Long touted as a heart-healthy fat, olive oil has now been shown to work at the genetic level by turning off genes associated with heart disease and inflammation.
Researchers at the Institut Municipal d’Investigacio Medica in Barcelona, Spain, have shown that inherited “bad genes” can be modulated by a healthy diet. They divided healthy subjects into three groups: one followed a traditional Mediterranean diet, which included virgin olive oil (rich in polyphenols); a second used a lower grade of olive oil (low in polyphenols); and a third group maintained their regular diet. Phenols are micronutrients in olive oil; extra virgin oils have particularly high levels of them.
After just three months, the virgin olive oil group showed improvement related to atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) as well as coronary heart disease.