Man, you're missing a bunch of ingredients to actually make tasty cookies. Definitely need some salt. She's probably also using vanilla extract or purchased chocolate chips (or chunks) or cinnamon. Plus the leavening agent, so baking powder (or baking soda and another acid). That's all just for the basic cookies, there's so many options out there using stuff like malted chocolate powder, and that's ignoring making palatable gluten-free cookies.
Yeah, but the point is adding salt raises the "Classification" to processed. Using store bought chocolate chips raises it to ultra processed because it contains ultra processed ingredients.
Is there any evidence that those are any healthier? If I'm going to overeat the same amount of calories eating store-bought cookies or grandma-made cookies - is my health outcome any different?
Depends on where you are. There's food additives that are used in the US that are forbidden in Europe [1]
> The E.U. says that if they can’t dismiss the possibility of harm, they can’t find an additive safe,” Galligan says. In the U.S., the bar is much lower; companies can add new ingredients to their foods without even informing the FDA. “In the U.S., it feels like the FDA is waiting to act until harm is definitely proven,” says Galligan.
When a grandma bakes some cookies for their grandchildren she uses only some basic ingredients - eggs, flour, butter, sugar.
For the product that food industries calls as cookies however, the list of ingredients looks like a git SHA.