Girl's Scouts of America, Selling Bad Health

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Girl's Scouts of America, Selling Bad Health
Scout's Dishonor
Merit Badge in obesity
I have to give credit where it's due. Lately, the problem of obesity, especially among children, has been making headlines and newscasts in a big way (it's only 30 years overdue, but better late than never), and that's a good thing.
Spurred by increasing rates of diabetes, obesity, heat disease, and cancer - plus the success of the Atkins and other low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets - school systems, food manufacturers, fast-food restaurants and other fat-fostering entities are finally making changes. Whether they're making the RIGHT changes is another story.
But apparently, the Girl Scouts of America have missed the boat on this movement altogether. According to a recent New York Times article, they're still selling $400 million worth of absolutely nutrition-less, sugar- and trans fats-saturated cookies to folks across the country every year.
Now, if ever there were an organization that should be devoted to eliminating obesity and promoting the health of our nation's youth, it's the nearly 4-million members of the Girl Scouts, right? I mean, with those kinds of numbers, they could really be a force for good in the children's nutrition arena.
But instead, they've simply become another in a long line of junk-food purveyors like Kraft, Keebler, Tastykake, and Little Debbie. According to the Times piece, a GSA spokesperson claims that sales of the cookies are all about teaching girls valuable skills like goal setting and entrepreneurship, not dietary choices. If that's the case, why aren't they selling Girl Scout Steaks or Girl Scout Almonds? Because compared to the sugary junk foods most Americans grow up learning to eat, these things wouldn't rake in a tenth of the profit those cookies do.
They KNOW they're doing the wrong thing, too. Apparently, the GSA released a 35-page health report to the public last year titled Weighing In: Helping Girls Be Healthy Today, Healthy Tomorrow. Cookies aren't part of the report's recommendations, the Times says. What hypocrites! On the one hand, they're advising us how to raise healthy kids, and on the other, they're destroying people's health by door-to-door guilt-tripping them into buying millions of dollars worth of heart-murdering sugar-bombs.
As if this isn't bad enough, the GSA has faced heat in the past few years about not only the trans-fat contents of their cookies, but also a child-labor scandal in the manufacturing of their confections.
Look, I'm not trying to be hard-hearted here; I'm just calling it like I see it. And Girl Scout Cookies are a murderous racket. Stop buying them and maybe they'll start being a force toward the TRUE health of our nation's youth.
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Glutton for "bun"ishment?
You know I'm a big fan of healthy red meat, but even I wouldn't recommend eating a six-pound hamburger in one sitting!
Yet according to a recent AP story, that's exactly what one New Jersey 19-year-old recently did at a Clearfield, Pennsylvania restaurant that boasts what must surely be the world's largest burger: A 96-ounce monster with 5 pounds of fixins - including 1 whole onion, 2 whole tomatoes, 1 whole head of lettuce, 1.25 pounds of cheese, 1 cup each of mayo, mustard, ketchup, and relish, plus two enormous bun-halves.
The restaurant, Denny's Beer Barrel Pub, issues a standing challenge to all comers: Eat the burger and all its trimmings in less than 3 hours and it's free. Since the meal's introduction on Super Bowl Sunday in 1998, no one has done it successfully. Not that many haven't tried - one 420-pound world-renowned competitive eater's best time downing the behemoth burger (it took him 3 tries just to finish it) was 7.5 hours!
What makes this story of gluttony even more incredible is this: The kid who polished the "96er" off in a tidy 2 hours, 54 minutes (on the first attempt, too) isn't some hulking college-football linebacker, Sumo wrestler, or Olympic weightlifter-in-training...
But a 100-pound girl! Yep, that's right. The petite College of New Jersey sophomore ate 11 pounds worth of food, more than a tenth of her body weight, in one 3-hour sitting. And apparently, with no lasting ill effects.
As incredible as this is, I'd never let anyone I care about do it. Meat's good for you, but a ruptured stomach isn't.
But hey, at least it wasn't 6 pounds worth of Girl Scout Cookies. Anyone who did that might REALLY be in trouble...
Always scouting out the truth,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD

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