Why would light olive oil be preferred to extra virgin? Does it make sense to keep both types?
I don't want to hear that light olive oil is good for calorie counters. What is the flavor and cooking expectations that are different?
Extra virgin olive oil is cold pressed, basically the least processed. Some are organic or unfiltered or both and they all have the characteristics (color and taste) of the terroir from where they came as well as all the nutrients that are found in olives.
Light olive oils are exactly that, light, and it's not calories in this case but color. All refined oils go through a process that basically strips the oils of their natural essence like phospholipids, carbohydrates and proteins, then the oil is neutralized with an alkali formula then bleached because it's pretty much a dark oil from this process and made clear and the last step is to remove the taste and smell with deodorizing otherwise it wouldn't be palatable.
Light olive oils don't really taste like olive oil in the true sense but they have a higher smoke point and they're much cheaper mostly because the olives that are used are not of the same quality used for EVOO production. If it's a big extra virgin olive operation or very small the opportunity to use an estate extra virgin olive oil is worth the extra cost imo.
One advantage of refined olive oil is, it basically has less polyunsaturated fat than most refined oils which is less likely to be converted to any trans fats from the refining process and less likely to polymerize during cooking.
Personally I don't use refined olive oil but would use it if I needed too, so far I haven't needed to. I normally use ghee where I really need that high heat searing.
