A Healthier Girl Scout Cookie: Sweet Treats Free of Trans Fats This Year
By Tim Sturrock, The Macon Telegraph, Ga.
Feb. 17–People who love Thin Mints, Do-si-dos and Samoas may not realize there’s something different about them this year.
All varieties of the popular Girl Scout cookies have less than half a gram of trans fats per serving, which meets or exceeds Food and Drug Administration guidelines for the “zero trans fat” designation, according to the Girl Scouts Web site. Trans fats have been linked to heart disease in the past few years.
“We want to serve the best product we can,” Lee Laughter, CEO of Girl Scouts of Middle Georgia, said of the change. She said the healthy change comes with a sugar-free brownie this year as well.
Although cookie lovers who pre-ordered their sweet treats may already have received them this week, Girl Scouts began selling the healthier cookies at various businesses Friday.
Laura Childs, assistant director of fitness and wellness at Mercer University, said trans fats can give foods a longer shelf life and more flavor, but it’s not worth the risk of heart disease.
“Anything that can make a type of junk food healthier is a good thing,” she said.
In the last few years, she said, research has shown trans fats, which are sometimes listed as hydrogenated vegetable oils, to be unhealthy.
Laughter said the cookie sales are all about the girls.
“I think a lot of people just feel good about knowing that it’s going to have a personal impact on a girl,” she said. In addition to funding programs for the scouts, she said selling the cookies also teaches them about advertising, marketing and finance.
Girl Scouts of Middle Georgia serves 22 counties, has about 5,800 members and ordered 384,000 individual boxes this year, said Jennie Lacey, Middle Georgia Girl Scout communications and program specialist.
Bonnie Walker of south Bibb County and her daughters loaded up 180 boxes of the cookies Friday morning. The lack of trans fat was a selling point for people on diets when one of the girls took orders in January.
“It helped sell a few extra boxes,” she said.
Walker, who prefers the Tag-alongs and Samoas, said she hadn’t tried the new cookies but wasn’t concerned about the difference.
“We have quite a few boxes in that pile for ourselves,” she said.
Lacey said this week has been especially busy at the Middle Georgia Girl Scout office. That’s not from eating cookies, though she does enjoy them.
“People say ‘So, do you eat a lot of cookies?’ and we say ‘not so much after awhile,’ ” she said. “We don’t eat a lot because we’re used to having them around.”
Laughter said some people will buy cases of them so they can enjoy them throughout the year. And though the ingredients may be different this year, part of the demand for the cookies is that they come out only once a year.
“It’s part of the mystique,” she said.
To contact Tim Sturrock, call 744-4347, or e-mail tsturrock@macontel.com [mailto:tsturrock@macontel.com].
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Macon Telegraph, Ga.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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