The olive oil business engages in many of the same purposefully deceitful practices as the wine industry. It regularly conjures up idyllic, romantic images to gloss over the reality of its production and agricultural practices. At the large scale, both are mainly involved in bottling and marketing. And, much like the wine business, where people doctor wines to get better ratings, the value of olive oil as a commodity encourages fraud.
Tom Mueller writes in an expose in The New Yorker in 2007, "Adulteration is especially common in Italy, the world’s leading importer, consumer, and exporter of olive oil. (For the past ten years, Spain has produced more oil than Italy, but much of it is shipped to Italy for packaging and is sold, legally, as Italian oil.)"

In an interview with NPR, Tom suggests the only way to know whether you are getting the real thing or not is to know the people who produced the olive oil.

Can you tell the difference between real olive oil and the adulterated version? Look at the photo above closely and tell me which one is real extra-virgin.