In previous articles, I wrote about a handful of studies that collectively demonstrated that consuming monounsaturated fat in place of saturated fat, even in small amounts, has beneficial effects on CVD risk factors, and that obtaining the monounsaturated fat from unadulterated whole-foods like unrefined olive oil and nuts can elicit even greater benefit through their secondary metabolites. However, these effects were obtained with chronic intake of at least one month and a largely uncontrolled for diet. This doesn’t downplay the health benefits by any means, but it does raise questions of whether these outcomes are observable within a single meal. To answer this, researchers from Sapienza University of Rome, Italy randomized 25 healthy male and female participants to consume a traditional Mediterranean lunch with or without 10g of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) in a crossover design separated by 30 days. Compared to consuming the meal without EVOO, the small 10g...
