Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health.

Today we're talking about olive oil. Touted as one of the hottest health foods right now, extra virgin olive oil has been linked to a range of benefits,

from reducing inflammation and boosting heart health to

even increasing longevity.

But is it truly liquid gold or just another fad?

I'm joined by Elizabeth Berger and Professor Tim Specter to explore the science behind this

ancient Alexia and share practical tips for getting the most out of your drizzle.

In the 1960s, it was noted that Mediterranean countries had much less heart disease than northern European countries.

And people thought it was something in the diet.

They thought it was about the wine or the lifestyle or they couldn't really know what it was, but it was the vegetables.

And it turns out that it's been a slow bit of detective work to work out that the amounts of fats consumed in Mediterranean countries is actually quite high, which went against the sort of theories of 20 years ago that fats were bad for you.

But it turns out the main source of fats in the Mediterranean is olive oil.

So huge amounts of fats are consumed in the form of olive oil.

So that started people thinking, or maybe there's something in olive oil that's actually healthy,

despite the fact that you can get up to 12% of it is saturated fat, which we're all told,

you know, in the US and the UK is really bad for you.

So you have these Mediterranean countries drinking a lot of saturated fat in their olive oil,

and they have much lower rates of heart disease.

So people started then looking at olive oil itself they have much lower rates of heart disease. So people started then looking at

olive oil itself, which, you know, it wasn't studied much because it was very low levels in the

US and the UK where a lot of this epidemiology was being done. And so gradually more and more

studies have shown that people who drink olive oil regularly,

...