By Adam Kramer
Is your job getting you down, causing you to feel fatigued, depressed and under stress? Joe Scarapicchia, owner of Nature’s Pantry in Floral Park, has the right stuff for all of the things that ail you.
Scarapicchia, of Floral Park, opened the health food store at 263-25 Hillside Ave. in 1979 when people’s interest in health and nutrition was gaining momentum. Since then he has been educating his customers on the importance of eating right and being health-conscious.
“I tell them what to eat and not to eat,” he said. “I try to get them to exercise and think positive not negative and allow the body to heal itself.”
He said eating fresh and natural food provides the foundation for a good and healthy diet. From there a person can begin to build and, ultimately, lead a healthier life.
Though not a certified nutritionist, Scarapicchia attends a wide variety of health food conferences and keeps up to date on new information so he can properly advise people.
Scarapicchia moved to New York from a small village 100 miles from Naples, Italy with his parents in 1965. He said they immigrated to the “land of opportunity” after their farm failed.
Starting out in the United States, Scarapicchia worked all sorts of odd jobs — from delivering papers to restaurant work to working for a sanitation company — to save money.
But he couldn’t find the beautiful, fresh foods he was so used to in his native Italy. One visit to a health food store changed all that.
“I started feeling better after eating healthy. Then I thought there was a need for a health food store in the area,” he said. “I decided to take a chance and started to build a clientele. It is not easy, but it is rewarding.”
The small store — not more than 6-feet-5-inches from floor to ceiling and 30 feet long — in what once might have been the basement of the garden apartment on 263rd Street is filled with vitamins, health food, nutrition books and natural cosmetics.
Scarapicchia also produces a monthly newsletter for the store that he gives out to all of the clients like one woman who parked outside and called in her order, which he delivered to her in a waiting car.
Later he explained that the woman was handicapped. He said it was difficult for her to park and come into the store.
“It is rewarding when people call to say thank you,” he said. “And when people call to say they feel much better.”
All of the products in the store are good for the body, he said, which was made to eat healthy and not unnatural foods like white flour, Jell-O or Special K.
Look instead, he said, for a multivitamin to provide “a good foundation,” a vitamin B complex to combat stress and fish oil to lower your cholesterol. He said good food will make you feel better and “let the body heal itself.”
Reach reporter Adam Kramer by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 157.
