Riverbend Co-op member Larry Jackson helps fellow members sort through a shipment at New Vision Church on Wisconsin Avenue. The products are separated by customer and ticketed before distribution.(Melanie Duncan ThortisThe Vicksburg Post)

Twenty years ago, Elza Fought suffered from what is called environmental illness and had a multiple-chemical sensitivity. But since joining the River Bend Co-op, her problems have practically disappeared.

“Someone wearing loud perfume would walk by in the grocery store, and my knees would buckle,” Fought said.

She said the fumes from pumping gas into her car or driving on the interstate would make her sick.

“It’s hard to believe I was really in that condition,” she said. “It just makes you want to reach out and help as many people as you can.”

In 1985, she was in a bookstore looking for recipes for organic foods when a woman approached her and asked her if she’d like to join the River Bend Co-op.

“I almost jumped up and down, I was so excited,” Fought said, and from that day, she has ordered her food from the group.

The River Bend Co-op, which includes 35 to 50 families, was begun in the mid-1980s by Waterways Experiment Station employees wanting access to health food without driving to Jackson.

At 70, Fought said she feels better now than she has her whole life.

“I have 20 years of knowledge now, and I’m still learning every day,” she said. “It’s a journey more than a destination.”

The co-op orders food from the Fayetteville, Ark.-based Ozark Cooperative Warehouse, which gathers food from about 17 other warehouses across the United States.

“We have access to anything you can imagine in the health food line,” Fought said.

Each month a shipment containing organically grown food such as carrots, raisins and even seaweed arrives at the New Vision Family Worship Center on Wisconsin Avenue.

“I feel like it’s also helping to save our land,” Fought said. “The growers are adding nutrients to the land.”

Meat and dairy products ordered through the co-op are raised without antibiotics and growth hormones.

“We’re supporting a more responsible form of farming,” said Sarah Dionne, who joined the co-op to ensure her family receives proper nutrients in their diets.

Members meet twice a month, once to organize and order almost $3,000 worth of food and, two weeks later, to separate and divide the order.

Members pay the same prices as health food stores.

“We get healthier foods at the best price through the co-op,” Dionne said.

Though all the food is healthy, the members still have indulgences, including treats such as ice cream substitutes, sodas with no artificial flavors, all-natural cheese puffs and yogurt-covered almonds.

Hippocrates, a Greek physician born in 460 B.C. and thought to be the founder of medicine, once said, “Let food be our medicine and our medicine be our food.”

“That’s my motto,” Fought said. “And I think most of us in the co-op feel that way.”