Ever flip over the package of your favorite grocery store cookie and get lost in a wall of ingredients you can’t pronounce? That’s no accident. Big grocery brands thrive on preservatives, artificial flavors, and cheap oils that keep costs down and products shelf-stable for months (sometimes years).
But here’s the problem: those same ingredients don’t belong in your body—or in something as simple as a cookie.
At Mind Your Biscuits Bakeshop, we believe food should be honest. That’s why we’re shining a light on what’s hiding in commercial baked goods—and why you’ll never find those ingredients in ours.
Preservatives & Shelf-Life Extenders
- The Big Grocery Way: Flip over a box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies and you’ll see sorbic acid, TBHQ, and a lineup of mystery stabilizers. Chemicals keep those ‘cream’ fillings soft for months, not care.” Additionally, other breads and buns sneak in calcium propionate to stop mold, or BHA and BHT—synthetic preservatives tied to possible hormone disruption.
- Our Way: We don’t need mold inhibitors because our treats are baked fresh, in small batches. Cookies should have a shelf life measured in days, not months. And here’s a tip—if you want to make them last longer, our baked goods freeze beautifully. Slice our bread or English muffins, freeze, and pop them in the toaster for an easy, homemade breakfast.
- Try This: Our classic oatmeal raisin cookies—fresh-baked, preservative-free, and freezer-friendly.
Artificial Colors & Flavors
- The Big Grocery Way: Open a pack of Chips Ahoy! Chewy cookies and you’ll see “artificial flavor” on the label—not because real butter, vanilla, or chocolate fail to taste good, but because lab-made flavors cost less and companies can pump them out by the truckload. And those pink-frosted Lofthouse sugar cookies? Red 40, a petroleum-based dye, gives them their glow and fuels hyperactivity in sensitive kids.
- Our Way: In contrast, we use real vanilla, local eggs, organic butter, and no synthetic dyes. Even our sprinkles are dye-free and plant-based—proof you can get the same cheerful colors without the chemicals.
- Try This: Our confetti cookies with dye-free rainbow sprinkles—pure fun, without the artificial colors.
Cheap Fats & Oils
- The Big Grocery Way: Many cookies and snack cakes, from Oreos to Pepperidge Farm Milanos, rely on hydrogenated oils, soybean oil, or interesterified fats. In fact, companies use these industrial fillers because they’re cheap, not nourishing. Hydrogenated oils are factory-made fats created to extend shelf life. They keep cookies crisp on the shelf, but they also drive inflammation and damage heart health.
- Our Way: Butter, coconut oil, or sustainably sourced fats that actually belong in food. In the rare case we use oil or shortening, it’s always cold-pressed and sustainably sourced. We’d rather use ingredients your grandma would recognize than ones developed in a processing plant.
- Try This: Our buttery scones, handmade with organic butter and cream, never industrial oils.
Sweeteners
- The Big Grocery Way: For instance, look at the label on a Hershey’s Cookies ’n’ Creme bar or Chips Ahoy!—you’ll spot high fructose corn syrup, invert sugar, or corn syrup solids. These are industrial sweeteners that give a quick sugar spike and crash. Additionally, some “diet” products swap them out for artificial sweeteners like sucralose or aspartame. These are controversial for gut and metabolic health.
- Our Way: We stick with pure cane sugar, brown sugar, or honey when it makes sense—sweeteners you’d find in your own pantry.
- Try This: Our chocolate chip cookies are made with pure cane sugar and light brown sugar for just the right sweetness.
Bleached & Enriched Flours
- The Big Grocery Way: Most commercial breads and cookies use bleached white flour, stripped of nutrients, then “enriched” with synthetic vitamins. In fact, many grocery store “sourdough” loaves aren’t fermented at all—they’re just white bread with commercial yeast and vinegar for “flavoring.” No long fermentation, no wild yeast cultures, no gut-friendly bacteria—just marketing spin.
- Our Way: We use unbleached flours, sourdough starters, and real fermentation. Additionally, our loaves take their sweet time to rise, and that makes all the difference in flavor, texture, and nutrition.
- Try This: Instead, try our naturally leavened sourdough bread, made with wild yeast cultures and unbleached flour.
Texture Additives
- The Big Grocery Way: Ever wonder how every Oreo tastes exactly the same? That’s DATEM, mono- and diglycerides, modified starches, and even cellulose (yes—wood pulp). These don’t improve taste—they’re just there to manipulate texture and guarantee factory uniformity. Dough conditioners (like azodicarbonamide, a.k.a. the “yoga mat chemical”) are another shortcut used in commercial breads.
- Our Way: In reality, time, care, and natural fermentation give our breads and cookies the texture they deserve. No shortcuts. No fake fiber. No preservatives. No dough conditioners.
- Try This: Our English muffins—fluffy, tender, and naturally risen without additives.
Why It Matters
Ultimately, big grocery stores bank on the fact that most people don’t check labels—or don’t know what those labels mean. But every “mystery ingredient” is a tradeoff: longer shelf life for lower quality, prettier colors for more chemicals, cheaper oils for higher health risks.
That’s why a grocery store “sourdough” can sit on a shelf for two weeks without changing. Real sourdough? It’s alive. It breathes. It molds if ignored. And that’s exactly the point.
We believe you deserve better. Better cookies, better scones, better loaves—all made with ingredients you can trust, and none of the ones that don’t belong.
Next time you’re tempted to grab a box of cookies from the grocery aisle, flip the label. If you can’t pronounce it—or if it sounds like something from a lab—you probably don’t want to eat it.
At Mind Your Biscuits Bakeshop, we’re proud to say:
👉 No preservatives.
👉 No artificial colors or flavors.
👉 No cheap oils.
👉 No fake sourdough.
👉 No shortcuts.
Just real ingredients, baked fresh, by a mother-daughter team who believes cookies should taste like home—not like chemicals.
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