Sun Potion Shines on Health Food Scene

Scott Linde and Nitsa Citrine Specially Source Their Tonic Herbs

<strong>GOOD EATS:</strong> Scott Linde and Nitsa Citrine have found health and love through their business.

It was while living a barefoot existence in the Ojai mountains that Scott Linde developed a fascination for plants and their history with human health. “I was intrigued with finding high-quality, bioavailable examples of this particular category of plant called tonic herbs,” says Linde, founder of the Santa Barbara–based food supplement company Sun Potion.

Five years ago, Linde began sourcing and packaging single-ingredient foods that were dense with nutrients and minerals. “It’s about herbs that are speaking directly to your nervous system, or feeding the life force in the kidneys or blood in your brain,” he said.

Sun Potion’s product line of powered and whole foods includes wild-sourced mushrooms, like chaga from birch forests in northern Canada, herbs like rhodiola from the Tibetan mountains, and “superfoods” like organic ashitaba from small farms in Taiwan.

Linde takes his product sourcing seriously and often visits the people and places around the world from which he buys his ingredients. He further vets sources by carefully selecting what he considers to be service-oriented suppliers, such as farmers and collectors who honor the harvested plants and eco-systems around them.

“We’re the cutting edge of the health food scene right now,” said Nitsa Citrine, Sun Potion’s creative director, who blogs about various recipes and mixtures she enjoys, such as adding powders to teas, or to foods like smoothies and ice cream. “You want to take it every day so that it serves as this carrier wave of power in your system,” said Linde, adding that their products are meant to be served in small amounts, about the size of the end of your pinky finger.

Recently engaged, Citrine and Linde fell in love over their work with the dark green algae chlorella. Together, they are responsible for educating the more than 250 health food stores and health practitioners that carry and use their products. “It’s a major undertaking,” admitted Citrine. But there’s a growing body of medical research on the health benefits and therapeutic uses of tonic herbs, said Linde, and Sun Potion links to some of that through their website.