Gordon Ramsay's Krude won't tell you its polyphenol number

Krude is a good looking olive oil in a genuinely clever can, priced against the best oils we cover. It just won't publish a polyphenol figure, a testing method, or a lab report — and at £24 for 500ml, that's a problem.

Gordon Ramsay has launched an olive oil brand. Krude went live on 21 May, co-founded with Ben and Elle Caring — the pair behind Soho House's Lady A rosé — and since August it's been in over 300 Waitrose stores.

The range splits in two. The Nude oils are the plain ones: Cook Me Nude at £18.40 for 500ml, and Finish Me Nude, an early harvest oil for drizzling and dressing, at £26.40 for 500ml after shipping. The Infused range is Chilli, Garlic, Lemon and Basil at £24.40 for 250ml, cold-pressed with the olives rather than steeped afterwards, which is the better way to do it.

Credit where it's due on the packaging. Krude ships in a 100% UV-protective metal can with a spout they call Krude Kontrol. This is impressive as it aims to fix the main issue a lot of our website’s readers have with cans - the dribble of oil that pools on top of the can after a pour.

Light and oxygen are the two things that kill polyphenols in your kitchen, and in this regard a sealed opaque can beats a clear glass bottle every time. Metal also cuts the microplastic question and weighs less to ship. We score darkened containers in our EVOO Score system for exactly this reason.

The number that isn't there

Here's where it falls down. Krude says its oils are "naturally rich in polyphenols". That's the whole claim. No mg/Kg figure on the can, none on the website, none in the press pack, and no lab report anywhere I could find.

"Naturally rich in polyphenols" means nothing. Every extra virgin olive oil on earth has some polyphenols in it. Some supermarket own-brand sits around 180 mg/Kg and it's still technically true of that. The EU Commission set the benchmark at 250 mg/Kg for a reason — below that you cannot make the health claim, above it you can. Krude doesn't tell you which side of that line it sits on.

They clearly know the vocabulary. Finish Me Nude is sold as "early harvest", and early harvest is the single biggest lever a producer has for pushing polyphenols up. If you pick green and press within hours, you get a high number and you shout about it. Krude picked green, cold extracted, and then said nothing. Either they haven't tested it, or they have and the number isn't worth printing.

What £26 buys elsewhere

This is the part that should bother anyone considering Krude for health reasons. Finish Me Nude is not cheap — it's priced right in among the oils that sit at the top of our rankings.

Krude Finish Me Nude — £26.40 per 500ml. Polyphenols: not published. Testing method: not published. Certification: none available.

ONSURI Arbequina — £25 per 500ml. 1504.42 mg/Kg, third-party certified by the Royal Scientific Society in Jordan, with oleocanthal broken out separately at 401.80 mg/Kg.

OlvLimits Green Machine — £23 per 500ml, or £20.70 with our reader code. 1378 mg/Kg, plus published acidity of 0.22%, and separate lab reports for polyphenols, quality markers and pesticide residues. Their 2L bag-in-tube works out at £20 per 500ml.

So for over £3 less than Krude, OlvLimits hands you four lab reports. For just over a pound less, ONSURI hands you a certified 1504 mg/Kg from a named non-profit lab. Krude asks the same money without any of this, and hopes to replace it by slinging around quirky marketing quotes like “pouring like you mean it”.

Where we land

This site exists because olive oil marketing is full of vague health language and almost none of it survives contact with a lab report. We ask every producer we cover for a number and a method, and the good ones send it over without being chased. ONSURI publish theirs. OlvLimits publish theirs along with a pesticide screen. Even smaller producers who can't get an English certification done in time, like Sangre de Olivo, send the Spanish report.

Krude has Michelin backing, Waitrose distribution, national press coverage and a serious packaging budget. Publishing one HPLC result would cost them a rounding error. Until they do, we can't give Krude an EVOO Score, and we can't tell you it's a high polyphenol oil — because nobody outside the company knows whether it is.

If you want a well made oil in excellent packaging for cooking, Cook Me Nude at £18.40 is a expensive but justifiable if you really like the brand. But, if you're spending over £26 on a finishing oil for the health benefits, buy one that shows you the certificate.

We'd genuinely like to update this piece. If Krude publish a certified polyphenol figure and name the testing method, we'll add them to the rankings the same day.