319. Olive Oil Industry SCAM: What You MUST Know
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Thank you for listening to the Boost Your Biology podcast. My name is Lucas Owen. I uncover the most cutting edge health information on the planet, ranging from hormones, nutrition, supplementation, fat loss, biohacking, longevity, wellness, and a whole lot more.

Welcome to the Boost Your Biology podcast. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to the Boost Your Biology podcast. Now, guys, today I'm super excited because we'll be diving into a topic that I'm extremely passionate about and I'm a big fan of, and that is extra virgin olive oil or olive oil in general. But today's guest is actually, I would say, probably more obsessed with olive oil than what I am. He

He has pioneered and developed his own company called The Wild Olive. So joining me in the studio here, Evan Karabidis. Evan, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, mate. Awesome. Evan, man, I mean, we go back quite a while. I mean, we actually played soccer together, but now you've sort of branched out and you've developed a business. How did this all come about?

Mate, as you know, I was always in health and fitness. And obviously, as you also know, I'm a very patriotic Australian born Greek. And look, it came about by chance, to be honest. I mean, we as a family have owned olive orchards in Greece, in Southern Greece, in ancient Sparta. It's been in the family for centuries. So we've got centenary old trees, but they were planted trees that

obviously produce a high level of extra virgin olive oil, an early harvest extra virgin olive oil, which I'm sure later on we'll go into the difference. The wild olive trees was a conversation that just came about with my now Greek partner on a family holiday because of my health and fitness space. And he just pretty much said to me, have you ever heard about wild olive trees? And I said, absolutely not. He said, let me send you some stuff.

do your due diligence, a bit of research. And if you're interested, you know, come back to me. And of course I was already reading it on the plane on the way home. And I said, mate, this is an opportunity that I just can't miss. Gives me something that I'm already involved with family wise at an X level, but then also ties into health and fitness and the Greek connection, but in a different way. Most of the Greeks here are

you know, in Australia or Victoria, I can speak for very, um, patriotic in different ways, whether it's, you know, religion, uh, culture in general, um, politics, all that type of stuff, or they simply just go back every year on a holiday. This was the missing piece of the puzzle for me. So this, um, I mean, I'd love to get into details around, uh,

Were you always a big believer in olive oil or were you also happy to try coconut oil, butter, different? Mate, I hand on heart can honestly say to you, and I say this to people and they freak out.

In this household, we have never, ever, ever cooked, put in our mouth, touched any other oil. Because look, it's available. And I understand the reasons it was available to us. I understand the reasons why people opt for different options. And mate, you're the ultimate myth buster. So you would know that there's a lot of BS out there about your seed oils, canola oils, good, bad, otherwise, whatever.

it's also a cost thing yeah extra virgin olive oil is not cheap right especially the last two three years it was cheap but it was always more expensive than the other stuff um so i can understand why other families you know for whether it's a purely a taste thing or whether it's a body of cooking or whether it's a cost effective thing had other stuff but ours was always readily available so

My mum was making cakes with extra virgin olive oil. You know, we would put in the candle or where we, you know, the Greeks light a candle at night, you know, a religious thing, olive oil. That's all I've ever known. That's all I've ever known. Yeah. So the, in regards to the olive oil, I mean,

One thing I'd love to learn more about is like for an average consumer, right? They go into a supermarket and they're looking at the shelf and they want to know how can I determine as a consumer whether the olive oil is legitimate or not? Because I know a lot of olive oils are cut. They're oftentimes they can be fake. You've probably done the testing. You've had a look at that. I mean, the simple truth is this.

And it's a harsh truth, but it's reality. Unless you physically buy that bottle, ship it off for analysis to someone you trust, you're never going to know. Wow. Because you can't... Even in Australia with our strict rules. Mate, I could tell you some stories. I've been doing this now for five or six years, I think, pre-business went on a bit of a halt because of COVID and then we then relaunched and...

making some really good traction at the moment, but you're never going to know. I could tell you some stories even on the Australian market. There's this big thing in Australia by Australian. I'm not here to pull anyone's pants down or throw anyone under the bus. There's not enough supply in the world. All we have to say is there's not enough supply in the world, let alone Australia, to meet demand. So how are they meeting demand?

I'm not going to say it. I can't say it. But how are they meeting demand? So for me, it's like unless you literally buy that bottle, send it off for third-party testing analysis, you're never going to know because you can't pick whether olive oil is real, cut down or otherwise, or the medicinal content of it unless you analyze it. You can't do it from tasting. It can be the best tasting olive oil you've ever had. That doesn't mean that it's real.

