Taking a spoonful of olive oil on an empty stomach each morning offers no special health benefit and may instead add unnecessary calories, medical experts say.
Lee Seung-hoon, a professor of neurology at Seoul National University Hospital, said on the 28th on the YouTube channel Jisik Inside that while cooking with olive oil instead of soybean oil is good for health, drinking it straight in the morning makes no sense. "Nutritionally, it is a strange thing to do," the professor said, according to medical industry sources on the 30th.
Lee said this does not mean denying the nutritional value of olive oil itself. "The nerves in our body use unsaturated fatty acids such as omega-3, and other soft tissues also need unsaturated fatty acids such as oleic acid. Olive oil is what contains this oleic acid," the professor explained.
"Soybean oil, the kind used as cooking oil, has far less unsaturated fat. Canola oil, flaxseed oil and grapeseed oil are relatively high in unsaturated fat, and among them olive oil has the highest oleic acid content," Lee added.
The problem is that olive oil is also a high-calorie food. "Olive oil is still a fat, so it is high in calories per unit of mass. A single spoonful carries 100 to 200 calories, which is extremely high," Lee said. "Drinking olive oil on an empty stomach does not flush out your blood vessels. If anything, it puts you on the road to gaining weight."
A typical tablespoon of olive oil, about 15 milliliters, contains roughly 120 calories. Adding olive oil on top of an unchanged diet for its supposed health benefits can raise total daily calorie intake.
For blood vessel health, Lee said omega-3 is the better choice. The professor added that unsaturated fatty acids such as omega-3 are fundamentally animal-derived fatty acids and cannot be replaced by olive oil.
Doctors abroad also caution that olive oil being a healthy fat does not mean more is better.
K. Sesi Kiran, an internal medicine specialist at Yashoda Hospitals in India, said olive oil is known as a healthy fat but eating more of it does not make a person healthier. Manjusha Agarwal, an internal medicine specialist at Gleneagles Hospital in India, likewise said olive oil is a good source of unsaturated fat but remains a calorie-dense food.
Anyone controlling calorie intake to lose weight should be especially careful about adding olive oil to an existing diet. Some people may also experience digestive discomfort, such as bloating or loose stools, after consuming a large amount at once.
