What are vegetable oils?
Before answering the question, ‘is olive oil a vegetable oil?’, I would like to delve into the criteria for determining whether or not an oil is a vegetable oil. Broadly speaking, vegetable oils are oils that are extracted from seeds or fruits composed mainly of unsaturated fatty acids. For example, oils that come from sunflower seeds or from nuts fall within this classification.
What are the characteristics of vegetable oils?
Vegetable oils are characterized by being liquid at room temperature, rich in unsaturated fatty acids (for example, omega 3, 6 and 9), by lowering levels of bad cholesterol, and by their anti-inflammatory nature.
So, is olive oil a vegetable oil?
Olive oil comes from olives, which have a high content of unsaturated fatty acids. So if a vegetable oil is characterized by coming from fruits with a high content of fatty acids, the answer is yes, olive oil is a vegetable oil. It is also a liquid oil at room temperature, it lowers cholesterol levels, and it acts as an anti-inflammatory.
For all these reasons, olive oil is not only part of the group of vegetable oils, it is also one of the most representative oils of this group.
*Source: NCBI
