I get this question a lot. "Diane, what makes your spice blends different from what I can find on the supermarket shelf?"

Or, sometimes, I'm asked why and how they are different even from other specialty organic spice blend brands that aren't in most stores.

And it's a great question, as we pour a lot into making our organic spice blends the tastiest out there.

Here are five reasons that our Balanced Bites Spice Blends are the best you'll find.

5 Reasons Balanced Bites Organic Spices are so amazing.

1. Balanced Bites spices are 100% organic.

Our blends are 100% organic, aside from sea salt (since as it can't be labeled as such). There are no pesticides, fungicides, or herbicides in our spices and they're non-irradiated / non-GMO. Our spice blends also contain no fillers, no junk, and are all gluten-free, dairy-free, and nut-free naturally as we use none of those ingredients in the blends.

What does this mean for you?

Our organic spice blends are the absolute best quality you can find. Better quality spices means better quality ingredients in your home cooking, which means better flavor and optimal nutrition. It may seem exceedingly simple, but the truth is that when you're cooking with real food, the quality of each ingredient makes a difference in how your results taste. If you can use something with better flavor, your food will just plain taste better. And, I have strong feelings both about well-seasoned food and great-tasting food... that is, I am strongly PRO-both.

2. Balanced Bites spices are made in small batches.

Balanced Bites organic spice blends are blended and packed by hand in small batches and are air-sealed for freshness under the cap. We also continue to refine any flavors I feel need it over time, so as batches of organic spices come in, there may be tweaks necessary to the blend ratios as nature fluctuates.

What does this mean for you?

Small batches means you get not only fresher spices, but we can achieve a more specialized texture result. When spices are machine-mixed and machine-filled, it's hard to keep the delicate touch required to have fluffy, flaky herbs and spices included in the blend.

3. We use lots of garlic, and our house-toasted garlic is the best.

Yup, we said it, and it's the truth. Our garlic is better than what you're getting at the grocery store because we house-toast and grind it to size in small batches, so the flavor is better and fresher than any other you'll taste! Furthermore, for SUPER GARLIC & SUPER GARLIC PIZZA we combine granulated garlic with flakes that are toasted to maximize the flavor in various textures. The same goes for our onion flakes, and you're getting those in our organic spice blends like SUPER ONION, COFFEE BBQ, and BAGEL blend.

What does this mean for you?

While you could theoretically make many of our blends using recipes in my books (Practical Paleo and Keto Quick Start, to name two), when you buy them from us, they will taste better, no question. Spices sold in grocery stores are produced in huge batches and spend time in distribution centers before making it to grocery store shelves and eventually to your kitchen. Our spices are only sold through us, so you're skipping the additional time they'd be sitting before you get them.

4. We balance the flavors so you don't have to.

Our spice blends make life easier, because isn't that the point?! No need to stress over finding 4, 5, 6, or even more jars of spices from your pantry and trying to balance the flavors perfectly every time you cook. Simply grab one jar of Balanced Bites spices and you're good to go. Balancing flavors is one of the key elements of what makes every product we create extra special, because no consideration is given to simply keeping costs down, we are always striving for the best product and the best flavor, period.

What does this mean for you?

You can trust that what you're getting in our organic spice blends are the absolute best flavors and balance of flavors possible, with no corners cut - ever! We don't increase the ratio of less expensive ingredients and sacrifice flavor, we make sure what you get is our best, always.

5. We use sea salt, but sparingly.

Salt is the least expensive ingredient of all the spices used in a spice blend, and also the heaviest. Since all spice blends are sold by weight, not volume, most companies use salt to bulk up the blend and keep costs down. Not us! Not only do we use high quality sea salt in our recipes, but we use it sparingly - just enough that your food will taste amazing (hello #noblandfood!), but not so much that we're trying to cut corners. The only exception? Our infused salts are a salt product, but they've been through an extensive flavor-infusion process that takes many weeks to achieve, so they're quite special and unique!

What does this mean for you?

You're getting a balance of salt in your blends so that they taste great, but we never use more salt than is necessary for the perfect flavor combination just to make the product less expensively. We challenge you to pour our our blends next to other brands that include salt onto separate sheets of paper and look at them closely. You can actually see just how much salt most other brands contain - it's shocking sometimes!