Why are plant oils so affordable?

[Jebus]

I can't get my head around this one. Where I live I pay about 7 USD for a liter of olive oil. I read that about 1000 regular sized olives are needed to produce one liter. Seven dollars will only buy me about 150 olives. How can the olive oil be so much cheaper than the olives when the production costs are higher? The same goes for other plant oils.

[brimstoneSalad]

For one, they're different kinds of olives; table olives and oil olives. Sort of like with table apples and the apples used to make cider and vinegar.
The better something tastes the worse the yield usually is, because it has been cultivated for taste rather than yield. Table olives are probably also less greasy, and may be larger. There are also some natural consequences of being softer/more edible, meaning they're more vulnerable to pests too who enjoy less fibrous foods like we do. I haven't tasted an oil olive before, but I would imagine they are regarded as inedible, tough and greasy.

That said, if you lived where olives were grown and got them fresh from a farmer's market they'd cost much less, but when you buy a jar of them you're also paying for the jar (which probably isn't much smaller for the olives than for the oil) and extensive processing: they've been pitted, often stuffed, and pickled. The processing is probably also a more difficult sort than required for oil which is just run through a couple high capacity machines.
You also pay more for them to sit on the shelf; volume of demand does a lot to cut costs, and olive oil is probably much more popular there than olives (and they don't take up much less shelf space).

All of that stuff adds up.

[cornivore]

I see prices all over the map for olive oil, because there are 30 or so gourmet brands, and I don't know why, when it tastes bitter. But I was looking at some ginger essential oil today, and that would cost around $2000 for a liter. Essential oils are supposed to be diluted in a carrier oil though, and I don't think olive oil would be a good one. I got some mint oil instead (which is only $350/liter, or a few dollars for 15 mL)... it goes good with corn oil (there's actually a cornmint essential oil too). Curiously, there are some bottles of olive oil priced similarly to an essential oil (on google shopping at the moment), I guess they're feeling lucky.

You have to be careful with this stuff, by the way:

• A near fatal case of high dose peppermint oil ingestion
• Acute lung injury after peppermint oil injection
• Allergic reaction to mint leads to asthma
• A case of anaphylaxis to peppermint
• A fatal case of menthol poisoning

Mostly there are scientific articles about its potiential health benefits when used in moderation (so maybe it's a good deal, especially compared to ginger, which I doubt makes people live six times longer for costing that much more).

[brimstoneSalad]

@cornivore It's hard to believe people are injecting peppermint oil, but I wouldn't say that's something we have to be careful not to do since it never crossed my mind that injecting random things into myself might be safe/OK.

[cornivore]

Yeah, you'd think, but they say that people have lost their genitals from injecting olive oil (somewhere in Thailand). Presumably because it was more affordable than silicone (not that it would be a good idea anyway, I guess enough people have to volunteer to be guinea pigs for the FDA to issue a warning, like they did for silicone).

Other than bizarre accounts, not all of the labels for essential oils mention diluting the substance, or warn that it is highly concentrated and could be dangerous in relatively small amounts. Many of them are not considered edible, even if their essence is used as a flavor somehow (artificially perhaps), like wintergreen and cinnamon leaf. It's a good idea to look those things up before using any as a food additive (and I wouldn't even use inedible ones for aroma therapy—inhalation is what made the menthol deadly, for example, and other oils may affect people in smaller amounts than that). Every substance can be toxic in large amounts, but some of these are more like drugs (they say that a teaspoon of wintergreen oil is equivalent to 90 baby aspirins, and should be kept out of children's reach especially, but this info isn't on the label). With those, if it doesn't say you can use a drop in a cup of tea, or something like that, it would be a hint not to eat it (if you were comparing labels like I was). Well, I take it that the presumption should be that essential oils are for external use only, unless they state otherwise (it's just that even household cleaners have warnings not to eat them, and essential oils may smell more edible than those to a clueless individual).

[cornivore]

In between vegetable oils and essential oils, there are macerated (or infused) plant oils. I think those are priced in between, as well, and some essential oils may be macerated for food use (it's another way of describing a carrier oil together with them). When adding herbs or vegetables (fruits, etc.) to oil there is also a risk of food poisoning with the infusions, especially if there is water content—with peppers for example (something like botulinum spores can reconstitute themselves in the mix). I suppose mixing edible essential oils with vegetable oils would be safer than dried spices, anyway, regardless of water content (because those are known to cause food poisoning too). Mint oils especially inhibit the growth of bacteria and fungi (as in mouthwash), so they are probably among the safest infusions or syrups for that matter (not to be confused with eyedrops either).