Price for olive oil aproaching €10 per liter in Dutch supermarkets

Everyone in the Netherlands is aware that food prices have risen in recent years. But the price tag on a bottle of olive oil has skyrocketed. A liter now costs almost 10 euros in Dutch supermarkets, RTL Nieuws reports.

“The price of olive oil really takes the cake,” nutritionist Leroy van de Ree of the Instagram account Voedingsweetjes told the broadcaster. A liter of classic olive oil currently costs 9.29 euros at Jumbo, 9.69 euros at Albert Heijn, and 8.15 euros at Aldi. Van Rhee calls the price of olive oil “really an outlier” among two years of increasingly higher food prices.

The high price is partly due to the disappointing olive harvest in recent years. Countries like Italy, Greece, and Spain, where olives grow, have been very dry. “When it is dry, the tree produces fewer olives, which results in a higher price,” Van de Ree explained. The demand for olive oil has also increased worldwide, Van de Ree added, which also pushes prices higher.

“There have been enormous droughts in Spain and Italy for two years in a row,” said olive oil sommelier Wilma van Grinsven-Padberg. “Spain is responsible for half of the total world consumption. So if there is half as much yield, the price will increase enormously.”

In supermarkets, customers can typically choose between the classic or “mild” olive oil and extra virgin olive oil. The first option is always refined, which means that essential, healthy ingredients typically found in olive oil are missing. “Then over 9 euros is actually much too expensive,” the sommelier said.

Extra virgin olive oil is often not much more expensive, Van Grinsven-Padberg added. That shows that the extra virgin oil in supermarkets is probably not of very good quality. Nevertheless, she recommends buying this option instead of the mild variant. “For a little more money, you have a better quality to use for everything you want to cook.” To test the quality of your oil, just give it a sniff, she said. “If you smell grass, you can be reasonably sure it is of good quality.”