Our vision

No compromise on our ingredients
No compromise for your taste buds

We deliver the best of home-style baking and offer the most honest-tasting baked goods. We believe in simple, homestyle intensely-flavored products: Our ingredient lists are STRAIGHTFORWARD, like a shopping list for a home-made cookie--which is, indeed, how it all started. No substitutes for the real thing, no processed ingredients, no protein powder, no preservatives (our packaging is pharmaceutical-grade), no trans fats, and no unnecessary "nutrition blends". (By the way, have they actually been scientifically proven to be absorbed by our bodies?)

Our key ingredients come from local sources: Our nuts are locally grown; our organic flour, oats, wheat bran and seeds come from a local miller. And we use organic Mexican vanilla (the original vanilla) to round out the flavor of all our cookies.

Just like Mom, we believe that the best ingredients will make the most honestly intense baked goods

My philosophy

A note from Taste Buds' founder and tastemaker.

I am not a fat or carb-phobe.
I have never followed any fad diet.
I believe in eating a wide variety of traditional foods, including animal products.
I never take any prescription drugs.
I don't take herbal medicine, or any kind of nutritional supplement.
I exercise daily (and I mix and bake Taste Buds cookies). I have a BMI of 19.17.
I can't recall the last time I or any of my children got sick.
And yes, I eat my cookies. With gusto!

I grew up visiting my grandmother on a traditional farm in Bosnia. She was the mother of 10. She died a few years ago, at the age of 104. She was (super)active until the end. She ate foods from all food groups, and hardly ever saw a doctor. Of course, she stuck to traditional foods, handed down from generation to generation. No fast foods, soft drinks, or any processed foods based on synthetic fats or any other unheard-of substances. Most of the other ladies in her village were as healthy as she was. Can you go wrong when you stick to the basics, proven by thousands of years of history?

When we performed nutritional research on the various ingredients of Taste Buds cookies, we found numerous conflicting pieces of information. One day we are told that fats are bad, and that we must avoid them at all costs (then what happens with those essential fat-soluble vitamins?). The next day, that carbs are the enemy... The "experts" cannot seem to make up their minds as to which foods are good for you, and which are bad. There is no such thing as rock-solid nutritional research. Nutrition is a science in its infancy. There are still a lot of unknowns. This is why, as new facts are discovered, yesterday's food villain becomes today's food fad. In other instances, a nutrient discovered beneficial at some point gets processed into a "supplement", which is then found hazardous or even fatal at too high concentrations. With so much conflicting information, it makes sense to turn back towards foods that have been staples for centuries. I am inclined to trust millennia of history rather than official agencies.

Let us check thoroughly ingredient lists to make sure that the product is truly wholesome. The best foods for our children are the ones where they can understand and pronounce every word on the ingredient list.

Oh, and one more thought: All human beings were given taste buds to figure out if foods were good for them. Let us pay more attention to this under-used sense.

Margot Tripier

Some thought-provoking further reading

 

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