Oils and Fats News
February 2025
AGM Luncheon
Tuesday 25th February 2025 11 am meet
Where: Ease of parking, Cypress Restaurant at 296 D0minion Road, Mount Eden, which is very close to Countdown Mt Eden. Please let us know attendance by the 20th of this month please. so, we can give the restaurant numbers.
In memorial Margaret Edwards
Ruth and I recently attended the memorial service for Margaret Edwards who passed away in January. Margaret and her late husband John were dear friends of ours for 40 years. I first met Margaret when she was at Buttermart, and I was at the NZ Dairy Board.
She and John at some stage moved to Waiheke where they had an olive Grove, and they started to produce high quality olive oil. 25 years ago, most olive oil in New Zealand which was imported and had been refined and deodorised and quite old. It was quite horrible.
Margaret was aware of my time at Abels as I know processing and chemistry of fats and got me to help her, and John improve the quality of their olive oil. First, she had to teach me a little bit about sensory as being trained on bland, totally deodorised oils to taste something that had quite strong and pungent flavours was quite unusual for me.
Margaret was a sensory scientist trained at Otago in the famous department of home science. She had a fantastic discerning palette and hopefully taught me a little bit about how to taste virgin olive oil. We ended up doing training seminars for olive plantations all round New Zealand. John and Ruth became the accidental tourists visiting boutique ice cream manufacturers, wineries, and anything else of interest whilst Margaret and I were running the seminars. The four of us had good times and we were always entertained well by the olive oil people who hosted us.
To have any food and drink at Margaret and John’s place was an experience never to be forgotten. Margaret ‘s coffee was perhaps the best in the whole of the world, perhaps a slight exaggeration, but it was made with such care, and it was lovely. Their food was also first class.
I do not think the olive oil industry ever paid the appropriate tribute to Margaret and John for improving the overall quality of New Zealand olive oil production. They received a considerable number of gold and silver medal winners on the international stage, virtually all originally due to Margaret’s coaching and training skills.
She will be sorely missed by her family and colleagues.
The choroid plexus and brain lipids?
What may you ask? Well, I did not have a clue when reading about this recently in Inform Magazine.
After adipose tissue, the brain is the second richest in lipids. Indeed, the brain is composed of 60% lipids, mainly phospholipids in cell membranes, enriched with long chain polyunsaturates. These acids regulate cell survival neuroinflammation and neurogenesis which explains the extension research on brain lipid profiles. To reach the brain omega-3 and other fatty acids must cross one of three specialised blood brain barriers. This is a semipermeable selective barrier between blood capillaries and the brain. There is also the blood cerebrospinal fluid barrier formed by the inverted commas choroid plexus close inverted commas and network of blood vessels within each brain ventricle. I probably need to read up more on this intriguing topic as it is brand new to me.
Reference inform magazine January 2025, volume 36 page 22.
Rotten avocados and the drug lords
The Avocado Wars -tells the story of the Southern California avocado industry. Although the fruit originated in Mexico it did not become a domestic staple until protectionist US trade policies, namely tariffs, in the early 20th century allowed the industry to gain a foothold.
In Mexico, armed groups and cartels use violence to try and control this lucrative business.
This docuseries travels deep into the heart of the food supply chain to reveal unsavoury truths and expose hidden forces that shape what we eat. Watch on Netflix.
The sad state of affairs with cheap RBD avocado oil spoiling the market for genuine producers has led to the recent receivership of Olivado.
Omega-3
A University of Zurich study published in Nature Aging suggests that a daily dose of omega-3 oils, along with vitamin D and exercise, can slow biological aging. The trial involved nearly eight hundred participants aged seventy and older and found that those taking one gram of omega-3 daily aged three months less over three years — with additional vitamin D and exercise boosting the effect to nearly four months.
Full Story: News Medical (2/4), The Guardian (London) (2/3), SwissInfo (2/4)