Making the difference: the passionate people behind natural products. (innerbeauty).

When you walk into a natural products or health food store, you feel differently than you would in a supermarket or drugstore. At the supermarket, bright colors and shelf positioning seem to dominate the senses, iust as jingles and slogans for the most well-known brands run through your head, seeming to make your decisions for you--may the best marketing and packaging win!

But such sales tactics don't really tell us what the best brands are--especially at the health food store, where it's left up to consumers to read labels, and maybe even the ingredients list, to make decisions. Suddenly it's substance over packaging, and for those who are not used to discerning the finer details regarding foods, supplements and personal care products, the experience can be downright daunting, like entering a Circuit City when you don't know a sub-woofer from a sub sandwith. But plunging into the process of label comparing and becoming an informed consumer have incredible rewards, I assure yon.

My own pursuit of the purest and most effective products has led me time and again not only to life-changing results--no exaggeration--but to some of the most passionate people that I have ever encountered.

This month, as part of a two-part series, I'll introduce you to a few of these fascinating people and the missions behind some of their most passion-driven products.

Supporting Sustainability

Aside from her lifelong love affair with herbs, which has taken her from Romania to Sudan to Argentina, herbal beverage pioneer Caroline MacDougall has helped indigenous communities in Central America for over a decade. Her work includes identifying local herbs and spices, plus resurrecting centuries-old harvesting and curing methods that preserve and regenerate rain forests. In creating beverages that utilize Mexican vanilla beans, such as her Teeccino Vanilla Nut Herbal Coffee and her Rainforest Tea, she helps support wild habitats in both Chile and the United States.

Two other pioneers, Gaetane Austin and her daughter, Andree, are founders of Pure Fiji--the first company in the world to commercialize the use of virgin coconut oil, which recently won a Fiji Trade and Investment Bureau award for top exporter. They've implemented a new technique for extracting the oil that requires no electricity and renders a product so unchanged by heat or chemicals that the unscented variety can actually be consumed--or used for massage and traditional skin and hair care. The new methods allow family members to work together as a group.