Born in Japan, Kushi came to the U.S. in 1951 and found “there was almost no good food,” she wrote in her autobiography. “We discovered that we couldn’t depend on the food industry, the government or the medical profession to change. We would have to make wonderful food available to everybody ourselves.”
She thus opened an organic food store in Massachusetts, and later another in Los Angeles, starting a trend that has swept the country in the years since. “She is the originator of the natural food movement in America,” said her husband, Michio. “Even the word ‘natural food’ — she chose to use that.” She survived for nine years after being diagnosed with cancer, but died from it July 3 at home in Massachusetts. She was 78.