 Many people are curious about olive oil, which has been touted as a health food for as long as we have known, but there are many foods we consider healthy that actually aren't. The basis for any food being healthy is two simple things. The absence of inflammatory factors and a high nutrient content. Interestingly enough, most foods we consider healthy nowadays only qualify for the former, and in reality we should be prioritizing a high nutrient content in the food. Olive oil is a great example of this. People think it's healthy because it's low in saturated fat, but reality is that saturated fat is the healthiest fat for our bodies. And olive oil doesn't have any vitamins, minerals, elements or omega fatty acids that our body needs in considerable amounts. With the exception of vitamin A, there is some retinol in olive oil. Olive oil does have vitamin K, but it's likely in the form of vitamin K1, so not nearly as beneficial as vitamin K2 in our bodies. And the vitamin E in fats is just to stabilize the fats and prevent them from oxidizing. All of the fat sources in nature are predominantly saturated animal fats. Anything else that we eat now, coconut oil, olive oil, any seed oil, is man-made. The way we determine if a fat is healthy or not is by looking at the fatty acid profile. But what exactly are we looking for outside of a high saturated fat content? What we don't want is a high linoleic acid content, which is a highly inflammatory omega-6 fat. Not to be confused with conjugated linoleic acid, the form that occurs naturally in animal products and is actually very good for you. The plant form of linoleic acid is very high in vegetable seed oils as well as certain nuts. These foods throw off your omega-3 to omega-6 balance so badly that it's hard to recover if you eat them, and it makes sense. With these seed oils, nuts in general, aren't foods we would have had access to in large amounts in nature and they wouldn't have comprised enough of our diet to cause an inflammatory issue. I mean, the seed oils never existed and you would only have a handful of nuts at any point in time, maybe a few times a year. If we take a look at the percentage of this linoleic acid in olive oil, it's pretty low. It's around 9%, especially compared to the other seed oils we mentioned. But butter, coconut oil, as well as most quality animal fats will have less than 4% of their fat composition being linoleic acid. Not all animal fat is created equal. If you feed these animals seed oils, soy and corn, it will actually alter their fatty acid profile to favor linoleic acid. But for the sake of this comparison, we are using quality grass-fed pasteurized animal fat as a reference point for what should be healthy. It makes sense. What occurs in nature that would have been accessible to all groups of people in all parts of the world, the only thing that fits those constituents is animal fat. The rest of olive oil is mostly oleic acid, a very stable omega 9 fatty acid and some saturated fat. So on paper, the fatty acid profile of olive oil doesn't look too bad. Whether you're coming from a conventional wisdom standpoint and you can say the saturated fat is low or you're coming from a carnivore keto diet standpoint and you're saying that the linoleic acid, the omega 6 inflammatory fats are low. But frequent olive oil consumption without consuming omega 3 to balance it isn't something you should ignore. The omega 3 to omega 6 ratio in olive oil is still off. It's just not as bad as these other oils that we've mentioned. As long as you're consuming less than 4% of your total calories from the plant-formed linoleic acid, you shouldn't worry about inflammation. Once you exceed 4% linoleic acid in your diet, there's a lot of evidence that chronic disease and inflammation become prevalent. You are what you eat. The lipids, the fats, all of the cholesterol, all the fatty tissue in your body will turn into the fatty acid profile that you're eating. So a natural percentage of linoleic acid in a human diet is less than 4%. These modern vegetable seed oils, even olive oil in large amounts would result in us exceeding that. The body doesn't recognize linoleic acid in this amount so it attacks it whether it's getting lodged in your arteries or causing a stroke elsewhere. The role I think olive oil plays in a healthy diet would be as a raw garnish on fish or vegetables, whatever you'd like. All fats you consume should ideally never be heated, especially the ones that are high in omega 6 and more unstable. More than 2 or 3 tablespoons of olive oil per day seems pretty impractical and I wouldn't recommend it as a primary source of fat, even opting for something like coconut oil instead. There are many studies showing antioxidant and anti-inflammatory benefits of olive oil, certain olive extracts, even olive leaf teas. So there may be specific mechanisms and applications that this food can be used for but in the context of a nutrient dense animal foods based diet, I don't think you'll see any benefit by incorporating olive oil. I would speculate that most diets are so poor that even a food like olive oil would give the person a less inflammatory fuel source to aid their body. Unfortunately, as with most plant foods, we do have anti-nutrient concerns. Oxalates also known as oxalic acid are present in olives. Oxalates are an anti-nutrient that binds to minerals, takes them out of the body, can lead to things like kidney stones and systemic inflammation in your joints pretty much everywhere. Oxalates are more of an issue because of a lack of animal nutrition in our diet. This causes oxalates to build up over years and years. Again, not an issue in a healthy individual but definitely applicable to many people in the general population that have been consuming oxalate rich foods their whole lives without vitamins D3, vitamins K2, vitamin A that can definitely help detox these oxalates. The amount of people that cook with olive oil drives me crazy. And although it's not the worst oil to cook with, it doesn't have a super high smoke point so the oil denatures and oxidizes it very quickly. I also find the flavor of olive oil disgusting whether you're cooking with it or putting it raw on food, especially when compared to butter or animal fat or duck fat, listen if you guys like the flavor of olive oil, I think you're crazy. I should probably do a video addressing cooking oils but most of what I've spoken about here is enough for you to understand that you want a high saturated fat content and low omega-6 linoleic acid content. To sum this up, you can put olive oil on your food, I think that olive oil originated as a survival food source. So these people found that they were able to harvest these olives and make something out of it that they could use to sustain themselves at various parts of the year. If you think about it, olives aren't really a great calorie source and if you press them into oil you're making something out of nothing. And that's applicable to many indigenous foods. We're trying to survive in nature. We are eating certain foods out of necessity. We don't have the luxury of choosing whatever food we want. The indigenous people that were excellent hunters that did get to choose whatever they want, 80, 90% of their calories from animal foods. So when we bring up plant foods, the first thing to say is they were really eating out of necessity and if you want to include them in your diet, if you enjoy them, that's one thing, but by no means will I really ever talk about a plant food in the way I talk about an animal food because I bring up vitamins, minerals, elements and fatty acids all the time and only animal foods contain these in available forms that can nourish our bodies. So keep that in mind. Thank you guys for joining me. If you could please like the video, subscribe, hit that bell icon, share the video if you can. If you guys would like to support me further, definitely check out Frankie's Free Range Meat, providing you with high quality nutrient-dense animal foods at an affordable price. You can also go to frankiesnaturals.com, minimal ingredients, minimally processed hygiene and cosmetic products. If you guys would like to reach out to me for one-on-one consultations pertaining to your health, shoot me an email frankatifanoatgmail.com. Thanks again guys and enjoy the rest of your day.