The benefits of high-quality extra virgin olive oil are always on the minds of its producers. Diamantis and Dino Pierrakos, makers of Laconiko Greek olive oil, and their wives, talked with Greek Liquid Gold in their U.S. headquarters. The Pierrakos family emphasized olive oil’s importance for everything from tradition and connection to cooking and health.
Tradition, Passion, and Connection Through Olive Oil
Diamantis’s wife Katerina considers olive oil “representative of Greece. These things you can’t separate: memory and imagination of Greek food, Greece, olive groves, olives. Every country has a tradition, something that represents it. If you ask me about Italy, I would say pasta, but if you say olive oil, I would say Greece.”
Dino adds that olive oil “carries our traditions, our values, our passion. It brings our family together, because it’s something we all have the same passion and love for.” It also unites them with friends they visit, taking olive oil as a gift. “It helps us connect,” Dino observes, “because we know we’re sharing something with high quality born of our efforts and our passion.”
Katerina feels that it is “very sad that a lot of people don’t know how good olive oil is supposed to taste. Every day we find someone who tastes it and says ‘oh, this is so different’” from the olive oil they’ve had before! Dino wants their olive oil to “inspire” people “when they taste something that it enhances.”
The Benefits of High-Quality Extra Virgin Olive Oil for Cooking
Olive oil naturally has a daily presence in the Pierrakos families’ lives. Dino’s wife Christina explains that extra virgin olive oil “is something we use every single day with our kids, and ourselves.” She doesn’t even know how much olive oil they consume. “I don’t measure. I drizzle it on everything, from morning to dinner. Our eggs are cooked in olive oil. All of our vegetables are sauteed in olive oil. I fry with olive oil.”
Christina strives to give her children the kind of high quality homecooked Greek food she grew up with, thanks to her Greek mother. “We just have a better weapon in our cabinet, which is the best extra virgin olive oil.” So, Dino notes, “the moment we run out of olive oil at the house, I gotta bring more!”
Similarly, Katerina affirms, “of course we cook everything with olive oil. Olive oil helps me cook Greek dishes. That was something new for me. Good olive oil just makes it easier. You cannot cook anything bad with a good extra virgin olive oil.” Diamantis estimates that his family goes through ten liters each month!
The Many Health Benefits of High-Quality Extra Virgin Olive Oil
What are the advantages of top-grade extra virgin olive oil? Diamantis and Dino emphasize that Laconiko olive oil can both enhance flavor, to make food more enjoyable, and nurture people. For Christina, with her background in nursing, the health benefits of extra virgin olive oil are “always my priority. Seeing firsthand the effects of the American lifestyle, the American diet” and its harmful effects on Americans’ health, and “knowing the quality of Laconiko’s olive oil and the health benefits it can have, that’s huge.”
Christina considers extra virgin olive oil “one of the top things in my healthcare arsenal. We try to be as natural and holistic as possible, especially with the kids, not jumping to medication if we don’t need it, trying everything else in the meantime. Sneaking olive oil into juice we make if they’re not feeling well. It’s a powerhouse, and knowing we have that under our healthcare belt, it’s awesome.”
Dino agrees: “we’re going to be okay because we consume extra virgin olive oil.” They use olive oil in everything, “from the obvious cooking to as silly as putting it over scratches or over bumps you want to heal.” Diamantis says they use olive oil as a skin moisturizer. Katerina even used their lavender olive oil for massages when she was pregnant.
In addition, Katerina adds, “we take Laconiko ZOI daily. Diamantis drinks from the bottle. I take a shot” of this especially healthy high phenolic extra virgin olive oil. (Find out more about high phenolic olive oil benefits here.) Katerina wants everyone to have access to really good extra virgin olive oil, because “we would have healthier generations if we used more good olive oil, not just other good food.”
Looking Toward a Healthier Future in America, With Olive Oil
As Christina explains, “we know the root of almost every disease is inflammation. Olive oil, especially this kind of high-quality extra virgin olive oil, is so anti-inflammatory. This is one small thing we can do for our health, along with healthy foods, getting outside, moving our bodies. If the only thing people changed in their current lifestyle was consuming our extra virgin olive oil, they would still be taking huge steps towards bettering their overall health status.”
As a nurse and a mother, Christina wants Americans to learn “that one ingredient can be so powerful in changing the trajectory of your health.” She thinks olive oil might even act as a “gateway to all the other healthy foods out there.” It could help encourage Americans to cook at home more, with their children.
She hopes Laconiko olive oil’s benefits can inspire Americans “to keep looking for the best ingredients, the healthiest whole foods they can find.” This could help “turn around the healthcare crisis, stop preventable diseases, improve quality of life.” To take charge of their health, people “need to start simple, even with just switching out the main ingredient in which they cook their food, such as high-quality extra virgin olive oil” in place of less healthy fats.
The Future of the Pierrakos Family and Their Olive Oil Business
Diamantis and Dino would be delighted if their children are inspired to take over their business some day. But only if “they have the passion for it,” as Diamantis puts it, so they choose this path and it makes them happy, as well as healthy.
Meanwhile, the Pierrakos children are benefitting from tasty food made with extra virgin olive oil, with all its nutritional advantages.
All businesses, organizations, and competitions involved with Greek olive oil, the Mediterranean diet, and/or agrotourism or food tourism in Greece, as well as others interested in supporting Greeks working in these sectors, are invited to consider the advertising and sponsorship opportunities on the Greek Liquid Gold: Authentic Extra Virgin Olive Oil website. The only wide-ranging English-language site focused on news and information from the Greek olive oil world and related topics, it has helped companies reach consumers in more than 220 countries around the globe since Lisa Radinovsky created it in 2016.
