It is unwise to be overly thrifty when choosing what olive oil to buy. Rather than the apparently lower price, one should consider the best quality-price ratio and the flavouring efficiency of the oil. There is a problem however: although it is deeply rooted in our culinary tradition, we are still incapable of discerning good from bad oil.
The price. Everything revolves around the price. When we stand in front of the supermarket shelves, the temptation to save money is always there, whatever we are gazing at. This seems to be particularly true for olive oil, a product that seems to have been robbed of all its virtues of originality and identity.
We would advise you to be extremely cautious of low prices: it is unwise to use price as the sole guideline when deciding what to purchase. It is worth noting however that we should be equally cautious of disproportionately high prices, because an expensive oil is not necessarily superior.
Consumers are often incapable of recognising quality, and can’t even be bothered to. As always, every time there is a promotional sale, they opt for the cheapest product. Although the price is undoubtedly a legitimate and understandable reason for choosing one or the other oil, the consumer should try to make a more informed decision. The problem however is that the consumers do not know enough about oil, although their knowledge of the subject has certainly grown. They use it, often abundantly, but they don’t know how to discern an oil of superior quality. Moreover, they often ignore what is the best type of oil for one dish or another.
Up to now, all attempts made to direct the consumers towards more informed choices have been unsuccessful, because the campaigns failed to act on a rational level, but were targeted instead at the consumers’ fears. It was suggested for instance that the cheaper oils were either intrinsically bad for our health or the result of sophistications, but this is not always true. Indeed, some of the cheaper oils on the market are even better than the more expensive ones.
In order to give olive oil due recognition of its value, we must make our interlocutor, i.e. the consumer, aware that his or her decision on what to purchase should be based on knowledge. The mistake made by many marketing experts operating in this sector was to give inadequate and even incomprehensible advice.
Some say that oil should never cost less than a certain amount of money, but this is not necessarily true, because the price of oil is influenced by countless factors.
It is impossible to establish a minimum price for oil, because of the intrinsic nature of the market, complex and extremely unstable. It must furthermore be noted that the prices of extra virgin olive oil varies extensively according to the country of origin, climatic and seasonal factors, and its availability on the market. More