It is a sad time to be a Girl Scout. First cookie sales are down due to the recession, and now they’re taking away the badges!

The biggest change is last year’s debut of Journeys, a pilot curriculum that will mostly replace the system of earning badges on specific topics. Girls still will be able to earn badges if they want, but Journeys rarely mentions them, focusing instead on broader themes, including teamwork and healthy living.

What kind of farce is this? Healthy living lectures from the demon distributors of Samoas and Thin Mints and Tagalongs? Ha! They can talk as much as they want about teamwork, but I remember what Girl Scouts was really about – tacky glue, fights over who lit the match to start the campfire, and BADGES. Lots and lots of badges. So many badges that yo’ mamma better learn to sew.

Here I am in 2nd grade in my Brownie Girl Scout jumper, with matching shoes, socks and striped shirt. I was the kind of Brownie you can’t eat. (If you’re not a [...]

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It’s Girl Scout cookie time and I have yet to eat a Thin Mint or a Samoa or a Tagalong. (Mmmm, Tagalongs.) I wish I could only buy a couple cookies at a time because I don’t trust myself with an entire box. I’m trying to visualize a world in which I only eat 2 or 3 crunchy cookies of mint chocolate goodness a day even though there’s a whole box sitting in my cupboard. Honestly, it’s easier to imagine a world where Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama bake Girl Scout cookies together while singing Eminem songs. As unlikely as the second scenario is, I can actually imagine it in my head. The first situation, not so much.

Which brings me back to the idea of food addiction, something I’ve been pondering on and off the past couple months ever since I read that book, Hungry by Allen Zadoff. I’m still not sure what to make of the concept of food addiction, though Zadoff is a firm believer in it. However, reading that book did [...]

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