Tunisian Producer Targets Medicinal Market

“A shot a day of high-qual­ity, highly phe­no­lic extra vir­gin olive oil can change your health,” Maya Ayed, founder of the Àlya brand from the Eagle Olive Oil fam­ily farm in Tunisia, told Olive Oil Times.

Àlya, a mono­va­ri­etal pro­duced from Chetoui olives, recently won a Silver Award at the 2025 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

“I already knew Chetoui was rich in polyphe­nols, but when the lab­o­ra­tory returned the results, we were sur­prised by just how high the polyphe­nols were in our extra vir­gin olive oil,” Ayed said.

Ayed’s fam­ily has cul­ti­vated the renowned Tunisian olive vari­ety in two loca­tions for decades. The award-win­ning olive oil is pro­duced from approx­i­mately 5,000 olive trees, exposed to the ele­ments on a hill­side grove.

The local micro­cli­mate might be one rea­son for the excep­tion­ally high polyphe­no­lic con­tent, which Ayed said was found to exceed 1,800 mil­ligrams per kilo­gram of olive oil. ​“It has changed over the years, and recently, the trees under­went sig­nif­i­cant stress,” she noted, refer­ring to the severe drought affect­ing Tunisia in recent sea­sons.

“When these con­di­tions occur, the tree defends itself by increas­ing its polyphe­nols,” she added. ​“To stay strong, the tree devel­ops these com­pounds. When we con­sume them, they help pro­tect us as well. It’s an amaz­ing exam­ple of syn­ergy between nature and humans.”

Due to its own olive mill and ded­i­cated work­force, the farm man­aged a very early har­vest and imme­di­ately pressed the olives. ​“This also enhanced the phe­no­lic pro­file of our prod­uct,” Ayed said.

Last August, the Àlya brand was launched to pro­mote extra vir­gin olive oil as a health rem­edy, not just a food prod­uct. ​“The word Àlya itself means ​‘to ele­vate your health,’” Ayed said.

“The whole pur­pose of this project is to take olive oil, which we know is excel­lent for health, and give it a form fac­tor that allows cus­tomers to use it daily to enhance their well-being,” she added.

Ayed ref­er­enced recent research show­ing that con­sum­ing extra vir­gin olive oil before meals can improve diges­tion. ​“Promoting it for this rea­son is mostly a new approach,” she said.

According to Ayed, the project was inspired by redis­cov­er­ing ancient wis­dom sur­round­ing olive oil.

“It all started with my own expe­ri­ence. When I moved to the United States, I worked in a stress­ful envi­ron­ment, ate poorly and my health suf­fered,” Ayed said.

Ayed fol­lowed her physi­cians’ rec­om­men­da­tions, tak­ing sup­ple­ments, pre­bi­otics and pro­bi­otics.

“I was tak­ing many things, but I wasn’t improv­ing. Once back in Tunisia, my grand­mother insisted I con­sume olive oil each morn­ing on an empty stom­ach, with a bit of bread,” Ayed said.

“That’s when my health began improv­ing sig­nif­i­cantly, reduc­ing inflam­ma­tion and nor­mal­iz­ing diges­tion,” she added.

Ayed noted that a grow­ing body of research sup­ports the daily con­sump­tion of extra vir­gin olive oil, par­tic­u­larly extra vir­gin olive oil rich in polyphe­nols.

“We began explor­ing stud­ies show­ing extra vir­gin olive oil ben­e­fits for diges­tion and gut health—effec­tively act­ing as a pre­bi­otic and help­ing nutri­ent absorp­tion,” Ayed said.

The new project aims to intro­duce these ben­e­fits to the U.S. mar­ket. ​“Many Americans strug­gle with insulin resis­tance and chronic con­di­tions often linked to diet,” Ayed said. ​“So, that’s where I come from.”

“I blended this ancient rem­edy we’ve used for­ever with mod­ern health prac­tices. It’s as if ancient reme­dies meet mod­ern health,” she added. ​“Our extra vir­gin olive oil is very bit­ter, green and pep­pery. We’ve been cul­ti­vat­ing these trees for over 20 years. We pro­duce small batches, always ensur­ing the high­est qual­ity.”

According to Ayed, the biggest chal­lenge for pro­duc­ers of high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil is reach­ing cus­tomers and rais­ing aware­ness about the product’s health ben­e­fits.

“Through social media and live events, we edu­cate peo­ple about extra vir­gin olive oil health ben­e­fits and its effec­tive­ness in man­ag­ing spe­cific health con­di­tions,” Ayed said.

A key issue remains the qual­ity of extra vir­gin olive oil avail­able to American con­sumers. ​“Many olive oils sold in the U.S. aren’t very good, often not fresh at all,” said Ayed, empha­siz­ing that Àlya is not intended as a main­stream prod­uct but as health sup­port for dis­cern­ing con­sumers.

As a result, Àlya’s pro­duc­tion will not expand in the short term. ​“Our pri­mary goal isn’t expand­ing pro­duc­tion,” she said. ​“It’s main­tain­ing our high polyphe­nol lev­els and demon­strat­ing to cus­tomers that we never com­pro­mise qual­ity.”