What's the Healthiest Girl Scout Cookie?

It's that time again!  Girl Scout cookies are out on the market.  Since they hold a special place in my heart, I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to see which ones are the best and which ones are the worst.  Honestly, they're all cookies, so it's safe to assume they are not healthy.  Regardless, I am curious to see what the nutrition information is.

So the random question of the day is:

What's the Healthiest Girl Scout Cookie?

I went to the official Girl Scout Cookie website, and here's what I found:

 

 

When I compare labels, I typically like to look at:

• Serving size
• Calories
• Saturated fat
• Sodium
• Fiber
• Sugar
• Vitamins and minerals

Serving size:

• Normally, I like to break down nutrition information to make the serving sizes match.  Since all of these look pretty close even though the serving size varies between 2 and 5 cookies, I’m going to leave the comparison in terms of suggested serving size.  It wouldn’t really work to compare them using 1 cookie since they all are different sizes.

Calories:

• The cookie with the smallest amount of Calories is Thank You Berry Much – 120 
• The cookies that tied for the highest are Thin Mints, Trefoils, Do-si-dos, and Dulce de Leche – 160 Calories per serving

Saturated fat: 

I like to look at saturated fat instead of total fat.  Total fat includes the healthy and the unhealthy kinds.
Saturated fat is considered the “bad” fat, so I don’t even usually bother with total.

• The cookie with the least amount of saturated fat is the Cranberry Citrus Crisp coming in at 0.
• Samaos have the most saturated fat.  At 30% DV, this is high in saturated fat, and I’m assuming it’s giving you close to 1/3 of the recommended amount because of the coconut.  Although delicious, coconut is one of the few plant sources that’s high in saturated fat.  Another contender that is super high in saturated fat, palm oil, happens to be a staple in Girl Scout cookies – exciting.

Sodium 

What I thought was interesting is that all of these cookies are low in sodium, meaning they are 140 mg or less.

• Samoas have the least amount of sodium – 60 mg 
• The cookies that tied for the highest are Savannah Smiles and Thin Mints – 125 mg

Fiber:

• Honestly, these all suck lol.  None of these cookies has more than 1 gram of fiber, so I’m not going to nitpick this.  Moving on…
  

Sugar:

• The cookies with the smallest amount of sugar are the Trefoils and Thank You Berry Much – 7 grams per serving 
• The cookies that tied for the highest are Somoas, Do-si-dos, and Thanks A Lot – 11 grams

Vitamins and minerals:

• All of these cookies are low in vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, and iron.  I’m not even going to compare them since they are all low (0-5% DV)

After considering all of these criteria, the winner for the healthiest Girl Scout cookie is:

Tagalongs!

Just kidding, but they are my favorite.

The actual winner is the Thank You Berry Much cookie.  Granted, it’s still a cookie, but it is the lesser of 12 evils.  The problem I have with this cookie is that I’ve never actually seen it.  Now it may not even be an option in my region, but my eyes go straight towards my favorites: the Samoas (which are probably the worst), the Tagalongs, and my husband’s favorite, the Savannah Smiles.  So I’m willing to bet most people don’t even know that Thank You Berry Much is an option let alone the healthiest.

After it’s all said and done, though, I have to point out that most people do not eat the suggested serving size.  My brain actually has a frequent battle with my belly, insisting that 1 row = 1 serving, which we all know is not what the manufacturer suggests.  So it doesn’t really matter which one is the healthiest and which one is the worst if we can’t practice self-control with either of them.   It’s pretty hard to keep your waistline low and your healthy high while eating an entire box of cookies.