Announcing our 2013 Best Bite Awards!

Delicious Living's first-ever food and beverage awards–fondly dubbed "Best Bites"–debut this month. Find some new favorites!

Don’t you sometimes wish you could get personal recommendations for natural foods that are healthy and taste great? This month, your wish is granted: With appropriate fanfare, hereby we present Delicious Living’s Best Bites, our first-ever food and drink awards! Get the full list of award winners here.

I’m so excited to see this longtime goal finally become a reality. With the recent addition of Kelsey Blackwell to our team as senior food editor, the time was right: Kelsey covers food and beverage products for our sister publication, Natural Foods Merchandiser, and has developed a particular expertise in and passion for finding the best natural, organic, and of course delicious edibles and drinkables on store shelves, with a keen eye for non-GMO ingredients, innovative eco-friendly packaging, and special-diet considerations (gluten free, vegan, and the like).

Kelsey took the reins on this inaugural project, gathering hundreds of nominations from manufacturers, retailers, and you, our readers, for favorites in 26 natural living categories. Our staff then had the enviable job of trying samples, deciphering labels, and narrowing down the choices to the winners and finalists. We applied standards of clean ingredients and healthful properties, but the final selections remain subjective, to be sure (yes, we have a collective sweet tooth). I’m confident that this list represents some of the best natural foods and drinks available today.

Did we honor or miss some of your favorites? I encourage you to take the list to your local store and pick up some new things to try—then post your agreements or debates here or on our Facebook page. How each person chooses to eat healthy is, naturally, a matter of taste.