Rapeseed Oil, Palm Oil and the London Dessert Aisle: What's Actually in "Healthier" Treats

If you've started reading ingredient labels properly on a shop in London, whether that's Whole Foods Kensington, Planet Organic, or the fridge of your nearest corner shop, you'll have noticed the same few names keep showing up: rapeseed oil, sunflower oil, palm oil, "vegetable oil." They're in supermarket cookies, in most "healthier" alternatives, and in plenty of products that lean hard on words like natural or wholesome on the front of the pack.

Here's what they actually are and why they're there.

Rapeseed and sunflower oil are industrial seed oils. They're extracted using high heat and chemical solvents, then refined, bleached, and deodorised to strip out the flavour and smell the extraction process leaves behind. They're used because they're cheap and shelf-stable, not because they make a cookie taste better. If anything, they're chosen specifically because they're flavourless, which tells you they're there for cost, not craft.

Palm oil is the ingredient food brands are most likely to disguise. It shows up under names like "vegetable fat," inside "barrier coatings" designed to stop caramel from leaking into dough, and inside flavour blends where it's technically listed but practically invisible. We found it three separate times, under three separate names, in a single salted caramel cookie's ingredient panel. That's not an accident, it's how palm oil usually gets used: everywhere, but never obviously.

None of this is about fear-mongering over "chemicals." Oil is oil, and your body can process it. The actual issue is honesty. A product marketed as the better, more real option shouldn't need three different names for the same cheap fat to get its ingredient list past you.

What we use instead: real butter, real dark chocolate with cocoa butter as its fat, and nothing that needs a barrier coating because nothing in a MOLTO cookie is trying to hide from something else in the pack.

The fastest way to check any product yourself: flip it over, and count how many times you see the words oil, syrup, or "natural flavour." If it's more than once each, ask why.

SEE THE FULL MOLTO INGREDIENT LIST: https://www.justmolto.com/#ingredients