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.
Well, I was never a Girl Scout and I don’t have any Girl Scouts (or any girls). I think the Scout parents and former Scouts here might be a little biased towards the wonderfulness of these cookies…
I do buy them sometimes, for the same reason I buy the candy, wrapping paper, magazines and whatnots–because my friends make me feel guilty if I don’t buy the stuff their kids are selling. If you taste them without the parental pride/nostalgia factored in, they are really just OK.
I think the value of the sales programs to the girls probably also varies a lot. I’ve seen very well-organized troops, who seem to make it a fun activity, with the girls making speeches about their programs, etc. I’ve also seen moms sitting outside Safeway hard selling cookies while their girls do gymnastic moves on the shopping cart rack and wait to be taken somewhere more interesting.
I’ll bet the troops who do sales “right” could make any kind of fundraising program successful and worthwhile. You’ve got those cute little Girl Scouts and a good cause, you’re well organized and have a plan, you’re going to get my money! I could really do without the cookies…
First, I do hope any scouts who post here will be “considerate and caring” and give Jessica some credit for her humor and research (not to mention that whole free speech thing).
True confession: I was an anti-cookie woman, too. Mainly because of Jessica’s arguments: junkiness & low mark-up for the girls. No longer. My conversion began when my young daughters begged to sell and I saw them learn math, social and organizational skills. They felt fabulous when THEIR earnings got them places. (On horseback, for instance.) Our family can’t eat most of them because of food allergies, and yeah, they are junk food, but that brand-name recognition and the experience has been priceless.
Without the booths at our local grocery store, many people in my area would have no idea that Girl Scouts are still out there, still making the world a better place. Some wouldn’t know about Girl Scout teens, either; many think the whole thing ends at Brownies. Since they can’t see us cleaning up Lake Accotink, learning CPR in a church fellowship hall, or planting milkweed in a swamp, this is how they SEE us.
Cookie sales are nearly done for the several troops I work with now. The girls did a great job and had fun, too. The portion the troop sees ($0.65/box) will take their little group rock climbing, camping and boating; the portion they DON’T see will improve our beautiful campgrounds, plump up the financial assistance fund so no girl will miss out on scouting because of money — and pay for the training and support we’ve enjoyed all year long from our Girl Scout council (for free or with deep subsidies). So, although the portion we get is indeed small, the cookie sales aren’t just about us.
However, being capitalists, my girls ALSO sold holiday wreaths and wrapped for tips at a bookstore. (With permission, and a plan that would not sabotage cookie sales, of course.) These other activities help them own their troop as much as they can at their age, rather than assuming moms and dads can/will bankroll them 100%.
Wouldn’t it be fun to know the markup on a box of Oreos? Bet it’s HUGE.
Finally, a word on nutrition. To give you less for more, just like dimple-bottomed peanut butter jars and air-whipped yogurts, there were changes this year to the beloved GS cookies, according to my council (GSCNC):
* Thin Mints now have 2 less cookies per sleeve, a 1.0 oz. reduction
* Do-Si-Dos have 1 less cookie per sleeve, a 1.0 oz, reduction
* Trefoils have, 2 less cookies per sleeve, a 1.0 oz. reduction
* Samoas cookies are 1/30 of an oz smaller, a 0.5 oz. reduction
That’s one way to improve nutrition!
@Tia I might just have a little crush on you. I’ll continue not buying the cookies, and you continue raising great kids.
I was a girl scout and now a leader. I have sold for schools and scout- boy scouts and girl scouts. Everyone remembers the cookies they sold as a girl and has their favorites. We don’t make a ton of money but the girls work together for trips or events. I would rather sale a box of cookies for $3.50(in our area) then the 15 box of microwave popcorn. Talk about preservatives and chemicals in them.
Thanks for doing a donation.
I was a Girl Scout leader and I hated the cookies. Our local council expected each girl to sell a quota, something like 50 boxes. Now, there are three ways you can do that;
You can go door to door
You can sell cookies to your friends and relatives, putting them on the spot
You can get Mom or Dad to sell them at the office
It doesn’t seem to me that any of these strategies teaches our children a good lesson. It’s not OK to go to a stranger’s house, embarrass your neighbors into buying something they may not want, or get your parents to do the work for you.
Furthermore, the girls get prizes for selling the cookies–a patch for selling just one box, big teddy bears and other desirable items for selling 50 or more. Our troop had an awards ceremony, and it was heartbreaking to see the girls who hadn’t sold a ton of boxes crying because they didn’t get the good prizes. This included my children; my job would not permit me to sell cookies at work, so they had to make do with a what grandma, aunts, neighbors, and I were willing to buy.
Cookie-selling may encourage entrepreneurship, but not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur and the fact is that any such system sets up a few winners and lots of “losers.” Not everyone can sell 100 boxes of cookies.
I believe that since I left the fold, my local Girl Scouts have de-emphasized individual sales and focus more on booths, which aren’t as bad–it’s more of a group effort, which I think is appropriate. Still, to this day I can’t stomach the damn cookies. They really need to rethink the entire program; one other bad lesson that it’s teaching is that it’s OK to work for peanuts.
I am a GS leader and those cookies are more that is 43 to 63 cents per box, that is what goes to the troop, there is a part that go to our council and of course to GSUSA. You are focused on one part, just the girl or troop when you should get a bigger picture, this helps out our council which pays for girls to be in a troop who can not afford it. the money goes farther than you lead people to believe. Not one girl scout is made to participate in cookie sale, not one mother is made to have thousand of cookie boxes in her living room, nor one father made to help his daughter deliver those cookies. You obviously do not get the “girl scout way”