Seven businesses go head-to-head for the Health Hero award – a new accolade for the 2025 Food Manufacture Excellence Awards.
Well-Fed
North Wales based Well-Fed says it is ‘deeply committed’ to ensuring equitable access to premium quality food for all, irrespective of their financial means.
The business is also keen to promote the art of crafting food from scratch, eschewing the use of additives, over-processing and disposable packaging. Its core mission revolves around championing a global food system that not only nourishes people and the planet but also bolsters the economy.
To this end, the business prioritises procuring its ingredients from local sources, guaranteeing that they are devoid of ultra-processing and sharing its profits with the communities it serves.
Currently, Well-Fed caters to the food needs of the healthcare and education sectors on a commercial scale. On a grassroots level, it operates mobile markets, communal meal hubs, and ‘MealLockers’ within neighbourhoods, providing recipe kits, ready-to-eat meals, and pantry staples.
The business has embarked on a ‘zero-UPF’ project, sparked by a successful bid to provide food for Flintshire County Council schools where it provides meals to its pupils.
This contract sparked the business’s research into school children’s diets (i.e. 70-80% of the food served in schools) and underscored a need to ‘do better’.
The business now claims to have ‘completely eliminated all ultra processed foods’ from its line. Despite the changes it has made to deliver on this, it has managed to absorb the costs itself.
Well-Fed was born from a collaboration between CanCook and Clywd Alun.
The judges agreed the business had a good ethos and aim, which could really make a difference in young peoples’ health.
Brusco Food Group
Food ingredients firm Brusco impressed the judges with its salt reduction collaboration with Smart Salt – a product which aims to tackle health issues related to excess salt consumption.
More than 16m people in the UK have high blood pressure – this is the main risk factor for stroke and a major risk factor for heart attacks, heart failure and kidney disease. Approximately, 62,000 unnecessary deaths from strokes and heart attacks are due to poor blood pressure control.
The risk of developing high blood pressure is much higher when one overly consumes salt regularly.
Smart Salt is a magnesium-based sodium reduction technology that can reduce sodium by up to 50% without comprising on taste.
February 2022 saw the official collaboration between Smart Salt and Brusco Food Group kick off, with Brusco becoming the exclusive distributor of the sodium reduction formula to food manufacturers.
With more than 30 years of industry experience, Brusco not only provides Smart Salt with sales and marketing support but also helps blend the solution to meet the requirements of the customers, whilst Smart Salt offers technical guidance.
One of the main challenges the project faced was the ‘bad taste’ of historical low salt solutions, as well as a product that matched salt’s perseveration functionalities. The team combined the scientific knowledge and years of consumer research from Smart Salt and the sales/ marketing capabilities of Brusco, to ensure it would succeed. A key part of this was getting the customers to taste the product first-hand.
With more than 790,000kg of Smart Salt sold already, the business mandates this as a hugely positive move in helping to reduce sodium intake in the UK for the benefit of consumer health.
Internally, Brusco has an ambition to grow its business by 20% each year and Smart Salt has an important part in achieving this objective. It is expected that Brusco will see an additional 20% of Smart Salt ordered next year, taking the amount sold well beyond the targeted 1,000,000kg.
Zebedees
Research suggests the diets of under fives in the UK are often low in fibre and key vitamins and minerals, and too high in sugar and salt. As a result, more than one in five UK children currently start school overweight or obese.
Zebedees provides nursery school meals that are cooked fresh daily and delivered to nurseries throughout the Southeast. It delivers between 45,000-50,000 hot lunches a week and more than 20,000 teas a week.
Everything is made fresh on site and the business works with a registered nutritionist and expert in baby and child nutrition, Charlotte Stirling-Reed, who analyses its menus to ensure they are not only meeting the recommended government guidelines but that they are going above and beyond.
Zebedees’ menus have also achieved the Eat Well Start Well Award from Surrey County Council.
As well as nutrition, the judges were impressed by Zebedees work to support children’s relationships with food, promoting the message of variety and encouraging children to learn that all foods can be enjoyed as part of a balanced and varied diet.
The business also provides free training to nurseries and parents in the form of webinars and workshops, run by its nutrition consultant.
Zebedees uses fresh ingredients, makes all stocks and purees in-house where possible, includes a variety of fruit and vegetables – going through between 7-15 tons of fresh fruit and vegetables over the course of 5 days. Moreover, all its food is freshly prepared packaged and delivered the next day or cooked hot and delivered on the same day.
The business has reduced sugar across the board on its range of menus by 67%. As the years go on, it says the use of sugar will continue to reduce as it develops new menus with no sugar.
It has also reduced its processed meat by 50% and increased its use of beans and pulses by 40% as natural, healthier sources of protein. In addition, it has reduced its cakes and tray bakes and increased fruit and yogurt by 60%.
