Talk:Olive oil acidity

What is free acidity?
"Free acidity is the percentage of free fatty acids." OK, but what are free fatty acids? The article goes on to say that this is expressed as a percentage of oleic acid. Now according to the Olive oil page, olive oil consists mainly of oleic acid (up to 83%) with some linoleic acid (up to 21%) and palmitic acid (up to 20%). All these substances are acids, albeit fatty acids, not much soluble in water due to their long fatty "tail" and the fact that they are "weak acids", i.e. acids which don't give up their protons as easily as typical mineral-chemistry acids like HCl or H2SO4. So what exactly are "free acidity" and "free fatty acids"? (And, please, in terms a layman could understand.) Tonymec (talk) 07:57, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

Possible clarification?
"The lipolysis reaction is greatly enhanced by the presence of an aqueous phase, so when oil is separated from water during processing, lipolysis slows down and stops."

"Slows down and stops" is a contradictory statement. I do not understand the science of this process (that is why I came to this page), but if the process stops when all water is removed, then a more clear phrasing might be "as oil is separated from water during processing, lipolysis slows down, eventually to the point of stopping when no water remains." Elindsey83 (talk) 05:41, 14 June 2021 (UTC)