Girl Scout Scandal

I admit it, I stashed a few boxes of Girl Scout cookies on the shelf in my office, for days just like today. Today I broke open the Peanut Butter Patties. As I snacked, I read the label. Zero grams of trans fat. Good, I watch what I eat, and trans fats are right at the top of the list of things I avoid. When I bought them from my niece, I made sure that I picked the ones with none of that bad stuff.

Then my eyes glanced at the list of ingredients. There it was. "One or more of the following partially hydrogenated oils: palm kernel, soybean, cottonseed, palm."

Did my eyes deceive me, or did the box say there were no trans fat but list partially hydrogenated oil as an ingredient? I had to get to the bottom of this.

Well, here's the scoop. When the FDA created the new rule forcing food distributors to put the amount of trans fat on the label, they made an important exception. If the amount per serving is less than half a gram, they are allowed to list it as zero grams.

What this means is that when you sit down and eat your realistic serving of peanut butter patties (I won't tell you how many I ate today, but it was more than the official serving size of two cookies), you are probably getting a gram or more of trans fat.

So, the Girl Scouts are just playing within the rules supplied by the FDA, right? What could be wrong with that?

Well, when the Girl Scouts proudly announce that they have made several of their cookie flavors trans fat free and use that as marketing information, when in fact they are not trans fat free, they are sending a very bad message to the girls. They are teaching them that it is ok to lie just a bit, as long as it helps sell your product and as long as the lie is pretty much in line with government rules.

Sounds like these girls are going to grow up to be fine members of Congress!

I guess that's the way the cookie crumbles.