The Girl Scouts have been sued by consumers over the alleged presence of “heavy metals” and pesticides in its popular Thin Mints and other cookies.
A proposed class action lawsuit was filed on Monday night in federal court in the New York City borough of Brooklyn against the 113-year-old nonprofit and the cookies’ licensed producers, ABC Bakers and Ferrero USA’s Little Brownie Bakers.
It cited a December 2024 study commissioned by GMO Science and Moms Across America that tested samples of 25 cookies from three U.S. states.
The study said Girl Scout cookies contained at least four of five heavy metals - aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury - that can harm people’s health or the environment, often at levels exceeding regulators’ recommended limits.
It also said all samples contained glyphosate, a pesticide used in some weed killers, with Thin Mints containing the highest levels.
The testing and warnings have been called into question by other scientists and Snopes, but the article is primarily about the lawsuit, so I will leave it up.
commissioned by GMO Science and Moms Across America
Very sus sponsors, probably not the most trustworthy
I always get a laugh at the GMO-free logo on Corn products
Not going to spend an hour on this, but detectable does not mean dangerous. All samples in the report I skimmed were not dangerous levels of arsenic according to the EPA ( < 10 ppb ) after a quick Google search.
Special interest groups fanning flames? Meh, probably; moving on. Cookies tasty.
This reminds me of the heavy metals in vapes studies where the news articles were freaking out, but if you looked at the actual numbers most were less than atmospheric levels.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/02/12/girl-scout-cookies-toxic/
No one can eat 9,000 a day?
I dunno, I worked with a guy who hoovered up oreos like that was the reason he worked there. I can’t say if he ever hit 9,000 in a shift, but I wasn’t always within line of sight.
Well not with that attitude, anyway
I accept your challenge.
This is shit, I looked at the EU limits on cadmium/lead per the lab reports https://gmoscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GSC-HeavyMetalsReports.pdf and EU limits https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32023R0915 (mg/kg == ppm, ug/kg == ppb) and their heavy metal amounts are very low.
For the aluminum the EU recommends 1 mg/kg per week on avg - but this EU report makes clear that ~10 mg/kg in baked goods is the norm https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2008.754 . So that’s even fine.
I don’t care to go into the pesticides but since the metal levels are good to fine but presented as horrendous, I would suspect the pesticide levels are overinflated as well.
Not gonna say GS are infallible, but there’s probably a venn diagram with this group and people who think GS exploits children for profit.
Explains why they taste so bad
The cookies in my box :
🤘🤘🤘🤘
🤘🤘🤘🤘
🤘🤘🤘🤘
