March 25, 2025 – Recent headlines sure sound scary. Someone's suing the Girl Scouts over reported toxins in their cookies. Sugar-free slushies send young kids to the hospital. Add to that the heavy metals found in protein powder and spices, and the toxins you're getting from food packaging, and you may start to wonder if anything is safe to eat.
"There comes a point where you could look at your kitchen and think that the boogeyman is in your refrigerator and in every cupboard," said Teresa Murray, a watchdog with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). "But that's probably not a good way to live."
If you dig a little deeper into these stories, you'll find that declaring something safe vs. toxic isn't as straightforward as it seems. Let's use the Girl Scout Cookies report as an example.
How Dangerous Are Girl Scout Cookies, Really?
Late last year, an organization called Moms Across America published a report on Girl Scout Cookies, citing independent research. Every cookie tested contained traces of glyphosate, a chemical found in weed killers, as well as five heavy metals: aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. The Girl Scouts refuted the report, but the claims gained traction after February 28, when podcaster Joe Rogan called them "toxic" on his show. Soon after, a class-action lawsuit was announced against the Girl Scouts and their bakers, alleging that the cookies contain dangerous levels of toxins.
Here's where the digging deeper part comes in: Moms Across America is an advocacy group that makes headlines with their own research, which is often disputed as cherry-picked or misleading. Previous targets include Chick-fil-A sandwiches, Trader Joe's, and even breast milk.
Regarding Girl Scout Cookies, experts note that the study wasn't peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal. The sample size was small, with just 25 cookies purchased across three states. And the report presents the findings in a misleading way, comparing them to standards established for water consumption, even though our bodies absorb toxins more readily from water than food.
Plus, just because a toxin exists in a food, that doesn't necessarily make it dangerous.
"Looking at the Peanut Butter Patties' lead level, a child would have to eat close to seven cookies in a day to exceed the FDA reference value for dietary intake of lead. Most children don't eat seven or more cookies per day," said Katarzyna Kordas, PhD, an associate professor of epidemiology and environmental health at the University at Buffalo School of Public Health. She studies the effects of heavy metals on human health, especially children's health.
"To go from, 'This is what we find in the cookies, or any other food,' to, 'This is harmful to children or humans in general,' is a big jump," she said. "We don't have the data to be able to say this."
What about the glyphosate? This herbicide, though dangerous to weeds, poses little threat to humans, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). And it's so common that an estimated 81% of the U.S. population has recently been exposed to it, says the CDC. The amount allegedly found in Girl Scout Cookies falls within EPA guidelines for consumption. While nobody's saying it's good for you, unless you're eating a lot of these cookies every day, it's not as threatening as the report suggests.
A spokesperson for Girl Scouts of the USA said, via email, "While we don't comment on pending litigation, we remain committed to vigorously defending ourselves against these allegations and supporting our Girl Scouts throughout the country who are actively learning entrepreneurial and leadership skills through the Girl Scout Cookie Program."
The Thing About Heavy Metals
Here's an unsettling fact: Many foods contain traces of heavy metals – including almost any packaged cookie you buy off the shelf. The FDA's Total Diet Study tested store-bought chocolate chip cookies, sandwich cookies, sugar cookies, and arrowroot cookies, and found remnants in samples of each. Which makes sense, really. It's hard to avoid something that occurs naturally all around us.
"They exist in crops, fruits, vegetables, because those things are grown in our soil and irrigated by our water, grown in our air," Kordas said. "Fundamentally, those are the sources of heavy metals: soil, water, and air."
Since heavy metals exist everywhere to some degree, tests discover them in all kinds of food, even if it's strictly organic. An organic carrot might have less lead or cadmium than its conventional counterpart, but it still has some.
Before you convince yourself it's not safe to eat anything, though, consider this: While we can measure metal in food, we don't know how much of it stays in your body.
"Whatever you're consuming comes with other things," Kordas said. "It's bound to fiber, it has iron, it has calcium, it has protein. All those things work to block some of that metal from being absorbed."
And with many metals, we don't know how much you'd need to consume, and how often, for it to affect your health. This makes it difficult to say decisively what could hurt you.
The Problem With Processing
Eating processed food magnifies your exposure to heavy metals and toxic chemicals. That includes even minimally processed fare: In one study, dried fruit had higher levels of heavy metals than fresh or frozen.
"For most products, the longer it takes for it to go from farm to fork, the more chance there is of something going wrong," Murray said. That might be from chemical preservatives or exposure to bacteria, or it could be what goes into the recipe. As tasty as Girl Scout Cookies are, every package lists at least a half-dozen ingredients. Trace amounts of toxins in simple things like wheat flour, vegetable oil, and cocoa can add up.
"Manufacturers have to source ingredients, which tend to be previously processed as well," said Adam Simpson, PhD, who studies food contaminants at the University of Southern California.
That includes – you guessed it – flour, oil, and cocoa. "If you are consuming food that is made up of previously processed foods," he said, "you're concentrating contaminants that build up over time."
The Simple Answer: Moderation
One problem with scary headlines is that they don't address how much you'd have to eat of a particular product before seeing any health effects. The easiest way to get around that lack of knowledge: Don't overdo it. As tempting as it may be to eat an entire sleeve of Thin Mints in one sitting, there's more than one reason why that's not a good idea.
Kordas has seen this in her research on lead exposure. "When kids eat a diet that's moderate, not too high in any one type of food, they do not have higher lead levels than other kids," she said.
As boring as it sounds to say, again, that we should eat everything in moderation, it really is your best protection against taking in too many toxins from food. Plus, it's a lot easier than renouncing Girl Scout Cookies forever. Try to consider highly processed foods a treat for special occasions, or maybe save them for weekends only, Simpson suggested.
"It's like how we tell pregnant women to lower their consumption of fish," he said. You don't have to just say no – you can simply say yes less often. "That might convince someone to buy a small bag of Oreos, as opposed to the Costco wholesale bulk size."
