their health is “not worth avoiding the terrible terrible sin of throwing food in the garbage (which my aunt who lived through the Great Depression in Germany yelled at me, once, with great feeling, for doing, when I was child and had eaten less than ALL the birthday cake that had been put on my plate)”. Cultural norms around food are fascinating and, in my opinion, are often rewarding to think about.)
Fascinating. I am surprised and saddened, and thinking about the behavioral implications. Do you have a “goto brand” that is “the cheapest that doesn’t give you preflux”? Now I’m wondering if maybe I should try some of that.
It’s not worth the suffering to do a lot of experimentation, I typically stick with the first oil that doesn’t give me issues. In the UK I buy Il Casolare from Ocado − 1 L for £16. In the US, I go to so many different places I don’t have a go to, so I stick with simple heuristics for quality like single origin / cold pressed / noted date of harvest—I typically buy the cheapest in the store that meets any of these conditions—and haven’t had any issues to date. Top of mind I can only recall one national US brand California Olive Ranch, but only their single origin oils is okay, I was hopeful about their 100% California blend but it also gave me preflux.
This bit caught my eye:
I searched for [is olive oil cut with canola oil] and found that in the twenty teens organized crime was flooding the market with fake olive oil, but in 2022 an EU report suggested that uplabeling to “extra virgin” was the main problem they caught (still?).
Coming from the other direction, in terms of a “solid safe cheap supply”… I can find reports of Extra Virgin Olive Oil being sold by Costco under their Kirkland brand that is particularly well sourced and tested, and my priors say that this stuff is likely to be weirdly high quality for a weirdly low price (because, in general, “kirklandization” is a thing that food producers with a solid product and huge margins worry about). I’m kinda curious if you have access to Kirkland EVOO and if it gives you “preflux”?
Really any extra data here (where your sensitive palate gives insight into the current structure of the food economy) would be fascinating :-)
Next time I have a chance to pick up Kirkland olive oil I’ll give it a try and report back.
I made a decision around this time of dietary changes to stop trying to cut so many corners wtih food. As a calorie dense food, even paying an “outrageous” double or triple the cost of cheap olive oil barely dents the budget on a cost per calorie basis. And speaking of budgeting, I had mental resistance to spending more on food so now I guesstimate what percent of my food budget I spend over the “cheapest equivalent alternative” part and I label as “preventative healthcare”.
I look forward to your reply!
(And regarding “food cost psychology” this is an area where I think Neo Stoic objectivity is helpful. Rich people can pick up a lot of hedons just from noticing how good their food is, and formerly poor people have a valuable opportunity to re-calibrate. There are large differences in diet between socio-economic classes still, and until all such differences are expressions of voluntary preference, and “dietary price sensitivity has basically evaporated”, I won’t consider the world to be post-scarcity. Each time I eat steak, I can’t help but remember being asked in Summer Camp as a little kid, after someone ask “if my family was rich” and I didn’t know, about this… like the very first “objective calibrating response” accessible to us as children was the rate of my family’s steak consumption. Having grown up in some amount of poverty, I often see “newly rich people” eating as if their health is not the price of slightly more expensive food, or their health is “not worth avoiding the terrible terrible sin of throwing food in the garbage (which my aunt who lived through the Great Depression in Germany yelled at me, once, with great feeling, for doing, when I was child and had eaten less than ALL the birthday cake that had been put on my plate)”. Cultural norms around food are fascinating and, in my opinion, are often rewarding to think about.)
Unfortunately the Kirkland EVOO gave me the same pre-flux feeling I’m used to. I was so hopeful!
Fascinating. I am surprised and saddened, and thinking about the behavioral implications. Do you have a “goto brand” that is “the cheapest that doesn’t give you preflux”? Now I’m wondering if maybe I should try some of that.
It’s not worth the suffering to do a lot of experimentation, I typically stick with the first oil that doesn’t give me issues. In the UK I buy Il Casolare from Ocado − 1 L for £16. In the US, I go to so many different places I don’t have a go to, so I stick with simple heuristics for quality like single origin / cold pressed / noted date of harvest—I typically buy the cheapest in the store that meets any of these conditions—and haven’t had any issues to date. Top of mind I can only recall one national US brand California Olive Ranch, but only their single origin oils is okay, I was hopeful about their 100% California blend but it also gave me preflux.