> ...is less bitter than the good stuff Bitterness matters here IMHO. One old anecdote: when I was in the US about 15 years ago, I was very surprised to see an

> ...is less bitter than the good stuff Bitterness matters here IMHO. One old anecdote: when I was in the US about 15 years ago, I was very surprised to see an Italian brand I knew with labels like "regular", "strong", "extra strong" or so. There was no such thing in France. And then from tasting I understood: the extra strong was the olive oil I knew, the others were distinctly less bitter. So more filtered. The irony is that olive oil, for the truly oil part, is not particularly good --- it doesn't have all what our body needs. Colza oil is a good complement BTW. What's good in the olive oil are the olive tanins (I may be doing frenglish there...), which are bitter. And compared to Europe the US has a sweet tooth, so I guess that the bitterness was not so popular. So just filter it ;) You loose what made the olive oil popular (at the time at least), but sales wise I guess it worked better. Marketing at work. Don't know if it has changed?