Costco blueberry bagel callout

A viral video is pushing Costco’s blueberry bagels into a labeling fight, after shoppers noticed the product is sold as “imitation blueberry bagels.” (tiktok.com) The current wave of attention appears to have accelerated on April 13 and April 14, 2026, with a TikTok from dietitian Nazima Qureshi and a repost on X that together drove fresh scrutiny of the ingredient label. The TikTok page visible to the public showed 32,700 likes and 709 comments when it was crawled. (tiktok.com) This is not a brand-new Costco product. A January 8, 2019 review on Costcuisine identified the item by the same name — “Kirkland Signature Imitation Blueberry Bagels” — and described the flavor as “artificial blueberry.” (costcuisine.com) Food labels in the United States do not need Food and Drug Administration preapproval before sale, but they do have to follow federal naming and ingredient rules. The Food and Drug Administration says it is responsible for making sure foods are “properly labeled,” while its labeling guide says labels are not pre-cleared by the agency. (fda.gov) Federal labeling rules also say a food is misbranded if it imitates another food and does not prominently use the word “imitation” with the name of the food being copied. That helps explain why a bakery item using blueberry-like inclusions can legally be sold with “imitation” on the package instead of simply “blueberry bagels.” (ecfr.gov) The Costco same-day product pages for other bagel varieties carry a warning that online packaging details “may not be current or complete” and tell shoppers to rely on the physical product for the most accurate information. That makes the in-store label the key document in this dispute. (costco.com) Independent nutrition databases and product listings now use both names for what appears to be the same general item, with some pages calling it “Blueberry Bagel” and others “Imitation Blueberry Bagels.” That mismatch has added to shopper confusion rather than settling it. (tools.myfooddata.com, mynetdiary.com) Costco has an official media request form for reporters seeking details about products and programs, and says responses generally take 24 to 48 hours. As of publication, the company’s public-facing pages reviewed here did not include a posted statement addressing the renewed attention on the bagels. (costco.com) For now, the fight over Costco’s bagels is less about whether the label exists than about whether shoppers ever expected to need a close read in the bread aisle. (ecfr.gov, tiktok.com)