Eatlean Ingredients
Eatlean cheese is a high protein, low fat, low calorie, lactose-free cheese, which the brand claims offers consumers with 90% less fat, 50% fewer calories and 40% more protein, in comparison with full fat cheddar.
According to the business, consumers replacing a daily intake of 35g full fat cheddar with Eatlean Tasty Mature Cheese would save 25,095 calories per year and reduce fat intake by 4.3kg.
The Eatlean cheese brand has been listed in a variety of UK retailers for several years, but now it has formed a new division, Eatlean Ingredients to target the out-of-home (OOH) and food manufacturing sectors.
Eatlean comes in various formats – grated, sliced, pre-packs, snack-packs and block, allowing operators in both food manufacturing and foodservice to reduce sat fat and calories (and boost protein) in dishes where cheese is a hero ingredient.
Eatlean’s milk is locally sourced from its network of Cheshire farmers and its ingredients are simple: just British cow’s milk and salt.
A recent Eatlean innovation includes its High Protein Cheese Snack Bar, containing 20g of protein per bar. This is being rolled out across the UK, including as the snack in the Morrisons lunch meal deal.
The Protein Cheese itself was originally developed by Richard Thorpe, head of product development, whilst the Eatlean brand concept was initiated by George Heler, the current MD at Joseph Heler Cheese.
The judges were very impressed with the level of data backing up its claims, also noting EatLean’s show of commitment to make its mark in new sectors with the introduction of its new division.
Heck Food Ltd
Heck makes sausages, burgers, meatballs and more in its own factory – and was the first to launch a chicken sausage in the UK back in 2015.
The business has had a long association with health and engages with health-conscious individuals and brands regularly on our social channels.
The team attends an array of fitness shows and events, including Turf Games which it sponsors, as well as helping to fuel run clubs with its samples.
The judges were very impressed by the changes the brand made to enhance the healthiness of its products without impacting the consumer pocket. Heck only uses breast and thigh in its chicken recipes and to claim its low-fat label on its chicken range, it had to make some alterations to the recipes. Although these changes increased its costs due to the reconfiguration of breast: thigh meat ratio, no extra cost were passed onto our consumers.
Alongside its low-fat chicken range, its original Heck 97% pork sausages are made with lean pork shoulder, lightly seasoned. This recipe has no onion or garlic powder within the seasoning which can benefit a variety of dietary requirements.
High protein is another focus area for the business, which it highlights on front of pack. According to IGD shopper data which investigates healthy sustainable diets, protein content ranks fourth among health factors that influence purchasing decisions.
Alongside consumer health, the business advocates for good health within its team. Its on-site gym is free for all our staff to use as well as the doghouse for employees with pets. Staff members can bring their dogs to work and take them for a walk during their lunch break, helping to promote physical activity and wellbeing.
Myco
Myco’s business model is centred around lowering meat consumption and aiding sustainability. In less than a year, Myco’s approach to eco-friendly food production has enjoyed growth that has seen the company expand production six-fold, in part due to creating a product that can play an integral part in helping both the planet and the public’s health.
Its Hooba product has been specifically created to mimic meat protein in both texture and taste, making it an ideal protein to blend with meat protein. This can create a 50/50 hybrid protein, which manufacturers have been struggling to crack.
Myco believe this innovation could substantially lower meat consumption, without consumers noticing any difference.
The judges noting the collaborative efforts of the business, which is proactively engaging with the meat industry. Rather than trying to work against it, the firm is trying to create blended products that can improve lives – and health outcomes - by subtly nudging consumers towards the benefits of a plant-based diet.
Hooba is made from oyster mushrooms and contains just five kitchen cupboard ingredients, plus seasonings. Moreover, nothing used in Hooba is imported and the protein is created under one roof from the vertically farmed mushrooms.
According to Myco, when blended with meat, Hooba can lead to 45% less carbon, 48% less calories, 57% less saturated fat, and 48% more fibre.
Soul Fruit
Soul Fruit is a 100% natural fruit snack which is HFSS compliant and high in fibre.
The judges liked that the product is made with a single ingredient and is plugging the UK’s fibre gap.
The processes used to create products are age-old preservation techniques, such as freeze drying and soft drying which are said to lock in natural goodness.
Soul Fruit was started by founders Daniel Twiss and Natalie Wood who both enjoyed an indulgent sweet snack but were inspired after they moved to Asia and discovered a new world of fruits. Now, the duo has introduced the business to the UK.
Soul Fruit is helping consumers reduce consumers intake of free sugars and have increase their dietary fibre (up to double the dietary fibre/100g compared with products including additives). The role of fibre when eating sugar is very important as this occurs naturally in fresh fruit and slows down the absorption of sugar into the blood. Where added sugars and fruit juices don’t contain any fibre, these sugars cause blood sugar spikes.