When it comes to taste, I mean, I know that, I mean, there's theories that it's like, oh, if it has a bitter aftertaste, this indicates purity. But you're saying it's... No, no, look, the bitterness is probably the best indication. The more bitter the oil, number one, the more fresh it is. And number two, the chances are it's got a higher medicinal content reading, right? That I'll vouch for and say, yes, correct. Yeah.

The ones that have absolutely no bitterness, there's no medicinal. There is medicinal content left, but a much lower level than your bitter ones, right? Right. Extra virgin olive oil is meant to be bitter. It's meant to be thick and it's meant to be bold, right? Yeah. If it doesn't have that, chances are something's not correct.

And this term that we hear, extra virgin, do you know where that originated from? I've actually never looked into that. Yeah, so extra virgin olive oil is, I'll give you the, because I deal with European, obviously, oil, Southern Greek oil. So there's wild olive oil, which we'll go into. That's nothing to do with extra virgin olive oil. That's a completely different species of tree and oil by itself, standalone.

Then from cultivated trees, planted trees, there's early harvest extra virgin olive oil, which means it's harvested earlier than your normal harvest. So they harvest that in Greece October time. They'll harvest that when the olives are still green and they're ripe. They're unripe, right? So they're still hard. Extra virgin olive oil is harvested late November, December.

When the olives are starting to change colour, medicinal content's still there, very high, not as high as early harvest, but it's coming down a little bit, right? And then there's obviously your virgin olive oil and olive oil. So it depends when it's harvested.

It depends on the medicinal content, depends on the reading. What gives those readings is the acidity level within the oil. So although it could be harvested at the right time, if you don't reach the right acidity, now all across the world, don't quote me, but you can quote me. I'm pretty sure it's going to be underneath 0.8 in acidity to be classified as extra virgin olive oil. Then from 0.8,

two points to two to two is your virgin olive oil anything above two is then olive oil then there's another degree which i don't ever really want to talk about but we'll say there's that degree which is considered unhealthy for you don't ingest it whatsoever

I like Simon Hill. Simon Hill's fantastic at researching. Yeah, and he did a podcast or a YouTube video, which I put up on my social media. That really blew me away and impressed me. He got some of these guys, doctors, who have gone into the olive oil business. Obviously, they all have businesses. I'm not going to mention any names. He mentions the names that some of them were considered not healthy to ingest.

- Geez. - Yeah. - Not because of rancidity? - No, no, look, very rare you'll find an olive oil that's rancid. - Yeah, 'cause the shelf life is, I mean, if you-- - It doesn't go bad, mate. - Yeah. - Like if you store it in the right place, the medicinal content will decrease, but olive oil itself doesn't actually go bad. Like honey, you store it right, use it right, it doesn't actually go bad.

We've got to put best before on it because it's best before best consumption, obviously, especially in Australia. I've had olive oil that's six or seven years old from my groves. Wow. Tastes fantastic. Medicinal content has dropped.

But it doesn't go bad. It doesn't. Now, when you say this medicinal content, I mean, I've got a pretty decent understanding of some of the major polyphenols, but the ones that you have focused in on, are you looking at like the, it's the oleorupine or oleocanthal, like these ones here,

I mean, I'm just going to put this out there. If anyone searches the medicinal health benefits of oleocanthal or oleorupine on PubMed, there's literally hundreds and hundreds of amazing studies. So it's scientifically validated. It's stood the test of time. But what

What makes the wild olive oil so unique and effective compared to the other ones? I think there's two parts to that answer. So one is the story of wild olive trees. So these are self-pollinated. What that means is that they grow by themselves.

Is it when the pip drops on the ground or something? It can be. Look, they're found on mountainous terrain. So what the leading professors and associate professors say is it can be anything from land movement or from a bird or an animal picks up an olive, eats the olive because obviously they don't eat the pip.

And funny enough, though, we crush the Pippinola. That's got great medicinal benefits for you, right? But animals don't eat it or birds don't eat it. They'll be flying over a mountainside in southern Greece, eat the olive, the Pippinola drops, falls in a rock, not even soil, and out pops this skeleton-looking thing that is almost like a crimson of an olive tree, of a cultivated olive tree. And they've been there for centuries, literally centuries.

They don't look great, but the oil they produce without so much as a drop of water going on them, fertilizer, pruning, nothing of that happens. They produce an oil that tastes amazing. It's drinkable and its medicinal content reads anywhere from, I think the lowest reading we've ever had is about 1800 milligrams per kilogram.

