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Granted, Girl Scout cookies are not exactly diet food. That said, The Columbus Dispatch came across a tasty little story about Girl Scouts' Thin Mints cookies, which account for about a quarter of all of the group's cookie sales. Some Thin Mints are trans-fat free, but others are not. Two bakeries make the Thin Mints; one uses trans fats and the other does not. It all depends on which bakery your local Girl Scouts use to fill their orders. The Dispatch explains: 

Turns out the most popular Girl Scout cookie differs depending on the part of the country where it's sold.

 

Despite recent news reports suggesting otherwise, Thin Mints sold in central Ohio aren't free of trans fat -- just what America's 16th-fattest city (according to Men's Fitness magazine) needs.

 

But hold on: The Thin Mints sold in Columbus are lower in total fat than their trans-fat-free counterparts.

 

How does one organization sell two different cookies?

 

Marion Swan, spokeswoman for the national Girl Scouts organization, said the group's cookies are made by two bakeries: ABC/Interbake Foods in Richmond, Va., and Little Brownie Bakers in Louisville, Ky.

 

Each of the 300-plus Girl Scout councils nationwide decides which bakery to buy from, Swan said.

 

The cookies in central Ohio, which went on sale last week, come from Little Brownie. Unlike ABC, Little Brownie doesn't make a Thin Mint free of trans fat. Medical researchers consider trans fat the least healthful sort of fat.

 

Each [serving of] Thin Mints, [equal to four cookies] from Little Brownie contains 1 gram of trans fat from partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.

 

The Scouts' effort to rid trans fat from food products stems from a new law that forces manufacturers to declare the level of trans fat on labels.

 

ABC figured out how to make a Thin Mint taste like a Thin Mint without trans fat. Not so with Little Brownie.  

In 2005, The New York Times raised the trans-fat issue and mentioned the smoldering conversation about whether an organization for kids should be selling cookies to start with, considering the national problems with childhood obesity.

From CalorieKing.com, here is a summary of the "nutritional" information for each Girl Scout cookie on the market:

• Aloha Chips
• Apple Cinnamon
• Do-si-dos
• Lemon Drops
• Samosas
• Tagalongs
• Thin Mints
• Trefoils
  

The New York Times story included this passage:

At least all the cookies are kosher.

In reply, the national office of the Girl Scouts of the USA has an official statement. "We look at cookies as a treat," said Marion Swan, the communications director. "They shouldn't be a big part of somebody's diet." Besides, the cookies aren't really the point. Their sale helps troops raise money and teaches girls life skills like goal setting and entrepreneurship, Ms. Swan said.

Portion Control

The St. Petersburg Times ran a useful piece on out-of-control portion sizes. The story zeroes in on the example of the "signature burrito" at Chipotle (a Mexican grill), which weighs in at more than 2 pounds and contains 1,000 calories and 40 grams of fat (PDF).

The story includes this passage:

Lisa R. Young, author of "The Portion Teller: Smartsize Your Way to Permanent Weight Loss" (Morgan Road Books, 2004), says, "The restaurant is not the food police. You've got to be your own portion police."

Young is a New York University nutrition instructor and researcher who has claimed for years that growing portions, especially from restaurants, have contributed to the expanding waistlines of Americans.

 

Some of Young's "portion shockers":

• A glass of wine at a restaurant or bar is about twice as large as it was in the 1970s.
• A typical muffin is more than 6 ounces and is more than an entire day's worth of grains recommended by government nutritionists.
• In 1960, a common portion of pasta was 11/2 cups. Forty years later, 3 cups of pasta is a "normal" serving.

And so on. When did everything get so out of whack?

 

"It started slowly, because it went up in increments," Young says. "We didn't notice it until we went 'wow.' The sizes are so big today, c'mon, it's like a joke."

 

The food we are eating more of, such as pasta, movie popcorn and soda, is inexpensive to provide, Young says. "Even red meat is relatively cheap."

