FOOD NEWS
Watch Out For These Shady Things About Panera Bread's Menu
by AMY BELL
Bagels
Panera’s bagels are steamed, not boiled. Traditional bagels are boiled, creating a chewy texture; however, Panera’s process creates a more soft and airy texture like bread.
Ingredients
In 2015, Panera made a “No No List” of artificial ingredients it vows not to use. The list says they have no “artificial preservatives, sweeteners, flavors, and colors.”
Concerns about glyphosate levels of glyphosate were raised in 2019. In 2020, a lawsuit claimed Panera was misrepresenting itself and still using artificial ingredients.
Healthy Menu
Panera says they have “clean ingredients,” yet some items are not considered healthy, like the Mac & Cheese bread bowl, which has high calories and carb content.
Many of their items, like the Chicken Cordon Bleu Melt on a baguette, exceed the daily sodium recommendation intake, and their drinks contain a lot of sugar.
Mac & Cheese
One of the shadiest menu items is the Mac & Cheese because it arrives frozen. They throw a single-serve frozen packet of pre-made macaroni into hot water to warm it.
Soup
Boxes of pre-packaged soups arrive at the restaurant frozen into giant bricks; employees heat them in hot water before serving them.
A fridge tech at Panera said on Reddit, “It is the only restaurant I know of where so little cooking goes on that they don't need a vent hood."