So this, this, the reading you're talking about is the percent, like the percentage of what? Polyphenol content, right? So polyphenols are good for pretty much, like you said, absolutely anything. Yeah. They fight free radicals that cause major inflammation that causes major disease. Okay. Within that polyphenol reading, there's seven or eight markers, right?

The one we hone in on is the oleocanthal. That's what gives the bitterness. That's what gives the major reading, right? Now, within wild olive oil, the major reading of oleocanthal comes in at about 450 to 500 milligrams per kilogram. Just oleocanthal. Just to give you an indication of what your normal Australian extra virgin total polyphenol count is, the highest I've ever seen is about 500 milligrams per kilogram.

Total, total, total, total. Yeah, total. So it's pretty amazing that these natural trees that grow by themselves give this medicine. And in the European Union has health claimed wild olive oil. Wow. Actually been health claim. They sell it in us. We sell it in pharmacies and superfood stores and all of that stuff in Australia. I haven't gone down that path yet. Yeah.

But just as an indication, we sell olive oil, olive leaf extract in pharmacies in Australia. The polyphenols are much higher. Obviously, it's from the leaf. If you get an olive leaf and eat it, it's very bitter. I've only seen about 2,500, 3,000 milligrams per kilogram.

we did it just as a an exercise so we made an olive leaf extract from walled olive leaves and the polyphenol content came in at 28 000 milligrams per kilogram unreal yeah yeah are you thinking of um i mean as the evolution of your brand evolves would you consider like venturing down the path of releasing your own olive leaf olive leaf extract yeah um

It's not going to be fantastic to drink that couple of drops on the palate. And what you'll find, again, with a lot of these olive leaf extracts, there's something else put in them that softens it up for the palate. And I'm not huge on that. The olive oil that we produce is pure wild olive oil. And it tastes amazing.

But look, we'll see where the road takes us. I haven't planned on it. We've looked into it. We've seen the results. I don't think anyone will ever be able to catch us with those results. There would be a way, I'm sure, to encapsulate it there as well. Yeah, of course. Yeah, we can possibly go down that path.

But then it's, do you stay as a superfood and a food or do you start going down the PGA approved path, getting told what you can and can't do? It's yeah. Yeah. First on all that. I know it all. Yeah. I know that. I know that path. Well, so let's, let's go back to, I mean, you guys offering, you know, you just sell at the moment, the wild olive oil in, you know, is it 500 mil? Yeah. Yeah.

What are people saying in terms of the taste, the effects, things like that? We also do the early harvest, which I'm sure we'll talk about. And we sell that in 500ml bottles and 5-litre tins. But that's more your cooking and finishing oil. So your wild is medicinal, similar to a Manuka honey. You ingest that daily 20ml. And the health benefits, we all know, are great.

are out there now. For both alls, if I can speak as a brand in total, I have never ever received one bad piece of feedback until last week, actually. So, and we'll go into it and it's all part of the process. This is part of being in business, you know. Yeah, of course. You know, but if I'm at, you know, out of a hundred reviews, I've got nine and nine good ones and one bad one, well, I'll take that. So,

Everyone loves the flavor. Everyone loves the results they're getting on it. Everyone loves the fact that it's so much higher in medicinal content and it still tastes nice. There are people out there that, Greek farms, I know a farm in Cyprus or Orchard that they've planted trees. They've actually got a much higher medicinal polyphenol reading than us, somewhere up around the four and a half thousand, but you can't.

you can't have it. They purely have done everything in their power to get that reading. It's very hard to drink, very hard to drink. But that's their goal. That's what they want to achieve and they've done it and hats off to them. The one bad piece of feedback I got actually came from a major chain who I was looking at doing some

some work with. And the buyer came back to me last week and said, yep, tried the sample. Unfortunately, I found the oil bit bold and thick. Now, I'm not sure on the buyer's experience. I'm not here to judge. I'm not. But

That's exactly what extra virgin olive oil is supposed to be. I was just about to say, I would prefer the oil to be thick, personally, because I know that it's legitimate. The ones that are cut, I would think in my... The ones that are cut... You're 100% on the money. They're watered down. They're watered down. You're 100% on the money. Water and oil don't mix. You don't mean water. You mean... Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm talking about other things. It's been tampered with, right? Tampered, yeah. So...

