Healthy Snacks From Kopali Organics

If our national appetite was a Venn diagram, with overlapping circles for our growing hunger for exotic flavors, our desire for all things virtuous and organic, and our ever-present love of snacks and sweets, Kopali Organics would reside where the three orbs converge.

Zak Zaidman (a former software developer) and Stephen Brooks (an organic permaculturist) met in Costa Rica and founded Kopali with a single mission: to connect farmers in developing countries with the burgeoning market for consciously grown and produced food.

Although the company's snack-size packages of dried fruits and chocolate-covered "superfoods" (think goji berries, bananas and cocoa nibs) seem tailor-made for Whole Foods' shelves, it was actually Kopali's first product, a banana vinegar, that caught the attention of the organic foods giant and set the wheels in motion.

Now you can find Kopali products in every Whole Foods in the country. The company is on a permanent national tour, traveling from state to state aboard its vegetable oil-powered bus to spread the fair-trade gospel–and, of course, to sell some food along the way.