By Shawna Hudson
Published 27 May 2026
Let me be honest: Hailey Bieber and I don’t have much in common. She has a multimillion-dollar beauty brand. I have a half-empty tube of drugstore moisturizer. She has a closet full of designer clothes. I have jeans with a permanent coffee stain on the left knee. But last week, I learned we share one very specific morning ritual, and suddenly I felt incredibly validated.
Bieber recently told Time that her daily nonnegotiable isn’t a fancy serum or an expensive gadget. It’s a shot of olive oil with lemon. First thing in the morning. Every single day.
I’ve been doing this for years—ever since someone convinced me that drinking straight olive oil wasn’t weird, it was wellness. And apparently, the experts agree. So let me walk you through why this simple practice has earned a permanent spot in my routine, and why it might earn one in yours too.
The Case for Drinking Your Olive Oil
You might be thinking: isn’t olive oil for cooking? For salads? For dipping bread at fancy Italian restaurants? Yes, all of those things. But drinking it? That’s where the real magic happens, according to Agatha Relota Luczo, founder and CEO of Furtuna Skin. She built her entire brand around the olive tree, so she knows what she’s talking about.
“Some of the most exciting emerging research around olive polyphenols points to their potential role in supporting cellular health and protecting telomeres,” she told me. Telomeres are those tiny caps at the ends of our chromosomes—think of them like the plastic tips on shoelaces that keep everything from fraying. Healthy telomeres are associated with healthy aging. And olive oil helps protect them.
But let’s get more concrete. What does drinking olive oil actually do for you?
For your skin: Relota Luczo calls olive oil “skincare you eat.” The compounds in high-quality extra-virgin olive oil fight free radical damage and defend against collagen breakdown. The fatty acids work at a cellular level to reinforce your skin’s moisture barrier and ease oxidative stress. Whatever is happening on the surface—dullness, redness, premature aging—is a reflection of what’s going on internally. Feed your insides well, and your face will thank you.
For inflammation: There’s a compound in olive oil called oleocanthal. Relota Luczo calls it “nature’s Motrin” because it acts similarly to ibuprofen as an anti-inflammatory. Paired with oleuropein, another powerful antioxidant, the two work together to address systemic inflammation throughout your body.
For gut health: When you take olive oil on an empty stomach, it may support nutrient absorption through the gut. Better gut health equals better skin, better energy, better everything.
For long-term health: Simon Poole, MD, a Mediterranean nutrition expert and author of Olive Oil for Dummies, adds that regular olive oil consumption has been linked to reduced risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, certain cancers, and even dementia. Not bad for something that tastes like it belongs on a bruschetta.
But Here’s the Catch: Not All Olive Oil Is Created Equal
Here’s where most people get tripped up. You cannot grab any old bottle off the grocery store shelf and expect results. The marketing around olive oil is, to put it kindly, misleading. Relota Luczo gave me a cheat sheet for finding the real thing, and I’m passing it along to you.
Shop by harvest date, not “best by” date. Polyphenol content—those precious antioxidants—degrades over time. You want oil harvested within the last 12 months, ideally consumed within 18 months of harvest. A “best by” date tells you almost nothing about actual quality.
Look for single origin, single estate. Blended oils, especially those blended across countries, are almost impossible to trace and often contain older or lower-quality stock. Know where your olives came from. Know who grew them. That matters.
Choose dark glass or tin. Light oxidizes oil rapidly. Serious producers know this, which is why they package their oil in materials that protect it. If you see olive oil in a clear bottle on a brightly lit shelf, walk away.
Read the story. Poole advises looking for brands where the growers clearly care about quality. “Look for an extra-virgin olive oil that tells a story of its region of production, heritage, care, and passion of the farmers,” he says. Organic or regenerative farming techniques are excellent signs that the producer is nurturing both the environment and the final product.
Trust your taste. A high-quality EVOO should have fruitiness, pleasant bitterness, and a little pungency. That peppery kick at the back of your throat? That’s the polyphenols. That’s the good stuff.
The Olive Oil That Converted Me
I’ll admit: I used to be skeptical. Then I tried Furtuna Skin’s LXR06 Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil ($40), and I haven’t looked back. Here’s why it’s special. The olives are harvested by hand at peak phenolic ripeness from the brand’s own estate in Sicily. They’re milled within hours. Every batch is tested. As Relota Luczo put it, “That’s the standard I hold other oils to now, and it’s made me a genuinely difficult person to shop for at the grocery store.”
I take a small shot every morning. Sometimes with lemon, sometimes on its own. The results aren’t instant, but they’re real, and they’re cumulative. My skin looks calmer. My digestion feels smoother. And I get to start my day knowing I’m doing something good for my body that takes exactly seven seconds.
The Bottom Line
Hailey Bieber does it. Experts recommend it. And honestly, it’s hard to argue with thousands of years of Mediterranean tradition. Olive oil isn’t a trend. It’s a staple. The only question is whether you’ll drink it from a spoon, a shot glass, or drizzled over something delicious.
Either way, your body will thank you. Just make sure it’s the good stuff.
