Innovation: a cure for what ails you.

WHEN JOE VON ROSENBERG led the road show for Omega Protein's initial public offering in 1998, he couldn't blame investors for scratching their heads--or even shaking them. Delivered with a straight face, von Rosenberg's pitch was that human consumption of oil concentrates from the lowly menhaden fish battled cardiovascular disease and even rheumatoid arthritis. "We did this for three weeks and people would just sit and stare at us," von Rosenberg recalls painfully. "One guy in Boston actually looked at me and said, 'You keep saying fish oil, but I keep hearing snake oil.'"

Now, even the federal government agrees that von Rosenberg was right. The Food and Drug Administration recently endorsed broad health claims for fish proteins called omega-3s. Manufacturers are putting them in cholesterol-reducing adult foods such as Smart Balance spread. And 38 districts in Texas have begun dishing out school-lunch fare with big doses of omega-3s.

Selling fish oil wasn't in von Rosenberg's career plan when he was general counsel for Permian and Zapata during the 1980s and '90s. "But a good thing about being a lawyer is that you're exposed to all aspects of a company's business," says the 45-year-old native of Clemson, S.C. In 1997, von Rosenberg became CEO of Houston-based Omega Protein, a fish-processing enterprise that was founded in 1913. (It remains 60-percent owned by Zapata, George H. W. Bush's old company.)

And just as it has for von Rosenberg, Omega Protein also has made a sublime ending for the menhaden fish. Until the wonders of omega-3s became known, the bony, oily, basically inedible species was processed into fertilizer and lamp oil.

But never snake oil.