A spiky appetizer hits the supermarket shelf

July 18, 2004

Mexico City — While many longtime residents north of the border may be having Cactus Cooler as their drink of choice, Latino immigrants are shopping for an increasingly cooler cactus to eat.
It's the latest and hottest market niche on the supermarket scene: chilled prickly pear cactus, known in Mexico as nopalitos, mixed with red chili sauce and pork, and being sold on the same aisles as pre-packaged salads.

Chilled cactus is projected to become a $350 million industry in the United States shortly, said Loui Olivas, assistant vice president for academic affairs at Arizona State University, who studies Hispanic trends within U.S. markets.

"Without a doubt, it's the next frozen-food craze," Olivas said.

Supermarkets that cater to the Latino market are having a hard time keeping it stocked because of the burgeoning number of first-generation Mexicans in the Phoenix area.

"We've quadrupled our sales of prepackaged nopales in the past two years," said Martin Contreras, produce manager for Food City and Bashas' supermarkets in the region.

The sale of chopped-up prickly pear pads also has been making inroads into the larger North American population, especially among health-food aficionados, Contreras said. The cactus is rich in nutrients, and research indicates it is effective in controlling diabetes and a host of other health-related problems.

According to Mexican agriculture statistics, the average Mexican consumes about 15 pounds of prickly pear annually. But some question how extensively prickly pear will cross over.

"I guess it has the potential to be a veggie trend in the non-Hispanic market, but it's awfully chewy," said Mayra Alvarado Driessen, a Latin American economic specialist for Phoenix and a native of Mexico. "Personally, I think it's going to take a while for it to gain wide acceptance."