Sunday, March 16, 2008

Girl Scouts: Peddling Toxic Fat Pills

A few of the neighborhood girls showed up on our door step peddling the infamous Girl Scout Cookies. I'm in no way a food nazi, but here are the ingredients listed on a box of Somoas:
Sugar, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (soybean, cottonseed, coconut, palm and/or palm kernel oils, THBQ and citric acid to preserve freshness), enriched flour (wheat flour niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate...... I could go on and on, but it just gets worse with items that resemble more of a chemistry experiment than a food item. You get my point.

The deliema is that I do have a heart and want to support the girls and their efforts. However, just a few extra calories for this household has us all busting out of our pants in no time. Actually, the extra calories don't bother me as much as the long list of chemicals in the cookies. These sweet-faced, innocent girls are peddling toxic fat pills with their willing, eager mothers waving 'hello' to me from the curb.

Without launching into a long explanation as to why we're watching what we eat, and how I think that the cookies are filled with artificial shit, I offered to donate money directly to their troop. This was met with sad, puppy eyes as the girls get prizes based on their individual sales volumes. See, they're too young to realize that they're being used to feed the corporate machine.

It's a perfect example as to what was once a homegrown, neighborhood effort turned into a corporate monster. I would rather purchase imperfect, slightly burned cookies made from *real* ingredients from a neighbor's kitchen than this crap they're selling now.

The corporate cookie marketing ploy works well. Who can resist innocent kids selling cookies? Yes, I ended up buying some boxes. I'm a sucker. They're sitting on my kitchen counter unopened. Would anybody like a cookie?

1 comment:

CG said...

I thought girl scout cookies were a myth!!