HuffPost UK was recently invited by leading olive oil brand Filippo Berio to attend a health talk at London’s Italian Embassy in support of World Heart Day.
While there we got to meet with Dr Bill Mullen, Senior Research Fellow of Cardiovascular & Metabolic Health at the University of Glasgow.
A recent study led by Dr Mullen has formed a revolutionary new way to measure the benefits of olive oil on heart health. This breakthrough technology, called proteomics, concluded the knowledge that consuming as little as 20ml of raw olive oil per day could improve your heart health.
We learnt how Dr Mullen has been working to prove the benefits of healthy eating on heart health for years, with a strong focus on the Mediterranean diet.
However, they had not been able to prove the “cause and effect between eating certain food and improvement in heart health.”
Is olive oil the answer to protecting heart health?
Dr Mullen’s study “measured tiny levels of protein fragments in urine which, when combined together are indicators, called “bio markers”, of heart health.”
By measuring these bio markers during the study, Dr Mullen and his team were able to create evidence that shows that “only olive oil has a positive impact on heart health.”
They also found out that rapeseed and sunflower oil produce no difference to health at all.
How did they do it? We asked ourselves, sipping on an olive oil-infused cocktail during an olive oil-themed lecture.
Well, the olive oil study was carried out in Glasgow on volunteers over a six-week period, a location chosen due to a low usage of olive oil intake and a high incidence of heart disease. The study was “double blinded”, meaning the volunteers “did not know what oil they were consuming and analysts processing the samples and the data did not know which oil was being used either.”
Dr Mullen says: “These results were like hitting the jackpot as far as I was concerned. Although I knew the science, it is extremely rare in nutritional research to see such strikingly positive results. And when I say positive, I mean good for heart health and statistically positive as well.”
“The results of the study were spectacular. Both extra virgin olive oil and olive oil produced significant changes after only six weeks, a change of 0.3 in the coronary artery disease biomarker score. Links between diet and good health are notoriously difficult to prove. This latest breakthrough in biomarker technology is finally changing that.”
BRB, taking a shot of 20ml of olive oil to improve my heart health.