Girl Scout Cookies. Synonymous with childhood, community, and trust. An annual tradition where young girls sell boxes to fund their activities.
A new investigation has ripped away the facade.
Here is what they found inside these iconic cookies:
• 100% contained Glyphosate, the controversial herbicide in Roundup.
• 88% contained toxic heavy metals: Arsenic, Lead, and Mercury.
• Thin Mints had glyphosate levels 334 TIMES higher than what experts consider harmful.
• Peanut Butter Patties were laden with Lead and alarming levels of Aluminum.
This isn't just "unhealthy." It is systemic poisoning, wrapped in nostalgia and sold by children.
The organization, Girl Scouts USA, generates nearly $800 million in annual revenue from this. When presented with these findings, their response was a deafening silence.
Pretty shocking BUT to be fair they taste like crap. When I was a kid I did like them. We thought they were special- could only get them once a year through a girl scout but I had a thin mint a few years ago and it just wasn’t good. They had to have gone out of their way to make them so bad for you.
This certainly sent me down a new interesting rabbit hole.
I won't say where but one of my first engineering jobs involved the production of the dark hard biscuit portion of the Oreo cookies.
The plant I worked at had been producing the biscuit since the 1950's. I was there in the 1990's and I can guarantee you that we did NOT add any abnormal metals. I know this because I was tasked with programming the ladder logic of the cocoa processing vats. Other than our steel and stainless steel screw conveyors, I see no other means for metals to end up in the food. The study states that aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury we found but I can't see where that would occur as all food production plants have to pass FDA inspections and are required to use "Edible grease" meaning that the bearings in our mixers, gearboxes, conveyors and roasters had to use lubricants with natural fatty acids and mineral oils.
In 1988 the food industry requested that synthetic lubricants be introduced and tested as a more durable lubricant (The plant I worked at was very old and hadn't yet switched to synthetics).
We didn't compress the "cooked" cocoa into the biscuit shape so I can't tell you what Nabisco put into them after they left our plant. The recipe was kept secret and we needed special clearance to badge into that portion of the plant.
According to Grok:
🟢 2001 – Post-9/11 Food Defense Enhancements
Change: Following the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 (effective 2003, with precursor guidance in 2001), the FDA tightened oversight of food contact substances, including lubricants (66 FR 6138, January 19, 2001).
Details: Required registration of food facilities and prior notice of imports, indirectly affecting lubricant use by mandating safer processing aids to prevent contamination risks.
Impact: Reinforced the need for food-grade lubricants in high-risk facilities, though no new chemical limits were added.
🟢 2011 – Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Implementation Change:
Enacted in January 2011, FSMA’s preventive controls (21 CFR 117, finalized 2015) indirectly updated lubricant standards by requiring Hazard Analysis and Risk-Based Preventive Controls (HARPC) (80 FR 55908, September 17, 2015).
Details: Facilities must assess lubricant-related risks (e.g., contamination from leaks) and use only FDA-compliant products. No specific lubricant revision, but enforcement tightened.
Impact: Increased scrutiny on lubricant application, favoring H1-certified options, though not a direct standard change.
🟢 2017 – Minor Technical Update Change:
Amended 21 CFR 178.3570 (82 FR 29745, June 30, 2017) to clarify labeling and update approved antioxidants (e.g., BHT, TBHQ) based on new safety data.
Details: Adjusted to reflect current good manufacturing practices (cGMPs) and minor ingredient tolerances.
Impact: Ensured alignment with evolving chemical safety profiles, with no major shift in policy.
Was the 2002 "Anthrax attack" a means to sneak in more government authority, oversight (spying) and recommendations (poisoning) using only FDA approved (harmful) ingredients?
Those food plants that didn't comply with using the new FDA approved poisons were at risk of being non-compliant and banned?
According to Grok, the FDA approved synthetic lubricants don't contain any Aluminum, Arsenic, Cadmium, Lead, or Mercury.
So at what point are they covertly added? 🤔
Very interesting. Appreciate you sharing this. Love getting this level of insight from an expert.
I met my wife of 40 years at the Nabisco Brands Research Center, then located in Wilton, CT. She worked in nuts and confections and I worked in International division, formulating of all things, cold water soluble gelatin. I used to wonder at the time: was there no ability to obtain hot water in Botswana?
Strange request indeed. Wonder if it they were targeting the foods that kids gravitate towards.
Once it warms in your stomach, I wonder if the special gelatin chemicals can then permeate our digestive tract and travel where normal foods don't.
I was working mostly with Polysorbate composition ratios. Not rocket science, really. Used babylonian-level tech: vacuum drum drying followed by particle sizing of gelatin batches. No mystery physiological outcomes. Polysorbate sugars are food/pharma grade surfactants used in many products.