Sue Nicholson, a natural products industry veteran, died on January 27, 2017.

Born October 13, 1956 on Long Island, in Glen Cove, NY, she was the youngest of six, with three sisters and two brothers. Nicholson earned A.S. and B.S. teaching degrees and taught kindergarten before gravitating toward the natural products industry where she worked at natural foods stores Provisions and Earth’s Bounty on Long Island before moving to Vermont, where Nicholson managed Llama Toucan and Crow, the natural food store serving Brattleboro, VT.

In 1998, she joined Jay Jacobowitz’s company, Retail Insights, a natural products industry consultant based in Brattleboro, and in 2002, helped integrate the Danny Wells Nutrition Newsletter, which the company had acquired, into its marketing services to independent natural products retailers. As director of research for what was to become the Natural Insights for Well Being nutrition newsletter, Nicholson helped refine and enhance the format of presenting groundbreaking nutritional research monthly to the public through the independent natural products retail channel. 

A lover of words and of writing, Nicholson developed the concept of “The Language of Health.” One day, while Jacobowitz was writing the final copy of an Alzheimer’s disease study for the newsletter, the headline he had written was, “Don’t Forget.” From down the hall, she came in and said that, while the 24-hour news cycle depends on tragedy and catastrophe, the company’s nutrition newsletter was not that. It had to be the opposite of fear and tension, so that readers—most of whom were seeking answers to serious health concerns—would feel better and more hopeful after reading what we had written. Thus was born “The Language of Health.” Jacobowitz changed his headline to “Remember,” and the newsletter reflects her language to this day.

In 2015, after caring for her mother for four years, Nicholson was diagnosed with cancer, and fought for 20 months, hoping the tumors would shrink to operable size. She was surrounded by friends, family, and loving husband, Dan Dearth, as she passed peacefully, leaving a legacy of positive thought, and the Language of Health.