Athena, Jesus Christ and the traffic light: The history and anthropology of knowledge about olive oil

Elisabetta Moro shows how the uses as well as the meanings and values associated with food have their roots in the ancient past. She argues that contemporary food-based dietary guidelines tend to ignore the wealth of cultural knowledge developed over centuries. The case she examines, that of olive oil, is exemplary in this respect. As literary, historical and religious texts attest, different kinds of practical and symbolic knowledge have been associated with olive oil over the centuries in the Mediterranean regions, since ancient Greek civilization. Olive oil has long been considered a ‘precious’ substance, used in cooking, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, soaps as well as in religious ritual to bless and to anoint the sick. Today, olive oil is often considered only from a nutritional point of view, so that this rich and ancient store of knowledge and symbols is in danger of disappearing. Nutritional ‘yellow or red traffic light’ warnings which appear on bottles of olive oil discourage its consumption, thus ‘demonizing’ a food once considered sacred. Reconstructing the key issues and controversies surrounding traffic light recommendations and olive oil, Elisabetta Moro provides an overview of the political and economic wrangling behind the terminology and principles of nutritional labelling for consumers. Moro shows how contemporary food knowledge mediators including dieticians and governmental experts play a key role in determining how nutritional knowledge is transposed into cautionary messages for consumers. Paradoxically, the dietetic and communicational ostracism of olive oil has confirmed and reinforced its historic and symbolic value in certain contexts. Elisabetta Moro explores the tensions between proponents of theMediterranean diet, who call upon cultural heritage to defend their views, and critics of olive oil who appear determined to banish this substance from the table of today’s ‘ Homo Dieteticus ’. Elisabetta Moro offers a broad historical perspective on the evolution of ancestral knowledge about food, as such knowledge is transported through ritual, practice and myth.