Cameron Healy is just the sort of guy New Seasons Market likes to support. In 1978, he decided Oregonians needed more exposure to healthy, natural foods to help slow the mounting fast food craze. He believed all people deserved good, healthy foods, and founded Kettle Foods by loading up his beat-up van with his handmade cheeses, roasted nuts, and trail mixes to sell from Eugene, Oregon to Seattle, Washington.

His business took off, and in 1980, he expanded into nut butters using locally harvested nuts. In 1982, Cameron made his first batch of Kettle Potato Chips, then the only natural, hand-cooked chips in the Western United States. Today, it’s the best selling natural potato chip line in the country and has factories around the world. Along with nuts and trail mixes, nut butters and potato chips Kettle also makes organic tortilla chips, pretzel chips, baked potato chips and the world’s only organic potato chips.

None of Kettle’s products have any trans fats, artificial flavors, colors, preservatives or MSG. Potato chips are stirred by hand, and tortilla chips are made from stone ground masa. The organic potato chips feature only locally grown organic russet potatoes, and all potato chips are made from whole slices of the finest quality russet potatoes. They use only expeller-pressed, non-hydrogenated, safflower and sunflower oils with maximum 10 percent saturated fat, the best and healthiest oils available. All chips are naturally cholesterol free. With rich, creative flavors like Spicy Thai, Yogurt and Green Onion, New York Cheddar with Herbs and many others, you can’t go wrong with a bag of Kettle chips.

But it’s not just their products that are impressive. Kettle is proud to support our environment and our community, which makes us proud to support them. In a creative take on reducing, reusing, and recycling their wastes, Kettle has teamed with Pacific Sequential Biofuels to turn their used cooking oil into the biodiesel that powers some of the fleet of vehicles at their Salem, Oregon facility. It takes about 7,600 bags of chips to create one gallon of waste oil, which can be turned into one gallon of biodiesel. They figure this saves as much as eight tons of CO2 emissions per year.

They also power much of their Salem facility with more than 600 solar panels installed on the roof in 2003 to celebrate their 25th anniversary. This array of panels generates 120,000 kWh per year, which is enough power to make more than 250,000 bags of chips. They figure this saves as much as 65 tons of CO2 emissions per year. Ten percent of their power also comes from wind in a partnership through Portland General Electric. This equals a reduction of 250 tons of CO2 emissions per year and generates about 10 percent of their energy usage.

When building their Salem facility in 1999, Kettle decided to restore the natural wetland and wildlife habitat that used to exist in the area. They now have planted hundreds of native trees and plant life and created trails for the entire 2-acre area so people can visit and learn about wetlands. Kettle is also strongly committed to supporting their community, donating lots of product, time and money to non-profit organizations and causes. They donate more than 175,000 pounds of potatoes to local food agencies each year and more than 1,700 cases of product to non-profit organizations.

Not only does Kettle Foods create fantastic-tasting natural foods with only the finest ingredients, but they’ve shown a commitment to being conscious of the impact they can have on the environment and on the community. You know we like that sort of stuff, and that’s why we’re proud to have their chips, nut butters and other products on our shelves.

You can learn more about Kettle Foods at http://www.kettlefoods.com.