Cooking with Extra Virgin Olive Oil

For many years, I kept at least 2 different bottles of olive oil at home - the "regular" one for cooking and the "extra virgin" one for garnishing, as salad dressing or basically for any other uses not involving heat. I am sure many of you did exactly the same, because we have been told time and time again that Extra Virgin Olive Oil is not suitable for cooking, and in fact, harmful to you.

I decided to dig deeper on this topic mainly for one practical reason - I used up my regular olive oil a couple weeks ago while having a few virgin and extra virgin ones sitting in the kitchen. It sounded stupid to left my pricier (and presumably better) extra virgin oil slowly turning stale on the shelf while replenishing the cheaper oil for cooking. And what I found out actually surprised me.