If you do one thing this week . . . start the day with extra-virgin olive oil

IT’S NOT like olive oil needed another study to provide more evidence for its health-promoting greatness.

But researchers recently found that eating extra-virgin olive oil that’s rich in phenols is linked with healthy changes in the expression of genes in cells of the immune system.

It was admittedly a small study – they looked at 20 people in Spain with “metabolic syndrome”, a condition often linked with obesity and chronic inflammation that pre-empts diabetes and heart disease.

But the outcome they saw was pretty clear: eating a breakfast including phenol-rich olive oil had an impact on the activation of almost 100 genes and, in many cases, pro-inflammation genes were toned down.

"These results provide at least a partial molecular basis for reduced risk of cardiovascular disease observed in Mediterranean countries, where virgin olive oil represents a main source of dietary fat," write the researchers in the journal BMC Genomics.