INDIANAPOLIS — There’s shower gel made from carrots. Egg-white protein powder. Diapers with no chlorine. Medjool dates and dried papaya.

This isn’t some exotic, hippy supermarket au natural. This is Kroger, one of the largest mainstream grocers in the nation.

‘Used to be this was all very faddish,’ said Gregg Proctor, who heads up natural foods for Kroger’s central division, which includes Indiana. ‘Not anymore. We’re adding new items constantly because if we don’t get it when it comes out, our competition will.’

There seems to be a race to pure foods among the nation’s largest supermarkets as they ramp up their offerings, even launch their own brands of organics and naturals, and then heavily advertise the healthy choice.

It all makes sense, considering sales of this segment of groceries are outpacing traditional grocery sales.

Nationwide, natural and organic food sales grew 8 percent in 2010 versus the less than 1 percent growth in the $630 billion total U.S. food market, according to the Nutrition Business Journal. It grew at about a 5 percent rate each year from 2005 to 2009.

With that growth and popularity comes a definite consumer advantage: Slowly but surely, the price of natural foods is falling.

‘Make no mistake, there is a […]