When I got that feedback, I thought, wow, this is the first bad piece of feedback I've had in six years. And the feedback is actually good feedback for me. But it doesn't suit them. So I just wrote back and said, thanks for the opportunity. Yeah. And then maybe, you know, talk again soon. But that came from, you know, a major player in the market that they haven't got an olive oil on their shelf that compares to mine. They really don't. They really don't. And I'm happy to...

I don't know, call it a blindfolded test and get them all analyzed. Not even close. Um, but it doesn't suit their purpose and that's fine. That's fine. So that, yeah, mate, the feedback has been great. People love it. Um, especially women, women find straight away that if they're not regular with the bells, they get regular, um,

the inflammation goes down straight away within two or three days. After about a week, they notice looking, you know, their skin tightens up and has more to it. Their hair's healthier, their nails are healthier. Um, and then, you know, we can talk to other things like working with professionals who have had readings on, you know, um, tumor sizes, the list goes on, the list goes on. Yeah. In terms of, um,

Because I get asked this a lot and I just tell people, I'm not worried about this. People will say that cooking with extra virgin olive oil, it's got a certain smoke point and it changes the oil and makes it more harmful. Man, I...

First of all, I don't actually agree with that. How hot are they cooking their food for that to happen? Well, exactly. I mean, most people got a hot, I mean, they've got a frying pan. I mean, if I'm going to cook a piece of steak, I prefer the taste when I cook it with olive oil than if I were to cook it with ghee or butter or there's no other thing I'd use. I wouldn't use macadamia oil. I wouldn't use avocado oil.

To cook a steak. I'm going to cook it with olive oil. No. Yeah, no. Look, some people do cook steaks in its own juices, in its own fat, and that's fine. Like I said, we just didn't have any other option. It was like, I remember my dad once, you know, someone came here and, what do you cook with? And...

Being an old stubborn Greek, I was like, what do you mean? You don't use extra virgin olive oil. It's just, it's in our, we're baptized with it. It's just in our blood. But yeah, no, the smoke point to reach that smoke point is you're cooking wrong anyway. So you're killing the benefit of anything you're doing. But then it's not only about the smoke point, it's about the taste, like you said, and it's

I would say that if you had every single oil cooked at a very close to smoke point,

um extra virgin olive oil's smoke point is a lot more tolerable and higher anyway yeah there's a lot of people in the like the carnivore community that are like really fixated and focused on tallow cooking with tallow yeah talking about yeah beef teller personally i've i've tried it but i still always go back to olive oil i don't like the taste honestly yeah

I guess that's a personal preference, but from a scientific standpoint, I mean, we work with some of the greatest professors in the world when it comes to this and it's the Mediterranean diet. 70% of the Mediterranean diet is olives and olive oil. Wow. 70%. That's a big percentage. I would think...

olive oil coffee would have to be there as well. Yeah, coffee's there, 100%. And that's also got your polyphenols and a lot of benefits as well, changing the gut bacteria. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. The breads they make, it's... The Mediterranean diet is...

a major part of where all the blue zones are in the world. Um, obviously there's some in Asia, you know, but, um, you know, you've got Southern Italy, Southern Greece, a couple of blue zones, the cuisine's quite similar and olive oil is a huge part of their diet. Well, a good, a good example would be, you've probably come across, um, Brian Johnson, um,

Yeah. Anti-aging. He was one of the ones, sorry to interrupt you. He was one of the oils that Simon Hill got tested.

So tell us about the... Well, I'm going to bring this up to the audience. I want to just mention this, that Brian Johnson is the most measured man in history. He's like an anti-aging guru. A lot of my audience... He doesn't want to die. He doesn't want to die. Yeah. So he's famous for not dying. So he released a product called Snake Oil, right? And it's an olive oil. Yeah. It's like, all right, you've got a guy who...

He's talking about anti-aging and longevity. And one of the first products that he brings out is olive oil. So what does that tell you about what he's... It tells me that he's looked at the evidence and he's convinced that it must be a staple, right? Yeah. Look, as you know, he works with the greatest doctors and professors in the world. And I think he spent something like...

Is it 2 million US a year on his body? Yeah. Something ridiculous, ludicrous, right? But obviously he's a successful entrepreneur, businessman, and he can, and he's now got this longevity project where it's literally not die at a certain age. It's like, don't die. Yeah. Which we'd all love, mate. You'd be pretty lonely in the end. But anyway, it's personal preference. But yeah, you're right. The first product he sort of looked into was extra virgin olive oil. I've purchased his oil. I ordered it.

