In 2007, Athens was handling a great deal of commotion over claims that the olive leaf could cure cancer and other ailments. The hysteria reached a deadly height when during an argument between two brothers over whether to use olive oil to cure a third brother’s cancer, one of the brothers stabbed the other to death. The commotion was due to a small scale study by the University of Greece which had evidence that mice recovered from cancer when fed an extracted form of oil from the olive leaf. Experts during this crisis such as Dr. Julie Sharp, of Cancer Research UK, warned that “while a few small laboratory studies have suggested that extracts from olive leaves might have anticancer properties, there is still not enough evidence to confirm these observations.”

Fast forward today, Spanish researchers at the University of Granada have made some progress regarding the benefits of olive oil. The research group, led by Jose Antonio Lupianez Cara, have found a molecule in the olive skin’s leaf and wax, maslinic acid, which has the ability to prevent cancer as well as regulate apoptosis in the carcinogenic process. According to the group, maslinic acid has three advantages: “Unlike other anti-carcinogenic products, it is highly cytotoxic, it is a natural compound and, therefore, less toxic. In addition, it is selective, this is, it only acts on carcinogenic cells, whose pH is more acid than usual. And lastly, it has a preventive nature, as it can inhibit cancer appearance in those cells with a higher predisposition to develop it.” The caveat for the time being is that this research has only been applied to colon carcinoma lines and transgenic mice.