Gladys Lindberg; Nutritionist Devised Daily Vitamin Packets

Gladys Lindberg, a pioneering nutritionist who founded a chain of health food stores and introduced daily vitamin packets, has died of natural causes. She was 85.

Mrs. Lindberg died Tuesday at her home in Rolling Hills Estates, according to a spokesman for Lindberg Nutrition, the chain she and her late husband, Walter, founded in 1949.

Born in Medical Lake, Wash., Mrs. Lindberg became interested in nutrition in the 1940s as a Los Angeles housewife worried about her children’s poor health. Thinking about her South Dakota grandparents who had raised a dozen robust children, she began feeding her family a well-rounded diet while studying vitamins and minerals.

She was credited with pioneering--almost by accident--the daily vitamin packets marketed today by the Lindberg chain and others for specific categories of consumers such as “sportsmen” or “active women.” The special packaging began 45 years ago when friends and neighbors who observed Mrs. Lindberg’s success with her own children sought her advice about vitamins and minerals. One mother was blind, so Mrs. Lindberg wrapped the tablets the mother would need each day in waxed paper packets.

In the Lindberg stores, in her personal counseling for customers, in radio and television talk shows and in the 1983 book she wrote with her daughter, “Take Charge of Your Health,” Mrs. Lindberg advocated lots of meat and eggs and other protein, vitamin and mineral supplements and a “serenity cocktail” made of brewer’s yeast, fertilized eggs and raw milk.

She is survived by two daughters, Judy McFarland, the co-author of her book, and Janice Bastedo; 12 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.