Newest Products for Healthier Eating Vie for Attention at Expo : Lifestyle: Guilt-free baked tortilla chips and low-fat dips are promoted, among other things, at a trade show for the growing natural foods industry.

Guilt-ridden couch potatoes who munch out during The Big Game, rejoice. The natural-foods industry has something for you.

A former Texas restaurateur has developed a line of baked tortilla chips, low-fat sauces and dips for those who can’t resist scarfing during the big game. Called Guiltless Gourmet, the line is one of the success stories of the natural foods industry, which was strutting its mostly fat-free, organically grown, environmentally correct stuff Friday at the Natural Products Expo.

Filled with both Birkenstock and wingtip types, the trade show at the Anaheim Convention Center drew a large crowd of buyers, growers, sellers and brokers who came to scope out the the newest products in the growing $4.6-billion-a-year natural foods industry.

“Last year, they had these frozen pocket sandwiches, and they were a big hit,” said Pondi Ericksen, buyer for a Seattle natural-foods cooperative. “Now, there are about five or six others doing the same thing.”

There were vendors hawking samples of pizza with brown-rice crust, vegetarian meals in a cup and deli “meats” made with vegetable products.

“I think that’s a nice concept,” said Deborah Oslinger, a vegetarian caterer from San Diego who offered soy- and wheat-based deli items. “Personally, I don’t need things to look like meat. In fact, I prefer that they don’t. But I think it’s good for the masses who may be trying to get away from meat.”

For those who want the real thing, Mel Coleman of Colorado brought his Coleman’s Natural Beef, which comes from cattle raised without steroids or antibiotics.

Coleman has been coming to the show for 11 years now, and when he started, the food was exclusively vegetarian products.

“There was a soybean place . . . and a little rubber shoe place,” he recalled. “And when someone tasted (my) meat, (they) thought it was a soy product and spit it out in my hand.”

These days, the big trends in the industry are in snack foods, sports nutrition, convenience foods and homeopathy, according to Monica Emerich, director of research for the show’s sponsor, Natural Foods Merchandiser Magazine.

Emerich said the industry is quickly moving to develop the same kinds of approaches practiced by mass marketers, especially producing natural foods in the most conveniently packaged form.

“That’s been a surprise because in the industry we try to get away from excess packaging,” she said. “It really says a lot about the people who buy the foods.”

The people likely to buy these natural food projects are most apt to be affluent, educated, professional women, between 34 and 44 years of age, married with children, Emerich said. Men, however, make up 38% of natural food buyers.

It was a man, after all, who devised the no-oil tortilla chips.

Doug Foreman, owner of Doug’s Burgers in Austin, Tex., explained that he wanted to go on a diet, but have his chips too.

So he perfected a baked tortilla chip, then created low-fat versions of the picante, bean and cheese dips out on the market. Eventually, he sold his restaurant to go into the chip-and-dip business full time.

Nell Veeder, Guiltless Gourmet’s customer service representative, said their line of snack foods now can be found at most of the major supermarket chains, although consumers may have to hunt to find it.

“We might be on the bottom shelf,” Veeder said. “But we’re working to change that.”