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Girl Scout Cookie Season: survival guide

Posted by Michael.

While paying proper respect to St Patrick’s Day Season, we should also note the onset of another calorie-consuming tradition that is soon upon us.

Very kindly, WebMD has put out a survival guide for GSC Season although that can be somewhat misleading; just like a sugar-free poptart or a “light” beer, eating/drinking 100 of them will still cause a bit of weight gain.

Apparently there are two new less-unhealthy options of which I was unaware:

  • Cinna-spins come in 100-calorie pouches topping out at only 2 grams of fat, 1 gram saturated fat, and 8 grams of sugar.
  • Sugar-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies have 0 grams sugar (but 7 grams of sugar alcohol that’s mostly not digested). But they’re relatively high in fat (9 grams per serving) and calories (160 per serving).

The overall list:

*Cinna-Spins (1 pouch = 15 mini cookies; 24 grams weight)

*Lowest in fat; lowest in saturated fat; lowest in calories

 2. *Shortbread (4 cookies; 26 grams)

*Lowest in sugar among the regular cookies

3. Do-si-dos (2 cookies; 24 grams)

4. Lemon Chalet Cremes (2 cookies; 32 grams)

5. Peanut Butter Sandwich (3 cookies, 35 grams)

6. Thanks-A-Lot (2 cookies, 31 grams)

7. Trefoils (5 cookies, 33 grams)

8. All Abouts (3 cookies, 30 grams)

9. Thin Mints from Little Brownie Bakers (4 cookies, 32 grams)

10. Lemonades (2 cookies, 31 grams)

11. *Caramel deLites (2 cookies, 28 grams)

12. Peanut Butter Patties (2 cookies, 28 grams)

13. Samoas from Little Brownie Bakers (2 cookies, 31 grams)

14. *Thin Mints from ABC Bakers (4 cookies, 33 grams)

*Tied with Caramel deLites for the highest in saturated fat

15. Sugar Free Chocolate Chips (3 cookies, 34 grams)

*Highest in fiber; Lowest in sugar

16. *Tagalongs from Little Brownie Bakers (2 cookies, 27 grams)

[*Highest in fat]

  

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 8:12 pm and is filed under companies, food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Girl Scout Cookie Season: survival guide”

  1. Michael Says:
    March 11th, 2008 at 8:14 pm Using Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.12 on Mac OS Mac OS X

    The comment on trans-fats is interesting/educational:

    What About Trans Fats in Girl Scout Cookies?

    As of 2007, all varieties of Girl Scout cookies contain “zero trans fat per serving,” Thompkins says. But you might notice in the list of ingredients that some of the cookies contain partially hydrogenated oils, which are how trans fats are made.

    So how can they claim to have zero trans fats? These cookies meet or exceed the FDA guidelines for the “zero trans fat” designation because they contain less than 0.5 grams trans fat per serving.

    So if you eat two servings of cookies (or more), particularly those that list partially hydrogenated oils among their first four ingredients, you might get close to taking in a gram of trans fat.

  2. Nathaniel Says:
    March 12th, 2008 at 9:32 am Using OmniWeb OmniWeb on Mac OS Mac OS X

    I got a box of Samoas when I was in Seattle last week. Mmmmm, good. It bothers me a little bit though that they make Samoas and Carmel deLights as a cave to political correctness. As far as I can tell, they’re the same thing. I grew up with them being Samoas and I think they should stay for historical reasons. Then again, if I were from Samoa I might think differently.

  3. Jules Says:
    March 12th, 2008 at 11:15 am Using Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.12 on Mac OS Mac OS X

    That’s interesting. I always knew them as caramel delights. I think they are slightly different, too. I thought that the Samoas had less caramel.

  4. Nathaniel Says:
    March 12th, 2008 at 2:44 pm Using OmniWeb OmniWeb on Mac OS Mac OS X

    All I know is that in maybe 1994 or so they switched from being Samoas to Carmel DeLights. I thought they were exactly the same thing and the switch was just ot be politically correct. It wasn’t until the last three or so years that I started seeing Samoas again.

  5. Michael Says:
    March 12th, 2008 at 9:23 pm Using Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.12 on Mac OS Mac OS X

    I hadn’t realized that “they” (the Girl Scouts?) contracted out to two different baking companies. So it’s quite possible that the change in name coincided with a change in company/recipe? Dunno.

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