NPR's defense of Girl Scout cookies crumbles under hypocrisy
A perennial champion of chemicals scares, NPR has suddenly found its science bona fides.
If NPR’s latest defense of Girl Scout cookies doesn’t leave you scratching your head, you might need to check your pulse. In an April 1 Planet Money piece titled “Crumbling trust in American institutions: A MAHA activist takes on Girl Scout cookies,” the public radio titan took a swing at Zen Honeycutt, the Moms Across America activist who’s convinced Thin Mints are a toxic Trojan horse stuffed with heavy metals and pesticides.
NPR’s counterpunch was crisp: a Michigan State toxicologist calmly explained that a 70-pound child would need to scarf down 73,000 cookies a day—roughly a warehouse’s worth—to flirt with any semblance of danger.
Fair enough—science for the win, right? But here’s the rub: NPR’s been peddling the same breathless food-scare nonsense it now smugly debunks, from lead-laced baby food to glyphosated granola bars, for at least a decade. Back then, NPR didn’t bother with pesky context—like the FDA’s decades-long policy of monitoring and recalling anything remotely unsafe. Now, with a GOP-aligned activist in their crosshairs, they’ve discovered basic toxicology and regulatory competence.
Apparently, the only thing crumbling faster than trust in institutions is NPR’s memory of its own reporting—or its willingness to admit it’s been playing both sides of the scare-story game all along.
NPR’s long history of chemical scares
The same fundamental science NPR championed in its April 1 story perfectly debunks every alarmist tale about food chemicals the news outlet has amplified over the years. Take this 2023 piece about lead in baby food, which erroneously warned that parents should “offer toddlers and young children sliced or pureed fruit … because some fruit juices can contain concerning levels of heavy metals.” That's just wrong. The FDA routinely monitors heavy metals and other chemicals in commercially available foods and will recall any product that violates its conservative safety thresholds for any harmful contaminant.
This has been standard practice for decades, yet somehow NPR failed to highlight such a crucial detail in its past reporting about chemicals in chocolate, fruit juice and even deli meat. Only now, when there are political brownie points to be earned for promoting science, has NPR abandoned its penchant for hysteria.
Remember when Girl Scout cookies were bad?
The most egregious example of this hypocrisy is found in NPR’s past coverage of Girl Scout cookies. For example, in a 2023 All Things Considered segment, “This Girl Scout is a vocal critic of the Girl Scout cookies and is making her own,” NPR lamented that palm oil, a commonly used baking ingredient, “causes 2% of major deforestation and climate change.” There was no mention of contrary data showing that deforestation has been in free fall since the 1980s, nor that palm production accounts for just one percent of the world's felled forests.
The same inconsistency permeated a 2014 piece in which NPR asked rhetorically whether Girl Scout cookies are good for the world. Quoting a cardiologist, NPR argued “that selling high-fat sugar-laden cookies to an increasingly calorie-addicted populace is no longer congruent with [the Girl Scouts' aim to make the world a better place]."
When critics told NPR that the iconic cookies are clearly marketed–once a year–as occasional treats, the news outlet retorted, “that argument just doesn't fly anymore,” in part because of the “addictive relationship we now have with sugary foods.”
Compare that inflammatory rhetoric to yesterday’s story, where NPR dismissed MAA’s cookie critique as a credibility issue fueled by Americans “fed an information diet from social media and subversive podcasts,” who “seem to increasingly distrust the experts and regulatory authorities.” Same cookies, same science, different politics—suddenly, the food safety debate is settled when conservatives are the bogeymen.
NPR: we're all trying to find the guy who did this!
NPR’s not wrong that trust is fraying. Gallup’s 2024 polls show public confidence in media and government at historic lows. As a career trial lawyer and professional scaremonger, RFK, Jr. is undoubtedly an important contributor to that dwindling trust, as we've reported on multiple occasions, including just last week. The same could be said for many of Kennedy’s right-wing MAHA compatriots; now that their leftist opponents are pro-science, they’re reflexively skeptical of established medical wisdom.
The oft-ignored fact is that media outlets like NPR deserve just as much, and arguably more, blame for lending their mainstream credibility to meritless scare stories as they see fit. NPR’s bias isn’t just a matter of red-state-blue-state scorekeeping—it’s a deeper, murkier habit of cozying up to fanatics and ambulance-chasers who thrive on turning molehills into mountains of dread.
These aren’t dispassionate scientists or regulators with decades of data; they’re crusaders armed with flimsy studies and a knack for PR stunts. NPR laps it up, giving airtime to their feverish warnings—think 2024’s rehashed hormone-disrupting-cosmetics scare, courtesy of the Environmental Working Group. The result? A steady drip of fear that drives the dramatic David-versus-Goliath narratives, where the “little guy” just happens to have a megaphone and a legal retainer.
By cherry-picking when to hype chemical risks (glyphosate yesterday, PFAS the day after) and when to soothe them (cookies today), NPR has tipped their hand, exposing an obviously fair-weather interest in science.
The Girl Scout saga isn’t just about crumbling institutions—it’s about NPR’s crumbling consistency. They’ve cried wolf on chemicals so often that when conservatives do it, NPR’s sudden “trust the experts” act rings hollow, a political dodge, not a scientific stand. Next time they lecture us about trust, they might check their own mirror first.