Olive oil is a vegetable oil for culinary use mainly extracted from freshly harvested fruit of the olive tree (Olea europaea) called olive or olive. Almost a third of the olive pulp is oil, and for this reason has long been easily removed with a simple pressure of a primitive mill (mill).
Its use is primarily culinary, but has been used for cosmetic purposes, as well as everyday in oil lamps. The olive or olives are not usually eaten raw because of the bitterness of its taste (mainly due to the presence of phenolic compounds), this flavor is greatly reduced by the application of various curing processes. However 90% of world olive production is used to produce oil.
Only 2% of world production is carried out in the Mediterranean area; Spain, and to a lesser extent Italy and Greece account for three quarters of world production.