Now, obviously, I did my research before I bought it. It comes from two parts of the world, one being Spain and Italy. How could it come from two parts? What do you mean? Well, it says on his website, and it was a long time ago, so anyone listening, please don't quote me, but I'm pretty sure I read right, that he sources from Spain and Italy due to, obviously, the last two years there's been –

less harvest ability than usual. So if he wants a scalable business, he needs to have different avenues of sourcing. Yeah. Right? Now, that's not a problem. The only issue I've got with that personally is that the bottle that I bought doesn't tell me where it's come from. I have to guess whether it's from Spain or Italy. Right? Does he own his own orchards? He doesn't say that. He may. He doesn't say that though.

I didn't have his olive oil tested. I went off the taste and there was some bitterness to it. I thought that it was okay. Going off the hundreds of oils that I've tasted, would I say the reading of polyphenol content was over 500 or 600? Probably not. Probably thereabouts. Did it taste fine? Yep. Tasted fine. But what we need to understand is when we're looking at it from a medicinal standpoint, it's not always going to have

the flouriness or the body or the taste that the ones that don't have the medicinal content have, right? I thought his oil was good for what he's trying to achieve. It was better than anything I've sort of tasted in Australia. Now, would I buy it again and drink it every day for the price point it's at?

I would probably personally, I can only speak personally. I would probably pay a little bit more money and he's wasn't cheap. I think I paid like, I think by the time I got here, it was a hundred bucks for like seven 50 mils. Yeah. Plus postage. Very well packaged. Look good. But would I look to something that has a little bit more medicinal benefit to have every day?

Me personally, yes. But it's based on everyone's personal preference and tolerance. But what does it tell you? I mean, for me, he's got a really stringent diet. I think he says his last meal is like at 11 a.m. Yeah, it was ridiculous, man. So he then uses the olive oil as a supplement during the day. Yeah. A lot of people can use – what I tell people is –

For some people who don't, I know people say that olive oil, it does break the fast. Technically, it does because it's a fat. I get it. But if people need to take their supplements in the morning and they don't want to eat, that's when I actually tell them have it with olive oil or have it with a boiled egg because you're going to get the fat. Because there's studies that show that olive oil enhances the absorption of vitamin E and some other vitamins and things like that. Yeah.

Yeah, it's a unique, I mean, first of all, it's an oil that tastes great if you cook with it. Number two, it's associated with longevity because of the Mediterranean diet. Let's go back to the Mediterranean diet, though. What else do you think makes that diet unique? You think it's the seafood? You think it's the meat? I think when we talk about Mediterranean diet, you know, we instantly think about the food we were raised on and our grandparents and the way they cooked.

I think going 20 or 30 years back from that, the way they were raised and what they were eating in the old countries, can we 100% fulfill a Mediterranean diet here? I don't think so. I think it's about their lifestyle as well in Southern Europe, in particular Greece. I think it's about how the food's grown. I think it's about

you know when it's grown how it's picked when they consume it how fresh they consume it i don't think we can ever fulfill it 100 i think we can do everything in our power to grow things in our garden organically consume it the best we can and try and mimic it as best as we can i don't think we can ever do it 100 though because in southern europe the soil is different

It's all different. And I can only give examples of, you know, where I've been and who I'm involved with. So my in-laws, they had grapes in Mildura. My mom's from Mildura as well. There you go. There you go. She used to pick grapes. That's all she ever used to do. I haven't met an Italian that they haven't got a connection with. But anyway, there you go. So I went out there for the first time about 10 years ago. And you think about,

olive trees and how they're planted and where they are strategically planted, by the way, to be organic in Southern Greece or in Greece in general. And then you look at the soil in Moldova. Now, Moldova's soil has a lot of salt, man, a lot of salt. It's red Australian soil, completely different to the soil in Europe, Southern Europe. So Southern Europe's full of potassium, nutrients, the ingredients you require, like...

Put it this way. You build a veggie patch. They're like, buy this, this, and this, and put that in your veggie patch soil, leave it for a little bit, then plant your plants. Correct? Yeah. In Europe, it's already in the soil. In Australia, it's not. You've got to add it and do it. And so most of your veggies, fruit, they come from places like Moldura that then go to supermarkets and you buy it. And, mate, there's horror stories out there. Like my father-in-law will say to me, if I ever catch you buying this, this, and this –

Right? What's he, which foods? He's talking about produce in general. He's talking about veggies, anything they grow in Mildura. Now, I'm not saying anything untowards happening. I think it's just more about if you've got the option to do something else, do that, he's saying to me. Don't, you know, stay clear from things that we know about. So we can't, we can buy that. We can buy organic vegetables.

you know, fruit or organic veg, how organic is it? And will it ever compare to what comes from Southern Europe and what's inclusive in the Mediterranean diet? I don't think we'll ever be able to match it. But the Mediterranean diet is made up of your lifestyle, your siestas, your food, your coffee, your fish, freshly caught fish, sun,

The air, the sea salt. I mean, the list goes on. What more can I say? You know, every time I visit Europe, I always come back saying, yeah, the best...

