Springtime: Where I Crush the Souls Of Girl Scouts
According to the National Action Against Obesity the girl scouts who peddle cookies each spring get 40 to 60 cents from each box sold. Roughly ten percent of each sale. Ask any mother whose living room has been taken over by boxes of cookies, any father who’s had to drag their daughter into work with a cookie order form, if that’s worth it. The Girl Scouts of America assert that 12% to 17% of each sale goes to the troop. At $4 a box that’s between 48 cents and 68 cents per box sold.
I know that looks impressive until you scroll down and see this.
I love Girl Scouts. My Mother was a Girl Scout, her Mother was the Troop Leader, but the Girl Scouts have been setting a terrible precedent. They’re asking young girls and their mothers to endlessly solicit from friends and family without adequately compensating them. If we’re raising our girls to be strong, let’s also raise them to be clever capitalists.
Okay Jessica, but what does this have to do with a sustainable lifestyle?
Glad you asked. According the Girl Scouts of America each and every cookie variety contains partially hydrogenated oils. If you are unfamiliar with the risk associated with partially hydrogenated oils please read one of these:
Further, and most infuriating is this snippet from their website:
Q: Are any preservatives used in Girl Scout Cookies?
A: No. Girl Scout Cookies do not contain preservatives. They are all made with pure vegetable shortening, are kosher, and freeze well to extend their shelf life.
I present to you a Girl Scout cookie nutritional label.
The partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil is enhanced with TBHQ for freshness.
What is TBHQ?
If TBHQ adds freshness, isn’t that by definition a preservative?
According to the World Health Organization TBHQ caused no deaths in dogs (congratulations!) and only slight discoloration of basal cells in rats. There appears to be a positive association with lymphoma in mice, but that doesn’t seem to alarm the Girl Scouts, as they tout their cookies as preservative free!
Folks, if you want cookies, bake them or buy them, I don’t care, but if the shelf life is longer than your pet goldfish, it’s not food.
If you think your local Girl Scouts are adorable (and I do) drop $1 in the jar and leave the cookies behind. They’ll make more money that way anyhow, and you don’t even have to worry about what’s gone into your body.
Not that I needed any further ammunition to be done with this organization, I ‘opted out’ of the selling of these. Like you, I am trying to feed the best I can. I was berated for offering monetary donations if lieu of selling, and bought from my own kid. Now, I am stuck with these damn things that rope me in.
Jessica, I am a Girl Scout leader, I don’t ask my girls or my troop to peddle the cookies to their family or friends. We rely on cookie booth sales. While it is true that as a troop, we get very little of the money earned, the money that our local council gets benefits all the girls in our local area. With this money they are able to provide camp facilities, tranings, scholarships and the like. I appreciate your oppinion on the cookies. I agree they are not the most healthy. They have however gotten much better over the last few years. They have greatly reduced the transfats to 0g(measureable). Does that make them transfat free? Nope. But it is a lot better than what they were. I am glad that you are one of those terrific people who still donate to girl scouts. What I have seen in my community is that few people support Girl Scouts except through cookie sales. Each year we try raising funds in other manners and none are nearly as successful. This is a sad statment of our society, but the truth. I might also add that Girl Scouts as a whole does more than any other group in our society to empower young girls to be leaders. I would rather focus on the positives in Girl Scouting than on the negatives of these cookies, that unfortunatley our unhealthy society wants.
It’s Girl Scouts of the USA. Not Girl Scouts of America.
I think the person who posted this is an angry person, who does not have a 10 year old GS, who wants to go on fieldtrips, and do service projects. Get a life, please, for everyone’s sake!!!!!!
My daughter just went through her first girl scout cookie experience. She got so much out of the experience and was so proud to deliver the cookies this weekend and have people be so excited to receive them. She was proud not only to be delivering a product people were looking forward to eating, but also proud that the money she was helping to raise was going to a good cause. Her troop will get a nice ice cream party out of the endeavor, they don’t need more than that. I think the entire experience is wonderful for all involved, especially me who really enjoys her unhealthy peanut butter patties.
I am proud to be a Girl Scout, I will pray for you.
Brenda
I am also a Girl Scout leader. I was a GS myself and now have two daughters in the program (along with two younger daughters who will be in it some day).
Like Mikalan, I’d like to thank you for donating to the movement- it means a lot to those girls.
In your opening, you ask if it is worth it for the parents who have a room full of cookies to deliver. When those parents have a daughter who really wants to go to summer camp, but they cannot afford the $100 or more to send her, the answer is YES! When those parents have a daughter who is saving to travel overseas with her troop and cookie funds can pay most of or all of their contribution to the trip, the answer is YES! When those parents have a daughter who wants to attend meetings with a uniform, but they cannot afford one, and the leader will pay for it with her cookie funds, the answer is YES!
What you don’t see behind the scenes is a little thing called “cookie dough” which girls can use to pay their own way to summer residential camp. At our camps, girls go on hikes, swim, learn about/care for/ride horses, learn archery, go canoeing, and more. Add in there learning how to pitch a tent and build/maintain a fire and you’ve got a pretty well rounded activity that they would be hard pressed to find in an average summer at home.
Some troops opt out of the cookie dough or prizes and instead take a higher per box profit for the troop, which they use in conjunction with other fund raisers to pay their way all over the world. London, Ireland, Australia, Honduras… the list is endless. Some of them go for fun, others go to take part in a service project.
Your are right in that the food is not good in excess, but look at the “food” they sell for school fundraisers! Frozen hunks of cookie dough that look like wax, “chocolate” candies that really are mostly wax, and junk items that only serve to fill the landfills twice: once with packaging and another time with the product itself when it breaks after two uses. Nothing is perfect, but GS cookies are low on the list of terrible things sold by kids in an effort to learn new skills and go places.
Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place. for more info see: girlscouts.org
My troop has over $3K sitting in a bank account from peddling cookies to spend on trips, activities, and community service. We earn 75 cents per box and we use all of the GS camps within our council that are supported be the same sales. After seven years, they still CHOOSE to sell, so it can’t be all bad.
Traci-
The cookies you purchased from your daughter will make a nice donation to a food bank. So not only will you be making a donation, supporting your daughter and her troop, and providing cookies for a food bank or other charity in need, you’ll get a tax writeoff to sooth your conscience and you’ll be able to live with yourself.
Unless of course, you’ve already eaten them.
“Ask any mother whose living room has been taken over by boxes of cookies, any father who’s had to drag their daughter into work with a cookie order form, if that’s worth it.”
As a former Girl Scout, mother of a Girl Scout, Leader for 6 years - I’ll answer with a resounding YES!!! Girl Scout cookie sales helped send my sister and myself to camp in the ’70’s. (An experience we both treasure) Something my parents never could have afforded. It has taught my “girls” (troop members) budgeting and using resources wisely. It has provided materials for them to learn and grow with. It has allowed them to travel from our rural area to experience Broadway Shows (Cirque Dreams), fun trips (900 miles to see HS Musical on Ice and the San Antonio Zoo and Riverwalk, Camping, CPR & First Aid Training and much more. This year they are each planning a week at summer camp (Canoeing, swimming, archery, photography, being enviromentaly green). No-one is asking you to eat a box of cookies 365 days a year. This is a once a year event - live a little.