Natural-Born Entrepreneurs at Food Expo

Go ahead. Think of it as a dare. Just try to ingest 1,000 calories.

Yes, there was giveaway food everywhere--hot food, cold food, candy, cookies, chips, beans, pretzels, popcorn, cheese puffs, ice cream, pizza, burgers, pasta--everything from soup to nuts ( lots of nuts). But you could scarf until your eyes crossed and you probably wouldn’t gain an ounce.

Whether you actually liked the stuff . . . well, that was the chance you took wandering the aisles last weekend at the Natural Products Expo West at the Anaheim Convention Center. From Friday through Monday, the expo was the epicenter of the natural foods and products world, nirvana for the health food store crowd and a chance for manufacturers, suppliers and retailers to meet and cut deals over tofu and trail mix.

If you routinely do your shopping in supermarkets, most of the products on display at the approximately 950 exhibit booths were unfamiliar, and often exotic. There was, for instance, the “ergonomically shaped” blue corn tortilla chip, offered by Kettle Foods of Salem, Ore. If you thought the chip was in the familiar triangular shape, you had to look again; one of the points had been rounded into a kind of indentation, shaped for easy thumb leverage.

“It’s for someone who can down a pint of salsa in one shot,” said Nirbhao Singh Khalsa, the turbaned president of the company. “You just grab hold of one and take a hit of bean dip.”

Just steps away was Chris Reed, the owner of Original Beverage Corp. of Santa Monica, holding aloft a gigantic clump of ginger root and hawking samples of his Original Ginger Brew. Unlike conventional ginger ale, he said, his stuff was brewed directly from the root, not from an extract. It had a decidedly unfamiliar, and pleasant, kick.

But no alcohol. That was one of the four substances that, in the minds of the natural foods crowd, were tantamount to nuclear waste. No booze, no meat, no additives, no dairy products.

Well, almost none. At a booth where a product called a Gardenburger sizzled on a small grill, one woman beat a hasty retreat when she was told that, in addition to mushrooms, rolled oats, onions and Parmesan cheese, the Gardenburger contained minute amounts of egg. That was enough to set off the woman’s vegan alarm: no meat, no dairy products.

On and on it went: demonstrations of electric juicers, endless pyramids of vitamin jars, containers of dietary supplements that promoted weight loss or weight gain or chemical reactions that would help you, too, to become like Ah-nold (who was represented by a photo in his bodybuilding days at the Wieder products booth), organic everything, pesticide-free everything, vegetarian everything.

Company names ranged from the lyrical (Amy’s Kitchen, Blue Sky Natural Beverage Co., Red Mill Farms) to the exotic (Bioforce, MegaFood, SolarTacos, Burgers and Burritos) to the lighthearted (Very Cool Foods, Kiss My Face, I Love Juicy). The sounds of nibbling were everywhere.

It was, said Elizabeth Bertani, the marketing director of the show’s producer, New Hope Communications of Boulder, Colo., the 12th annual gathering of largest natural foods trade show in the country. Around 13,000 people, including the exhibitors, would visit the show over the course of the four days. The health food business, she said, is booming.

“One of the greatest reasons that’s happening,” said Bertani, “is that the general public is disenchanted with many of the traditional medical treatments and with the health care crisis in general. They’ve become more aware of what they eat, of the environment, of processed foods and recycling. There’s more emphasis on preventive medicine now, and people are realizing that good health is more than just the absence of disease. People are also better-educated. They’re reading more and demanding product excellence.”

The expo, she said, included six distinct areas of interest in addition to natural and organic foods: herbs, homeopathy, personal care (such as cosmetics), aromatherapy, nutritional supplements and soy foods.

“What they’re seeing here are the things that will soon be on the shelves in health food stores.”

A collection of nuts and other munchies called Zen Party Mix, for instance (quite tasty). Or, over in the “Soyfoods Pavilion” area of the show, Pizsoy, “the first soy cheese pizza in the industry,” according to Robert Savar, the owner of the Cherry Hill, N.J.-based company. It consisted of “organic whole-wheat crust, tomato sauce and tofu instead of cheese.” It won’t put Domino’s out of business, but it actually wasn’t bad.

But it was commerce.

“It’s like opening up a restaurant for three days,” said Carol Berry, owner of Putney Pasta of Putney, Vt., who spoke as her assistants ladled out spoonfuls of vegetable-filled tortellini to wandering noshers. “It’s a very important show for us. It’s an opportunity to meet retailers face-to-face that we may only have spoken to over the phone. We can also show new products. It’s a big order-writing show.”

Which accounted for all the suits among the sandals and blousy clothes, both of which were in evidence at the Wakunaga of America booth. There was Charlie Fox, the director of sales for the Mission Viejo-based company, preaching the gospel of Wakunaga’s product, Kyolic garlic extract, and a few feet away was his cousin, the ageless health food guru and rabid Southern California sports fan, Gypsy Boots, showing off the vibrant health of his 81-year-old body.

The peripatetic Gypsy was willing to tell anyone that he ran the last Los Angeles Marathon, was looking younger every year, was still ringing his trademark cowbell at Rams, Lakers, Dodgers, Kings, Raiders and USC Trojan home games, was still selling an occasional copy of his book “Bare Feet and Good Things to Eat” and gave much of the credit to Kyolic.

“I used to eat the stinking kind of garlic,” he said, “but they (Wakunaga) improved my social standing. Kyolic doesn’t smell.”

Cheese, refined sugar, meat, eggs, additives--all were taboo. And the orthodoxy was observed . . . mostly. There was at least one heretic in the crowd.

Out in the parking lot sat a car with a license plate frame reading, “Hand over the chocolate and nobody gets hurt.”