The best place that we went to was Greece. It's always Greece. It's not Italy, even though I'm half Italian. It's not Italy. It's always Greece. Why do you say that? You're not your usual tourist. You're always obviously switched on. Yeah. I don't want to boycott your podcast and start asking you questions. But, I mean, you're...

You're a savvy scientific bloke that wants to obviously make inroads and dispel myths in this industry. So why do you say that? Cause I know why the, the usual, you know, Joe blow says it, but I want your, my thoughts. I, first of all, I think the quality of the food is unmatched in terms of the freshness of like the seafood. It's just literally straight from the ocean. Yeah.

This is going to sound pretty funny, but the carrots and the tomatoes actually taste like they actually have flavor. Even though I buy organic here, it's not the same. It's just not the same. There's farms in Greece or just from, you know, I'll go to relatives overseas where they just grow their own tomatoes and they're not certified bio organic tomatoes, right? Yeah.

But the taste is unbelievable. And we spoke about it before about the soil and where they live and close to the beach.

And the natural sun and the air is different. Yeah. It's just even the color of the foods, like the freshness. I'm just getting flashbacks to Glee Father. Yeah. The watermelons. Yeah. Unbelievable. And I just like,

Obviously, the culture is very different. I love the... I wouldn't personally live there because I'm not at that stage in my life yet. But obviously, if I'm in my 60s, I'd love to have a place there so that I can go back and forth. That's the ultimate goal. Yeah, mate. I think I'm biased. I'm Greek. So Greece for me is heaven on earth. I always say when God created the earth...

The Greeks were last. He gave us the smallest piece of land, and that's where he said heaven's going to be. But funny you mention it because I've spoken to people from a lot of different, all Australian born, obviously, but a lot of different cultures who have gone overseas as late. And what was your favorite place? And be honest, not because it's me, Greece. And they all come back to the ocean, the sun, and the food. Yeah. Yep.

Are you with the wild olive, like your brand, what's the... Congratulations on the... I think the business is already thriving. I know you've got big ambitions and goals with it. First of all, supply. How's that looking? There is... With wild olive trees, the only downside to the business is because they're wild, there may be a freak of nature incident that...

They don't produce one yet. It hasn't happened yet. It hasn't happened, but that can happen with olive trees, dependent on weather and rain and all that type of stuff. Sometimes there can be too much rain and that affects an olive tree. So they don't like a lot of water. They don't like to be moist at the roots. They like irrigation, right? So

That can happen. That's a risk. In terms of our planted trees, there's a myth out there that, you know, olive trees will only give you olives every two years. Yeah, that's only if you don't know what you're doing, right? So it's actually my partner's brother that cultivates our trees and he's like 72 years old. So these guys have been doing this since birth. Yeah.

And you can't teach him. There's no formal qualification. He doesn't have a formal qualification, right? He's not like an arborist or something like that. He just knows what he's doing. In terms of that side of the business, we can produce, call it unlimited amounts, right? Now, some people might think, okay, well, how can you produce unlimited amounts? Just earlier in this segment, you said that there's not enough supply and all that type of stuff.

The olive tree needs love. So you need to know how much to water it, how much to prune it, when to prune it, how to prune it. You need to know what fertilizers to put on it and you'll get the crop that's required. Right. But, you know, these trees have been in our families, myself and my partner for centuries. We're talking about huge amounts of olive trees that, you know, we've got trees, some of them are 1500 years old.

So they'll produce without even us doing anything to them. Jeez. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So pretty special. Like it's, the stumps of these trees are like, you need 10 of me, my spans to get around the stump. Like you've got to be there to really appreciate it.

So you, with the company initially, I mean, you've set it up so that you're only shipping Australia-wide at the moment? No, we ship internationally. Oh, internationally. Yeah, I've always shipped internationally. We get a fair few orders from the United States, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Canada, all these countries, it seems like they don't seem to produce the high-quality stuff.

Very rare I'll get an order from Italy or Spain. It just doesn't, you know. But yeah, the bulk of the business right now is in Australia, London. And London? Yeah, I find that with my cultivated oil, so early harvest, it's appreciated in London. The restaurants there are...

