I recent­ly attend­ed ExpoW­est, where I tur­bo-shopped through thou­sands of booths at the Ana­heim Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Appar­ent­ly I was in good com­pa­ny – reports say that 63,000 folks in the indus­try attend­ed, set­ting a new record. Over the next few weeks, I will be shar­ing my obser­va­tions, along with intro­duc­ing a few of the inspir­ing cre­ators of the health­ful foods we eat.

One thing that stood out was the num­ber of com­pa­nies sell­ing food with a pur­pose. What this means is that a por­tion of every cook­ie, bar and nut sold gets donat­ed to a des­ig­nat­ed cause. Sure­ly these com­pa­nies are run by Mil­len­ni­als, I thought, since the social­ly aware spir­it of the gen­er­a­tion born between 1982 and about 2004 is one of their defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics. True to a point. But then I met the folks at Papa Ben’s Kitchen, found­ed by an 80-some­thing patri­arch to help sup­port his Zachor Holo­caust Remem­brance Foun­da­tion. So you don’t have to be in your 20s, give or take, to want to give back to oth­ers.

Back to the Roots turns spent cof­fee grounds, tea leaves, grains and hops, and okara into com­post that it pack­ages in grow-your-own-mush­room kits. I can’t wait to grow my own! For every hap­py grow­er who posts a pho­to of their ful­ly grown kit on Face­book, Back to the Roots donates a kit and a sus­tain­abil­i­ty cur­ricu­lum to an ele­men­tary school of the poster’s choice.

I love Sweet Loren’s ready-to-bake cook­ie dough and brown­ie bat­ter because they’re made from 100% WHOLE GRAIN! But Loren, who is a can­cer sur­vivor, also donates a per­cent­age of sales to Cook­ies for Kids’ Can­cer.

Love with Food sells themed food gift packs filled with health­ful gourmet foods. You can buy them for a sin­gle occa­sion or sub­scribe for a gift-pack-of-the-month. For every box sold, Love with Food donates a meal to a hun­gry child.

The founders of Kutoa Health Bars are on a mis­sion to empow­er change through health. For every yum­my hand­craft­ed oat-fruit-nut bar sold, Kutoa, through its part­ner­ship with the World Food Pro­gram, donates a nutri­tion kit to a mal­nour­ished child.

Fresh­Pa­per is a sheet of herb-impreg­nat­ed paper that helps keep fruits and veg­eta­bles fresh for two to four times longer. Fenu­green, the social enter­prise that cre­at­ed Fresh­Pa­per, has two dri­ving mis­sions. One is to reduce loss of food due to spoilage, both in the US and around the world. The sec­ond is its “Buy a Pack, Give a Pack” ini­tia­tive to match Fresh­Pa­per pur­chas­es with dona­tions to local food banks.