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After a Lull for Over a Century Olive Oil is Back With a Bang!

December 17, 2007 at 3:16 PM Diet & Nutrition News

Thirty-five years ago olive-grower Raymond Gonfond pondered giving up on his olive trees -- because olive oil was not selling.

Now the whole world is enamoured of this green gold, which underpins the famed 'Mediterranean diet' ... and olive-growers are prospering.

After a Lull for Over a Century Olive Oil is Back With a Bang!

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"When I was starting out, olive oil had a terrible reputation, people said it was greasy, that it made you fat," remembers the 57-year-old Gonfond, a grower in France's pre-eminent olive-producing town, Maussanne-les-Alpilles -- which carries the "Appellation d'Origine Controlee" (AOC) guarantee of quality.

In fact, the decline in the fortunes of French olive-growers goes still further back, to 1840, according to the French Association of Olive Professions (AFIDOL). At that time, France could boast 26 million olive orchards. By the 1970s that figure was down to around three million.

Ripped up in favour of more profitable vineyards or decimated by frosts, olive orchards and their growers had lost their status. Olive oil was competing against the less expensive groundnut oils. Factories closed one by one.

Despite all that, Gonfond and other olive oil makers were keen to safeguard their olives, because "in the Mediterranean, families are very attached" to the olive tree, which has grown in the region since pre-historic times.

Today he has no regrets. Global olive oil consumption is at an all-time high: 2.9 million tonnes (3.2 million US short tons) in 2006/7 compared with 1.6 million tonnes in 1990/91, according to the World Olive Oil Council.

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After a Lull for Over a Century Olive Oil is Back With a Bang!

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