Myth or fact

You shouldn't cook with olive oil because of its smoke point

Short answerNo

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 20263 sources

No. In one lab test, extra virgin olive oil smoked at 404 °F (207 °C), above the 356 °F (180 °C) used for deep frying. Over 6 hours at frying heat it broke down less than canola, sunflower or grapeseed oil.

The myth comes from a real number used the wrong way. Extra virgin olive oil has a lower smoke point than refined seed oils. The reasoning goes that an oil past its smoke point is breaking down, so an oil with a low smoke point must be a bad one to heat. It sounds careful, and it’s been repeated so often that plenty of people save their olive oil for salads.

The one thing the reasoning skips is that smoke point and stability are different questions.

What did the test find?

In 2018, three scientists at Modern Olives Laboratory Services in Australia bought ten common cooking oils from the supermarket and tested them two ways. The lab belongs to an olive oil company, which the paper says on its first page, so keep that in mind. The results still didn’t flatter every olive oil.

First they measured each oil’s smoke point, the temperature where a steady blue smoke appears. Extra virgin olive oil smoked at 404 °F, plain olive oil at 406 °F and virgin olive oil at only 348 °F. Canola smoked at 492 °F, sunflower at 490 °F and grapeseed at 514 °F.

Then they held 3 liters of each oil in a deep fryer at 356 °F (180 °C), which they call the highest temperature recommended for deep frying, for 6 hours. They measured the polar compounds as they went. Those are the breakdown products that build up in frying oil, and many countries limit how much frying oil can contain.

The oils with the highest smoke points broke down the most. Extra virgin olive oil and coconut oil, with two of the lowest, broke down the least.

The other test heated each oil in a pan from room temperature to 464 °F (240 °C) over about 20 minutes. Averaged over both tests, extra virgin olive oil made the fewest breakdown compounds of all ten oils, 8.5%, then coconut oil at 9.3%. Canola made the most, 22.4%, and in the hot pan it reached 27.5%, past the 24 to 27% that many countries allow in frying oil.

Why would a lower smoke point hold up better?

Smoke point tells you when an oil starts to smoke. It doesn’t tell you how fast the oil wears out at a heat it can handle, much like a car’s top speed tells you nothing about how long the engine lasts on the highway.

How fast an oil breaks down depends mostly on its kinks. Polyunsaturated fats have two or more double bonds in each chain, and those are the spots where oxygen attacks in a hot pan. Extra virgin olive oil is mostly monounsaturated, with one double bond per chain, and the authors say its natural antioxidants protect it further. Sunflower and grapeseed oil are mostly polyunsaturated. Coconut oil is mostly saturated, with almost no double bonds at all, which is why it held up so well in the pan, and why it does so badly for your LDL at the table.

Smoke point depends a lot on how an oil is made and refined, the authors say. In the test, virgin olive oil had the most free fatty acids of all ten oils and the lowest smoke point. Refined seed oils start out with very few, so they smoke late, and their polyunsaturated fat still breaks down in a long fry.

What are the limits of the test?

It was one lab, ten bottles from Australian supermarkets, and an olive oil company running it. No food was cooked. The authors point out that water and steam from real food change what happens to the oil, so a pan of frying potatoes won’t behave exactly like a fryer of plain oil.

And smoke points vary by bottle, by how the oil was made, and by how fresh it is. The authors note that an oil’s smoke point drops as it’s used. Plain olive oil and extra virgin were close in this test, while virgin olive oil smoked more than 50 °F earlier.

Why cook with olive oil at all?

For your heart, the fats in it are the reason. A tablespoon of olive oil has 1.8 g of saturated fat, against 7.2 g in butter and 11.2 g in coconut oil. The 2026 US Dietary Guidelines name olive oil first among cooking fats. Plain olive oil, which smoked at 406 °F in the test, had almost the same fat profile as the extra virgin, so it’s a fine pan oil if you’d rather keep the good bottle for the table. Oils in the kitchen has the rest of the test and how to pick a bottle.