Most good science seems to come from an unexpected direction — like Extra Virgin Anti-Inflammatories:
At the 1999 international workshop on molecular and physical gastronomy, in the mist-shrouded mountain town of Erice, Sicily, the physicists Ugo and Beatrice Palma brought along oil freshly pressed from their own trees. Dr. Beauchamp tasted the oil and felt his throat burn, as did I and all the other attendees. But he was the only one who immediately thought of ibuprofen.Dr. Beauchamp happened to be an ibuprofen connoisseur. He and a Monell colleague, Dr. Paul Breslin, had been trying to help a manufacturer replace acetaminophen with ibuprofen in its liquid cold and flu medicine. The medicine tasted fine until it was swallowed. Consumer panels described the unpleasant sensation as bitterness, but Dr. Beauchamp recognized it as an irritation akin to the pungency of black pepper and chilies, strangely localized to the back of the throat. And he recognized it again in Sicily.
“The moment I felt that burn from Ugo and Beatrice’s oil, I saw the whole picture in my head,” Dr. Beauchamp recalled last week. “There’s a natural analogue of ibuprofen in olive oil, and it could have anti-inflammatory properties, too.”
He, Dr. Breslin and several collaborators confirmed that the pungent substance in olive oil is a phenolic chemical, which they named oleocanthal. And they showed that oleocanthal is even more effective than ibuprofen at inhibiting enzymes in the body that create inflammation. “It took five years of spare-time unfunded research to prove it, but that was some of the best fun I’ve had doing science,” he said.
In their 2005 report to the journal Nature, the team noted that anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin and ibuprofen appear to have long-term health benefits, including reduction in the risk of some forms of heart disease and cancer. They suggested that the oleocanthal in pungent olive oils might be one of the things that make traditional Mediterranean diets so healthful.