Researchers from Phenols4Health are work­ing to eval­u­ate cook­ing meth­ods with extra vir­gin olive oil and a pro­pri­etary olive oil pro­duc­tion byprod­uct to cre­ate a new line of healthy snack foods.

“Our main objec­tive is… to under­stand how extra vir­gin olive oil rich in phe­no­lic com­pounds can inhibit the for­ma­tion of some com­pounds includ­ing advanced gly­ca­tion end-prod­ucts in cooked food,” Ítala Marx, a post­doc­toral researcher at the University of Córdoba and prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor for Phenols4Health, told Olive Oil Times.

Advanced gly­ca­tion end prod­ucts are formed when pro­tein or fat com­bine with sugar in the blood­stream. They con­tribute to increased inflam­ma­tion and oxida­tive stress asso­ci­ated with dia­betes and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease.

“Our pre­vi­ous results indi­cated that phe­no­lic com­pounds in extra vir­gin olive oil can min­i­mize lipid oxi­da­tion and in this sense, due to its high antiox­i­dant capac­ity, we hope that it also inhibits the for­ma­tion of these com­pounds,” Marx added.

The researchers’ sec­ondary goal is to iden­tify cook­ing meth­ods that pre­serve polyphe­nols, which degrade when exposed to heat, light and oxy­gen.

For exam­ple, Marx said the team has been test­ing dif­fer­ent cook­ing meth­ods, look­ing at emerg­ing alter­na­tives such as air fry­ing. 

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“We want to under­stand how dif­fer­ent cook­ing meth­ods can affect not only the phe­no­lic com­po­si­tion but also the inhi­bi­tion of advanced gly­ca­tion end-prod­ucts and the reduc­tion of lipid oxi­da­tion in cooked foods,” she added.

The project, involv­ing sci­en­tists from the University of Córdoba in Spain and the University of Campinas in Brazil, has already devel­oped an extra vir­gin olive oil-based cracker and is work­ing on pro­duc­ing flour enriched with their novel byprod­uct.

In one for­mu­la­tion, the researchers pre­pared the crack­ers sim­i­larly to reg­u­lar crack­ers, replac­ing sun­flower oil with Picual extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duced in the Tabernas Desert in the Andalusian province of Almería. They also swapped white flour for gluten-free chick­pea flour.

Due to an early har­vest, the nat­ural genet­ics of the Picual vari­ety and the cli­mate of the Tabernas Desert, the researchers selected extra vir­gin olive oil with a very high polyphe­nol con­tent of 1,500 mil­ligrams per kilo­gram.

As a result, Marx said the sen­sory prop­er­ties of the extra vir­gin olive oil crack­ers were dis­tinct, with a pro­nounced bit­ter­ness and char­ac­ter­is­tic smell of fresh extra vir­gin olive oil. The researchers also tested cracker for­mu­la­tions using refined olive oil as a con­trol.

They aim to cre­ate prod­ucts that appeal to var­i­ous con­sumers and are health­ier alter­na­tives to typ­i­cal snack foods.

Additionally, the researchers pro­duced crack­ers using chick­pea flour enriched with their pro­pri­etary olive oil pro­duc­tion byprod­uct. 

“To ensure phe­no­lic enrich­ment of the crack­ers and pro­pose an upcy­cling strat­egy for the byprod­ucts of olive oil pro­duc­tion, we are devel­op­ing for­mu­la­tions with enriched chick­pea flour, which can fur­ther con­tribute to the reduc­tion of lipid oxi­da­tion, and which we hypoth­e­size will also pre­vent the for­ma­tion of advanced gly­ca­tion end-prod­ucts”, Marx said.

“ Our pre­vi­ous results in other foods, includ­ing fried pota­toes and breaded chicken, showed that it was pos­si­ble to reduce lipid oxi­da­tion using extra vir­gin olive oil and enrich the foods with antiox­i­dant com­pounds using the olive pro­duc­tion byprod­uct,” she added.

The Phenols4Health project is part of a broader trend in the Mediterranean of researchers search­ing for alter­na­tive uses for olive oil pro­duc­tion byprod­ucts.

A 2024 study iden­ti­fied freeze-dried olive pow­der, a byprod­uct of table olive pro­duc­tion that retains phe­no­lic com­pounds and monoun­sat­u­rated fatty acids, as a healthy ingre­di­ent to enrich baked goods, sea­son­ings and health sup­ple­ments.

Separate ini­tia­tives have repur­posed olive waste into an eclec­tic range of prod­ucts from bio­fuel and bio­plas­tic to build­ing insu­la­tion, super­ca­pac­i­tors and ani­mal feeds.

For her part, Marx believes snacks enriched with the olive oil byprod­uct will be a grow­ing source of rev­enue for olive oil pro­duc­ers, and new com­pa­nies will spe­cial­ize in mak­ing these phe­no­lic-rich snacks.

Indeed, once the Phenols4Health project ends in May 2026, Marx is con­sid­er­ing launch­ing a start-up that would pro­duce a new gen­er­a­tion of func­tion­ally enriched foods.

“My main objec­tive is to develop new prod­ucts… that are nutri­tional, sus­tain­able and healthy, as well as to cre­ate new avenues and sources of rev­enue for olive oil pro­duc­ers, ” she said.

“These results allow us to think out­side the box and pro­pose the devel­op­ment of new, healthy, gluten-free snacks,” Marx con­cluded.