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Food for Thought

About Food For Thought

With a vision of treading softly on our human and natural environment, Timothy Young founded Food For Thought, an organic foods company nestled in Michigan’s Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park in 1995. He started the business out of his home with nothing more than a copper kettle and some organic fruit, and was soon crafting organic and wild harvested specialty foods that have earned the company both local and regional attention. With an emphasis on premium quality, low sugar, organic wine and herb-infused preserves, the line has grown to include salsas, mustards, dried fruits, and other condiments.

In addition to creating exciting products from the farms and forest of northern Michigan, Young has a long history of humanitarian activism on a range of issues, including farmland preservation both here and abroad. A past President of the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council, Young is currently vice chair for the board of the Michigan Land Use Institute. His awards include Environmentalist of the Year and Environmental Business of the Year, voted Best Local Hero, by a reader’s poll in the Northern Express Magazine and was recently honored by The Traverse Business News as a "Green Pioneer" of northwest Michigan.

Food For Thought uses organic fair trade sugar from Paraguay provided by Wholesome Sweeteners. Until signing Fair Trade agreements, many farmers' kids in Tebicuary, Paraguay worked in the fields and horses pulled cane carts. Today, the kids are in school and a tractor does all of the pulling.