Most of us have a bottle of extra virgin olive oil [1] in our pantry.

And if you're like me, you use olive oil daily in all kinds of ways: to scramble eggs, saute mushrooms, marinate veggies [1], dress salads [1], and generally think of it as a staple in your kitchen.

In fact, I have a basic (cheap) bottle of extra virgin olive oil that I use for everyday cooking, and a slightly better, presumably more virginal bottle of the stuff that I reserve for salads and pasta.

And, on a high shelf where I stash truffle oil, fig balsamic vinegar, and my other luxury pantry ingredients, I've got a bottle of the really good imported stuff. It's a bottle of primo Italian olive oil that's so intensely virginal it might bring a tear to your eye. If I remember correctly, it set me back about $30.

So, I'm not at all happy to learn that my bottle of real Italian extra virgin olive oil could be a fake. According to a very interesting article in The [2]New Yorker [3], olive oil fraud is rampant, and as profitable, if we're to believe one investigator, as cocaine trafficking!

Apparently, it's very easy to doctor less favorful (or healthful) vegetable and nut oils and pass them off as olive oil. We may think we're splurging on extra virgin olive oil, but there's a chance that, despite the label, our bottle may have come from Turkey or Tunsia and been cut with hazelnut, soybean, or canola oils.

Even if we've gotten real olive oil from Italy, few bottles actually meet the official criteria for the "extra virgin" label. That requires that the oil be made by press or centrifuge and pass 32 chemical taste requirements. Virgin olive oil is a grade lower. But there's even a possibility that the "premium" olive oil we've bought is categorized by the Italians as "lamp oil" and is not meant to sold as food.

Worse, I've used this monosaturated, healthy oil very liberally for years now, because it's proven to have considerable benefits [4] for the heart and cholesterol levels. Had I suspected it was a fake, I would have limited my intake.

Part of the reason for so much trickery is the increased demand in Europe and the U.S., but the article illustrates that olive oil fraud has gone on throughout history. Who knew?

What should we look for? Experts say that once we've tasted the real thing, we'd know the difference. It's certainly possible that many of us have never had that pleasure; those who have compare olive oil to a "freshly-squeezed fruit juice," rather than, well, a cooking oil.

My very expensive bottle of olive oil tastes good. It's flavorful and distinct, and tastes pretty much how I expect a quality olive oil to taste. But I'm sad to report that it tastes like oil, and nothing like fruit juice.