Spoonful of olive oil won’t make medicine go down – but it may save your life

The benefits of the Mediterranean diet are widely known, but its secret weapon may be olive oil.

A study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology this year reports that eating less than two teaspoons (about 7 grams) of olive oil per day can lower your risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease and respiratory disease.

The study also found that replacing about 10 grams per day of margarine, butter, mayonnaise and dairy fat with the equivalent amount of olive oil may lower the risk of mortality, as well.

"Our findings support current dietary recommendations to increase the intake of olive oil and other unsaturated vegetable oils," Marta Guasch-Ferré, the study's lead author, reported in a Harvard University article. "Clinicians should be counseling patients to replace certain fats, such as margarine and butter, with olive oil to improve their health. Our study helps make more specific recommendations that will be easier for patients to understand."

Using data from the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, researchers analyzed 60,582 women and 31,801 men who were free of cardiovascular disease and cancer at the study baseline in 1990.

Their diet was assessed every four years for the next 28 years. The questionnaire used to assess their diet asked how often they consumed specific foods, the types of fats and oils they used, and what kinds of oil they used for cooking and at the table.

Over the study’s 28 years, 36,856 participants died.

Researchers concluded that study participants who daily consumed 7 grams or more olive oil were 19% less likely to die of cardiovascular disease, 17% less likely to die of cancer, 29% less likely to die of neurodegenerative disease and 18% less likely to die of respiratory disease.

The study also found that substituting olive oil for 10 grams per day of other fats, such as margarine, butter, mayonnaise and dairy fat, was linked to an 8%-to-34% reduction in total and cause-specific mortality.  

They found no significant associations when substituting olive oil for other vegetable oils.

An interesting discovery: Researchers observed that participants with higher olive oil consumption were often more physically active, had southern European or Mediterranean ancestry, were less likely to smoke and consumed more fruits and vegetables compared to those with lower olive oil consumption.

Obviously, no single study can definitively determine what will extend our lives. However, this study’s findings are consistent with everything we’ve seen in the past about fat consumption. It pinpoints olive oil as one key factor in prolonging our lives and reducing specific health risks.

All this reinforces the idea that we need to take charge to extend our lives. And one obvious way to do that is by changing what we eat.