Frequent Olive Oil Consumption Linked to Smaller Waistlines, Study Finds

Summary

Regular con­sump­tion of extra vir­gin olive oil has been linked to lower lev­els of abdom­i­nal obe­sity, accord­ing to a study ana­lyz­ing the dietary habits of over 16,000 adults fol­low­ing the Mediterranean diet. The study found that daily con­sump­tion of olive oil was asso­ci­ated with smaller waist cir­cum­fer­ence and lower body mass index, with bioac­tive com­pounds in olive oil poten­tially aid­ing in weight man­age­ment and meta­bolic health.

Regular con­sump­tion of extra vir­gin olive oil has been linked to lower lev­els of abdom­i­nal obe­sity, accord­ing to new research.

The study ana­lyzed the dietary and lifestyle habits of more than 16,000 adults — men and women in nearly equal pro­por­tions — who fol­lowed the Mediterranean diet to vary­ing degrees.

Researchers found that only fre­quent con­sump­tion of extra vir­gin olive oil was asso­ci­ated with a smaller waist cir­cum­fer­ence (WC) and a lower body mass index (BMI). Occasional or ran­dom use showed no sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit, accord­ing to the study pub­lished in Frontiers in Nutrition.

While over­all diet qual­ity had the most sig­nif­i­cant effect on body com­po­si­tion, olive oil con­sump­tion more than six days per week played a vital role. The analy­sis sug­gested that approx­i­mately 62 per­cent of the Mediterranean diet’s asso­ci­a­tion with smaller waist­lines could be attrib­uted to the reg­u­lar use of olive oil, with the remain­ing 38 per­cent explained by other sta­ples, such as fruits, veg­eta­bles, legumes, and nuts.

Participants who con­sumed olive oil daily tended to have smaller waists, even when their over­all diet scores were sim­i­lar to those of oth­ers.

“Even though in some stud­ies olive oil con­sump­tion increased body weight, sev­eral clin­i­cal stud­ies have asso­ci­ated its con­sump­tion with a lower rate of weight gain, a reduced risk of obe­sity, and improved meta­bolic para­me­ters due to its bioac­tive sub­stances,” said Antonios E. Koutelidakis, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of human nutri­tion at the University of the Aegean in Greece, who was not involved in the study.

Previous research co-authored by Koutelidakis has also shown that olive oil con­sump­tion can aid in weight man­age­ment. ​“Almost all the stud­ies show a pos­i­tive effect of olive oil on meta­bolic indices,” he noted. ​“Several stud­ies found that weight, waist cir­cum­fer­ence, and blood pres­sure decrease after olive oil con­sump­tion.”

The lat­est research used a cross-sec­tional design, col­lect­ing data at a sin­gle point in time through an online ques­tion­naire. Participants reported their dietary habits, olive oil con­sump­tion, and lifestyle behav­iors, as well as their height, weight, and waist cir­cum­fer­ence.

While such stud­ies can reveal asso­ci­a­tions, they can­not deter­mine cause and effect. The researchers acknowl­edged poten­tial lim­i­ta­tions, includ­ing self-reported mea­sure­ments and the pos­si­bil­ity of reverse cau­sa­tion — for exam­ple, that peo­ple with health­ier waist­lines may be more likely to choose olive oil.

Nonetheless, the study found a strong and con­sis­tent inverse rela­tion­ship between olive oil intake and both BMI and waist cir­cum­fer­ence: the more fre­quently par­tic­i­pants con­sumed olive oil, the smaller their waist mea­sure­ments — the rela­tion­ship held for both men and women.

“Olive oil is clas­si­fied as fat. However, sev­eral stud­ies have shown that within the con­text of a bal­anced diet such as the Mediterranean diet, it does not affect weight gain in the same way as other fats,” Koutelidakis said.

He explained that this dif­fer­ence stems from the rich com­po­si­tion of bioac­tive com­pounds in extra vir­gin olive oil — includ­ing toco­pherols, oleu­ropein, hydrox­y­ty­rosol, and oleic acid — which sup­port meta­bolic health.

“In regions where olive oil pro­vides most of the daily energy from fat, sci­en­tists have observed low rates of obe­sity and improved meta­bolic indi­ca­tors,” Koutelidakis added. ​“This is likely the result of both high olive oil con­sump­tion and the syn­er­gis­tic action of bioac­tive com­po­nents in the Mediterranean diet.”

He also noted that numer­ous clin­i­cal and epi­demi­o­log­i­cal stud­ies have doc­u­mented olive oil’s pos­i­tive effects on blood lipids, glu­cose reg­u­la­tion, and inflam­ma­tory mark­ers — all key meta­bolic risk fac­tors.

Obesity and meta­bolic syn­drome develop through com­plex mech­a­nisms involv­ing pro­teins and enzymes whose activ­ity is influ­enced by gene expres­sion. ​“Research has shown that many func­tional foods, such as olive oil, con­tain bioac­tive com­pounds that can inhibit var­i­ous processes involved in meta­bolic dis­ease,” Koutelidakis explained.

Over time, these com­pounds may influ­ence how spe­cific genes are expressed at the mRNA level — the step that deter­mines how genetic infor­ma­tion is trans­lated into pro­tein pro­duc­tion. By mod­i­fy­ing this process, olive oil com­pounds may help reg­u­late pro­teins linked to meta­bolic dys­func­tion and dis­ease devel­op­ment.

“The bioac­tive com­pounds of olive oil may con­tribute to a dif­fer­ent pat­tern and rhythm of body weight gain,” Koutelidakis said. ​“Olive oil con­sump­tion, when aligned with dietary guide­lines, may aid in weight man­age­ment, even for peo­ple who are over­weight.”

He cau­tioned, how­ever, that results across stud­ies remain mixed. ​“The data are not yet fully con­clu­sive,” Koutelidakis said. ​“More clin­i­cal and prospec­tive stud­ies, as well as meta-analy­ses with larger pop­u­la­tions, are needed to con­firm olive oil’s role in body weight reg­u­la­tion.”