Oh, the restaurants are using it, not consumers. Oh, yeah. No, no, no, no. So they're buying like five litres. They're buying five-litre tins, yeah. Wow. Yeah, but we're talking about, you know, some of the best restaurants in the world. Michelin star restaurants. But they've just recognised, yeah, and hat restaurants. So they've just recognised the quality. And it's not about... The other thing I pride myself on too is like, oh, this week I came across an Australian olive oil

from New South Wales that was selling four liters for $180. I'm just trying to do them four liters. So I'm just thinking like my price awareness is really bad because I don't look, I don't look, I just buy the best. Yeah. And that's, that's cause of who you are. But the last two years you've got to get a decent oil from a supermarket. So Coles and Woolworths. Right.

or you have independent IGAs in Australia, you've got to spend at a minimum $23 or $24 a litre. Online, when I first launched my five-litre tin, I think I was selling per litre, I was selling at about $27 a litre. So double the quality, but

Double the quality. Yeah, it makes me wonder why you wouldn't start higher though. Yeah, because I had a goal. This is what I'm explaining. I've got an ideology that when you launch something from overseas, you need to build trust. There's already this stereotype around don't buy European because you don't know what you're getting. I don't care what anyone says anymore. I'm in the game. You don't know what you're getting with Australian oil either, right? So for me to justify...

I wanted to do the right thing and say, okay, I'm going to come in at an entry point that's two, three, $4 more per liter, but you're getting double the quality. And once that customer gets that in their food or in their mouth, they're never going to turn back. And they haven't. They haven't. They actually haven't, right? So then it's about, okay, the consumer saying, well, why am I going to go buy at the price point that your Cobrams, Mordors –

Red Islands are selling for when I can get an olive oil that tastes better and has higher medicinal benefits but not double the price. Right? I haven't done a pricing press on my wild olive oil in six years. Wow. And olive oil has gone up 60%. Wow. In the last two years. Right? Will it ever come back to what it was? I don't think so. I think it might. Maybe a dollar or two per litre. It's never going to be the...

16 17 a liter on the shelf that it was that was the ideology to build trust gain attraction and then see where we go from there okay um wild's a whole different level you're getting something that's 10 times better than what's on a supermarket shelf like manuka honey there's manuka honeys out there for like 250 300 bucks yeah so that was the whole the whole goal for me yeah

If we have a think back now, I'm just trying to like, if you had to build, and I'm actually curious to get your thoughts on this. It's probably your fridge right now. Of course, I know you have kids. There's other food items. But if you had to build out the most ideal fridge with the best quality foods, let's talk about what would be your top five in the fridge that has to be there year round. Well, olive oil doesn't go in the fridge. Yeah, of course. We'll say olive oil is 100%. Olive oil, honey.

Honey as well, like a raw honey? A good honey. My grandfather told me to drink olive oil every day with fresh lemon in it. And then he would, with his fingers, get it out of the glass or drip it on his hands and slick his hair with it. And he died at 93, so I'll take that. Smoked, drank, worked hard, didn't have the Greek lifestyle. They came out here and worked two jobs.

So, you know, to say that, oh, okay, his lifestyle was, no, they didn't have a good lifestyle. They worked hard. It was all family, company, gardening, best exercise. And then, you know, he would swear by olive oil. Then he'd have his bees. They lived in Richmond. He'd have his two or three beehives on the roof in Richmond and produce his own honey. Jeez. Now this honey, organic honey. That's another industry that's...

Tampered, man.

And no longer sold in chemists, sold in all the main supermarket chains. The medicinal benefits just completely went. But it's been recognized now the last two, three years for what it really is. Honey's another one. Honey's another one that's been killed. Like he died, what am I now, 38, probably 16, 17 years ago. And up until a couple of years ago, my mom was still ripping out these honey jars and the honey was as good as gold, right? Yeah.

So olive oil, honey, lemon, what else in the fridge? I don't like dairy. I was going to ask about Greek yogurt or a cheese. Greek yogurt. There's a Gelner Greek yogurt. I know that one. That's the green label one because it's got all the right bacterias, the three bacterias that you require. We have that. And what else would I say? What else would I say? For the kids? Eggs. Eggs.

Eggs is a staple, yep. Eggs is a staple. And I'm going to say a good bread, like a good sourdough. I agree. A good sourdough bread that, again, for the gut. Mate, I can totally tell the difference. When I eat sugar, and I'm a bit of a sugar fiend when I get stressed. Yeah, me too. Mate, I have bad dreams. I don't sleep well. I wake up the next day, look, I've had 20 beers. It's all this processed stuff.

