Farm takes a top honour at inaugural Paleo awards

A Shropshire company is celebrating after scooping a top honour in the first ever national awards which celebrate the UK’s Paleo food community.

The very best Paleo food producers, bloggers, restaurants, cafes and authors from across the UK entered the inaugural UK Paleo Awards this year.

There was delight at Fordhall Organic Farm based at Market Drayton who walked away with the Paleo Meat Supplier of the Year award and was runner-up in the Business of the Year category.

Categories included Innovative Paleo Product, International Paleo Blogger, Paleo Breakfast Product, Paleo Meat Supplier and more. There were 96 entries for the online awards, with 76 being shortlisted as finalists A total of 9,735 votes were cast by 3,857 individuals and judges scores rated from 1.14 to 9.30 out of 10.

Shropshire businesswoman and awards founder Jan Minihane (left) said the response to the awards had been incredible and said they would be making a return in 2018.

“The thing that kept coming through in our involvement with these awards was the depth of talent and high quality in the Paleo community - the standard was incredibly high,” she said.

“We are delighted to have raised the profile of the Paleo food industry in this way, putting it well and truly under the public spotlight. The awards have been hugely successful and superbly supported.

“It is vitally important to heighten awareness in Paleo food and I would like to thank all those people who helped to make the awards such a success. I am also grateful to all those companies who took part and the people who took the time to vote.

“The whole thing has been such a worthwhile experience and we must now sit down and decide how we will proceed with 2018.

“We took the decision to have an online-only awards for this first year and will look at that to see if it is the best way to continue moving forward.

“The awards were sponsored by Free-From Heaven magazine, which was also the awards’ media partner.”

Other sponsors included Free-From Inspired online magazine, for free-from and Paleo recipes, lifestyle tips and advice; Healthy Perspective, the UK’s largest Paleo and Clean Living directory website, and the Paleo website ‘Path to Paleo’.

The awards also saw major success for Gloucestershire company Primal Joy, who lifted two honours - Snack of the Year and Innovative Product of the Year.

A Paleo diet largely cuts out processed and artificial food, grain, sugar and dairy, harking back to our paleolithic ancestors.