Newman's Own.(Nell Newman)

Byline: Photographed by Annie Leibovitz.

A pioneer of the organic movement, Nell Newman is carrying on her father's legacyone snack food at a time. Robert Sullivan reports.

Now that it often seems as though everyone is going greenthat people are scared if their vegetables are not certified organic, or that they will send back an entrA[c]e if its ingredients are not locally grownit's good to remember how far we have come, to think back to the time when organic-food stores were on the small side and attracted customers associated with certain political causes and, say, sandals, macramA[c], and skirts made of gauze. Today, of course, organic-food stores are as vast as supermarkets, and people drive hybrid SUVs to discount stores to pack them with organic chips. But back when Nell Newman was growing up at her folks' home in Connecticuther folks being Joanne Woodward and the late Paul Newman, who died last fallher mom was cooking organic (nA[c]e healthy) before it was even called green. Unfortunately, that meant cooking things like nut loaf with yeast gravy, and what Nell refers to as the Atomic Muffin, a West Coast health-food staple so named not because it was radioactive but because it combined a futuristic combination of good-for-you nutrients that in retrospect probably were the reason it tasted like a Duraflame log. "They were just full of everything good for you that you could possibly put in a muffin," Nell remembers.

"The green thing is being embraced," said Paul Newman. "And Nell was there first, with the mostest"

Nell's own reaction to the muffin was not entirely positive. Thus, when, in 1992, she approached her father with the idea of launching an organic division of his already wildly successful Newman's Own, the company Newman had started ten years earlier with the writer A. E. Hotchner and a salad-dressing recipe (all after-tax proceeds are given awaysince its founding, more than $250 million has been donated to thousands of charities), she did not try to convince him with an Atomic Muffin. She went whole turkeyas in Thanksgiving turkey. In an incident that has become the foundation myth of Newman's Own Organics, she served her father an entirely organic Thanksgiving dinner without his knowing it (or letting on that he did). Just to season this moment with a little more drama, remember: In 1992, farmers' markets were still quirky; Oregon and Berkeley, California, were organic pioneers while the rest of America was just getting interested in gourmet coffee. Remember, too: Paul Newman had eaten the nut loaf with yeast gravy. Was he reluctant? You don't stay married for half a century without being flexible.

"Skepticism is one thing; reluctance is something else," Newman said last spring. "So you give the green flag however skeptical you are." He also suggested Nell avoid making something that tasted like a dog bone.

She listened; he green-lighted her ideas. "He gave us the money to do research for a year, but he said, 'You've gotta pay me back,' " Nell remembers. She was 33, living in Santa Cruz, California, as she does now, and teamed up with Peter Meehan, a childhood friend who once ran a Connecticut company that cleaned the Newmans' swimming pool. A year later, after many trips to an old Pennsylvania pretzel factory, she had developed an organic version of her father's favorite food, a pretzel. Within a few months, the Newman's Own Organics pretzel had become America's number-one snack food in the natural-foods category. Stick pretzels followed, as well as salt-and-pepper pretzels (a pretzel innovation), which led to cookies, fair-trade coffee, dried fruit, oils and vinegars, mints, pet food, and most recently teas. Now, after Peanut Butter CrA[umlaut]mefilled Chocolate Newman-O's and grain-fed-beef dog food, a new line of chocolates is launching this winter, chocolates that are both organic and Rainforest Alliance certified, as well as "slavery-free." And it's fair to say that, with things like pretzels and pesticide-free figs, Nell has changed the snack-food landscape of America, which is a big landscape, all while raising money for charity.