The issue with dairy is the majority of it's very highly processed these days. And not just dairy, it's your veggies and your fruits and potatoes. The less processed, my doctor puts me on a six or seven week paleo diet, which paleo is pretty much Mediterranean. Whatever comes from the ground in an animal. Anything processed, which the old people didn't have, was nothing processed.

Even think about the way they used to make cakes and sweets. Yeah. It's not like the way they make cakes and sweets that are in the same ingredients. So that's, yeah, that's what I would look to. Yeah. No, it's really, really interesting. I'm just, now that you've sort of woken me up to the, to the entire olive oil industry, I feel like I've got just even chatting to you now and hopefully the audience listening in better awareness, man, like people are going to be more,

They're going to pay more attention. I'd imagine people listening to this podcast are probably going to go back, open up their pantry. Yeah, have a look. Have a look at their olive oil. And it's two points, man. It's quality and it's price. Like if I can land olive oil from Greece in a five-liter tin, and freight costs have like gone up triple since COVID, yeah? If I can land it and sell it at the same price,

not the same, but very close to Australian olive oil, then are the orchards here doing the right thing? Are they selling at the right price for their quality? Or are they just doing what they have to because inflation has driven all this stuff up? You know what I mean? Yeah. And then it's obviously the taste. It's obviously the taste. So, Evan, if my audience, again, if they're obviously listening to this, they're going to want to try...

they're going to want to know where to purchase the wild olive oil. Where can they do that? BestBird is our website, so discoverthewildolive.com. If they type in wild olive oil in Google, we come up straight away. We have got this year's harvest of wild olive oil, which came in at a medicinal polyphenol reading of 2,000 plus milligrams per kilogram, right?

We sold out two weeks ago of our white bottle, our early harvest, but don't worry, there's more coming. That's about six weeks away. That's your best bet where you'll get, you know, you can get your 10% discount if you sign up to our website. We do free shipping for orders over 150. So if you buy one tin, it's free shipping, right? Yeah.

That's the best bet. Follow us on Instagram to see any sort of updates on what's coming, what it's looking like, so on and so forth. I'm actually, I've got some stock already coming your way. Yep. Now, after we get off, I'm actually going to start an olive oil challenge today. A shot challenge, morning shot challenge. Love it. I'm going to tag you in it. I love it. You're going to do the shot challenge with a bit of... I'll do it.

I'll tag a few in there, but I want to start getting this morning shot challenge going because people get up in the morning and they just listen to the latest fad. This isn't a fad. It's been going for like 4,000 years. That's not a fad. It's a stalemate that's going to stay. Yeah. I love it.

I'll make sure to leave that. I'll make sure to leave those links in the, in the podcast show notes for, for those listening in. But yeah, definitely really, really excited to, to get, get my, I mean, I've already used your olive oil. I went through that really, really quickly looking forward to more, more stock. And I loved it when I used it. But yeah,

Otherwise, I think any final words for my audience you want to mention, anything in relation to what we've covered so far today? Yeah. Myself as the founder of this company, it started as a passion project and it's now become a business, right? And I think the best advice I can give is just be really careful with your choices. I think it's not about, and it's not just olive oil, it's in general, food in general.

Like I said, I've dabbled in and done some work with Australian orchards now and had conversations with some of the major supermarket chains and superfood stores. And it's really just about the bottom line. You can't have a business if it's not about the bottom line. Now, I'm not going to sit here and say it's not about my bottom line because if it wasn't, I can't do what I do. I can't go on these podcasts. I can't educate people. But it's really about creating awareness of just make sure that

you're getting value for money. And if it's purely about taste, then that's fine. But we need to remember that olive oil is a medicine that's been around for centuries. Yeah. Now we can't claim it as a medicine. I can, because mine's European Union health claimed. In Australia, we can't, but just make sure you're getting value for money. That's the best thing I can say. Awesome. Awesome. I'd agree with that.

That pretty much wraps up today's podcast. Evan, thank you so much for- Thanks for having me. This has been an absolute wealth of knowledge here around this topic. And I imagine a lot of people are going to want to definitely try your olive oil. So make sure to leave that link in the podcast show notes. But otherwise, for anyone listening in, if you did enjoy today's episode, please do leave a five-star review. And that definitely supports the algorithm. I look forward to seeing you guys in the next episode.

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