Today is National Girl Scout Cookie day, also the date for Cookie Social Media Day and the first day of Girl Scout Cookie Booth Sales in Colorado. National Girl Scout Cookie Day is a celebration of the 5 skills selling cookies reportedly instills in young scouts, namely, goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills, and business ethics. But not everyone is celebrating, in a letter to Girl Scouts of America CEO Anna Maria Chávez, from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), says that by marketing their new cookies with NutriFusion as a “delicious new way to get your vitamins,” the Girl Scouts is misleading its young members and undermining their health.
“If there were a badge for misleading marketing I’m afraid the Girl Scouts of the USA just earned it,” CSPI nutrition policy director Margo G. Wootan is quoted to say in a press release earlier today.
It’s bad enough that the Girl Scouts of the USA sells cookies to raise money, but it shouldn’t pretend that its’ new “Mango Crèmes with NutriFusion” are nutritionally equivalent to fruit, said CSPI in the press release. The cookies are 98 percent white flour, sugar, palm oil, and dextrose (sugar made from corn). Yet marketing copy on the manufacturer’s website claims that its filling has “all the nutrient benefits of eating cranberries, pomegranates, oranges, grapes, and strawberries!” Besides flour, sugar, palm oil, and dextrose, the remaining 2 percent of Mango Crèmes with NutriFusion includes corn syrup, leavening, natural and artificial flavor, corn starch, salt, and coconut, followed by “nutrients from natural whole food concentrate (cranberry, pomegranate, orange, grape, strawberry, shitake mushrooms).” Soy lecithin, citric acid, malic acid, and annatto color round out the list of ingredients. A serving of three cookies has 180 calories, 4 grams of saturated fat, and less than a gram of fiber. CSPI says the tiny amounts of nutrients from fruit concentrate don’t make the cookies remotely equivalent to fruit of any kind.
“The Girl Scouts should promote healthy eating through all of its educational activities, including fundraising,” wrote CSPI’s executive director Michael F. Jacobson and nutrition policy director Margo G. Wootan. “Sweet baked goods, including cookies, are a leading source of calories, sugars, and fats in Americans’ diets.”
With childhood obesity at a 30 year high, it is time to hold companies accountable for misleading marketing. Sweets including cookies can have a place in a healthy diet but thinking cookies are nutritiously equivalent to actual fruit is just misleading and untrue.
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