Interactive Extra Virgin Olive Oil Tasting & Review of the clinical applications of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

This product is free for DIFM members.

This webinar was presented live on December 9, 2020.

This webinar will cover a review of Cobram Estate as a brand of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) that is commercially available, as well as their other brands born of our sustainability initiatives—Wellgrove and Stone & Grove teas.

We will proceed through an overview of the process of making EVOO. We will then cover sustainability as it pertains to the EVOO industry and Cobram Estate. To culminate the EVOO overview section, we will be guided through an EVOO tasting guided by Cobram Estate's chief EVOO maker world-renown expert in olive agronomy, Leandro Ravetti.

After the EVOO tasting, we will be guided through a scientific overview of the clinical uses of Extra Virgin Olive Oil by Dr. Mary Flynn of Brown University. The webinar will close with a question and answer session.

Supported by: Cobram Estate and WellGrove

CPEU: 1.3
CPE Level: 1
Performance Indicators: 8.3.7, 8.4.2, 8.4.3

Learning Objectives

1. Describe the tasting process of Extra Virgin Olive Oil and define at least 2 key parameters to focus on to identify high-quality EVOO
2. Define 3 benefits for using EVOO in the clinical setting, including the appropriate dosage associated with the benefit
3. Describe a benefit of cooking with Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Speakers

Paul Riordan

Paul Riordan has extensive experience in the Australian olive industry having worked in the industry since 1996 and is a co-founder of the BBL Group.

He currently oversees the operations of all the companies' regional sites including olive groves and the manufacturing of the Colossus olive harvesting equipment.

Paul is a Non-Executive Director of Select Harvests Limited.

Leandro Ravetti

Leandro Ravetti graduated as an Agricultural Engineer in Argentina achieving the second-highest academic score in the country. He worked for the National Institute of Agricultural Technology in olive production research and advised many of the country's largest olive developments from 1995 until he moved to Australia in 2001. Leandro has also studied and worked as an invited researcher at the Olive Growing Research Institute of Perugia, Italy, and at different Governmental Olive Institutes in Andalusia, Spain where he completed a postgraduate degree in olive growing.

In Australia, Leandro leads the Modern Olives technical team, which provides horticultural and olive specific technical advice to most of the largest olive groves and olive oil processing plants in the country. These companies represent more than 70% of the Australian olive industry by production. Leandro has also been involved as an adviser, researcher, and invited speaker in most other new olive industries such as New Zealand, Japan, Peru, South Africa, Chile, and the USA.

Leandro was an alternate director of the Australian Olive Association between 2009 and 2012. During that period, Leandro covered the position of Drafting Leader for the new Australian Standard for Olive Oil (AS 5264-2011) receiving the 2011 Standards Award for outstanding contribution to standardization in Australia. Leandro has been Executive Director of Boundary Bend Limited, Australia's leading fully integrated olive company since 2005. As part of his role with Boundary Bend,

Leandro has overseen the production of multiple award-winning oils for the company's flagship brand, Cobram Estate, including a large number of gold medals, best in class, and best in show trophies in national and international competitions such as New York, Los Angeles, Olive Japan, Australian Olive Association, etc.

Mary M. Flynn, P.h.D., RD, LDN

Mary M. Flynn, Ph.D., RD, LDN is an Associate Professor of Medicine (Clinical) at Brown University and a research dietitian at The Miriam Hospital, where she has worked since 1984. She is the outpatient dietitian at TMH for oncology, Men's Health, Kidney Stone Center, and the medical clinic. Her main research interest is how food can be used as medicine and her main food of interest is extra virgin olive oil, which she has been researching since 1998. In 2013, she founded The Olive Oil Health Initiative of The Miriam Hospital at Brown University that has a mission of educating the public and medical community on the health benefits of olive oil. She has developed a plant-based, olive oil diet that she has tested for weight loss in women diagnosed with invasive breast; in men with prostate cancer for weight loss and improvement in components of the metabolic syndrome; and to decrease food insecurity in food pantry clients. She has been on the board of the RI Community Food Bank since 2005. She collaborated with the RICFB in a study that provided a cooking program of her plant-based, olive oil recipes to food pantry clients. The study showed that the use of the recipes for 2-3 main meals per week decreased food insecurity, body weight, and money spent on groceries. She received a strategy grant from the RI Foundation to develop the cooking program for type 2 diabetes. The results of the pilot study showed significant decreases in fasting blood glucose and body weight after three months of follow-up.

She is co-author of the books LOW-FAT LIES, high-fat frauds and the healthiest diet in the world (Lifeline Press, 1999) and A Pink Ribbon Diet (Da Capo Press, October 2010) which is a weight loss program and cookbook for women who have had breast cancer based on her research of the plant-based, olive oil diet that she has developed.