Summer is the peak time for travel, but when it comes to “Authentic Italy” excursions, travel takes place earlier in Spring. This deliberate timing allows us to bypass huge crowds at airports, overbooked hotels, and exorbitant prices, creating the ideal environment for the kind of “Authentic Italy” travel and experience.
This spring, it was my pleasure to host two groups of travelers, not just tourists, who embraced this approach. We ventured to incredible locations in both Sicily and Calabria, seizing the unique opportunity to genuinely connect with and learn from a different culture, rather than treating our trips as a series of things to cross off a “bucket list.”
In Calabria, one particularly memorable experience was spending an afternoon with the Cosmano family, owners, and producers of the organic extra virgin olive oil.
The group shared a five-hour lunch where they met both family and dedicated workers on their olive farm. It was a profound and beautiful cultural exchange.
While the weather didn’t allow for a full farm visit this past trip, our May 2026 itinerary includes an entire day on-site, complete with cooking lessons and a deep cultural dive into the south of Italy. This extended experience highlights the Cosmano family’s profound expertise, especially when it comes to olive oil.
As the Cosmano’s will tell you, the use of olive oil, for both dietary and other applications, dates back to 3500 BC. For centuries, its production remained largely consistent.
Yet, the mid-1900s saw the rise of mass production and industrialization, which, in many cases, introduced:
✔️Mixing the oil of old harvests with new.
✔️Blending with lower-grade olive oils.
✔️Mislabeling and false claims on the label.
✔️False claims of origin (Geographical Fraud).
✔️Deceptive marketing terms to keep you confused.
✔️Adulteration with cheaper oils and sometimes not even olive oil.
Without even noticing, low quality, falsely labeled and sometimes even “fake” oil hit the market, a nightmare still existing today sitting on shelves in stores everywhere.
To make matters worse, lack of consumer knowledge often leaves the general population vulnerable to deception. It only takes a little insight for consumers to confidently avoid common pitfalls when choosing olive oil.
Now, after a decade of immersing myself in olive oil research—from the lab to the olive groves I’ve decided to provide a solution and packed that knowledge into short easily digestible modules in a digital course that gives you:
Clarity to finally know what makes olive oil healthy, and how to capture its benefits.
Confidence – no more second guessing and making mistakes in the grocery store.
Savings – you will stop overpaying for fraudulent oil.
This course will be the first in a series of several digital courses that will completely cover the lifestyle of longevity.
I choose to cover olive oil first since it’s the foundational ingredient in the diets of longest living people on the globe and one of the easiest and tastiest ways to immediately level up your nutrition.
Other courses will cover other pillars of longevity as social networking (as opposed to social media), the longevity diet, and integrating movement into your days as longest living populations do it.
If you are interested in getting on the wait list for the first course on olive oil, here’s a link to receive updates.
I know several of you joined an earlier waitlist (which I’ve maintained!). Travel and the unexpected technical demands of course development have put me behind schedule.
However, I guarantee that for those looking for credible and essential truths these courses will prove well worth the wait.
That’s it for now! I’ll Be Back Soon,
Carol Amendola D’Anca
Master of Clinical Nutrition
MS CNS LDN
