YES ………..YES ……………YES
For olive oil, avocado oil or coconut oil to be defined as a “Virgin Oil” the three main rules are;
- The fruit or nut should be Fresh (They cannot be sun dried for weeks)
- In the pressing process of oil, squeezing out from the nut there should not be high heat generation (Normally the temperature should be below 55 degrees Celsius when pressing is done)
- There cannot be any refining like, heating, addition of ingredients to take out aroma or taste etc.
For these three rules to apply, definitely the coconut, olive should be in raw fresh state. And the pressure application to squeeze out oil should be slow and gradual. So that during heavy pressing the temperature shall not go beyond 55 degrees Celsius. And Finally the produced raw oil cannot be deodorized or bleached or heated. So to preserve in Virgin state you cannot use above techniques to refine the oil. There are special machinery designed for cold pressing instead of general purpose grinders which generate high heat due to friction and colliding mechanical parts.
The term “Virgin” is used to emphasize that, all nutrients in a nut/seed/ or fruit is preserved when it is converted to the format of oil. If we use the word “Virgin fruit juice” it means that the natural nutrients in a fruit is preserved when it is squeezed into juice. Similarly in Virgin Olive oil it means that the natural nutrients in olives are preserved when oil is pressed out.
Therefor virgin coconut oil, virgin olive oil, virgin avocado oil similarly means “Unrefined Raw – Cold Pressed”. The two words are like synonyms.
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