Taste Test: Whole Foods’ 365 Organic Chocolate Chip Cookies

Whole Foods’ house brand, 365, makes some rather interesting chocolate chip cookies. On the outside, they look like any other cookie, albeit with far fewer chocolate chips. But when our panel of tasters bit into them, most responded with a "hmm."

The initial texture that we look for in a store-bought chocolate chip cookie, imprinted in our minds by Chips Ahoy, is missing. "It’s not crunchy enough," one taster said, with most agreeing that they could have been sweeter, and certainly needed more chocolate chips. They were also dry and crumbly, similar to biscotti, which could have been rectified with a dunk into milk.

As for flavor, that’s where they’re hurting. "It tastes like a graham cracker with chocolate chips on it," said another taster, and more than one agreed that it "tasted like sawdust." The fact that wheat flour is used instead of white most likely accounts for the graham cracker flavor.

Interestingly enough, most tasters agreed that the cookie could have been richer, as it tasted "diet" or "vegan." In reality, each of these small cookies contains 3.5 grams of fat (palm oil is used instead of the partially hydrogenated soybean oil we’re most likely used to, which certainly isn’t a bad thing).

If you’re looking for your organic cookie fix, one of these dunked into milk should successfully satisfy a craving. But if you want that crunchy, chocolaty cookie satisfaction that brings you back to your childhood, there’s no substitute for the real thing. 

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