 

For example, switching from a 6-inch to 12-inch tuna sub at Subway costs only 47 percent more but has 100 percent more calories, Young writes.

To help you visualize an appropriate portion, the article provides these comparisons:

A leafy green salad, broiled fish, mixed vegetables and whole-wheat pasta with fresh tomato sauce is a healthy dinner if you get your proportions right. Here is a cheat sheet from "The Portion Teller" by Lisa R. Young:

Tossed salad = 2 baseballs

Olive oil dressing = 1/2 shot glass

Broiled fish = 1 checkbook

Mixed vegetables = 1 baseball

Drizzle of olive oil on veggies = 1 water bottle cap

Pasta = 1 baseball

Tomato sauce = 1/2 baseball

Parmesan cheese = 1/2 walnut

Home Burned Compact Discs May Only Last a Few Years

If you are saving important data, movies or photographs on CDs or DVDs you may think that data will last for decades. It may not.

In fact, the lifespan may be a lot shorter than you think. The IDG News Service reported:

Unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life span of between two to five years, depending on the quality of the CD," Kurt Gerecke, a physicist and storage expert at IBM Deutschland, says. "There are a few things you can do to extend the life of a burned CD, like keeping the disc in a cool, dark space, but not a whole lot more."

 

The problem is material degradation. Optical discs commonly used for burning, such as CD-R and CD-RW, have a recording surface consisting of a layer of dye that can be modified by heat to store data. The degradation process can result in the data "shifting" on the surface and thus becoming unreadable to the laser beam.

 

"Many of the cheap burnable CDs available at discount stores have a life span of around two years," Gerecke says. "Some of the better-quality discs offer a longer life span, of a maximum of five years."

 

Distinguishing high-quality burnable CDs from low-quality discs is difficult, he says, because few vendors use life span as a selling point.

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I love to pass along cool Web sites that journalists can use. This is one of them.

This is NOT the FlightTracker that we all know about that lets you see one airplane's progress. This site, FlightAware.com, lets you look at EVERY flight that has filed a flight plan anywhere in the country.

My friend, KTHV Little Rock anchor Andy Pierson, who is an experienced pilot, tells me:

The user can key-in their local airport and see any flight live on radar that has filed a flight plan. This includes general aviation, commercial flights and differentiates between arriving and departing flights and flights transitioning through the area. Double click the radar screen on the home page and you'll be updated every five minutes.

 

On the left side of the screen, you will see hundreds of red dots plotted on the map. These are all the planes in the air. If you double click that screen twice, you'll see cool animation on what the typical day in U.S. airspace looks like.

You will see a lot of numbers on the screen. The ones that start with "N" are the tail numbers, which are extremely useful to figure out what kind of plane this is. Here is a tip for journalists: Plug the "N" number into a regular Google search and you will get the aircraft registration and often a photograph of THAT aircraft.

Andy tells me that the FlightAware site includes some other numbers that he has figured out. The flight number is followed by the flights' altitude (for example 340 is 34,000 feet, 34 is 3,400 feet) and then the speed in knots, MPH is determined by multiplying by 1.15.

If a crash occurs the user just has to enter a tail number and this site will tell you where the flight was coming from, where it had been earlier in the day, and where last radar echo came from -- assuming there was a flight plan filed.

Drinking on the Job

Results of a new study by the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) were reported in the current issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol, which says about 7 percent of American workers drink on the job. The most common time for "on the clock" drinking is lunchtime.

The study estimates that:

2.3 million workers (1.8 percent of the workforce) have consumed alcohol at least once before coming to work and 8.9 million workers (7.1 percent of the workforce) have consumed alcohol at least once during the workday. Most workers who drink during the workday do so during lunch breaks, though some drink while working or during other breaks.

The study also estimates that 11.6 million workers (about one out of 10 American workers) worked with a hangover in the last year.

And people who work non-standard hours -- such as a late or overnight shift -- were the most likely to have been drinking before they report to work, according to the research. Those working nonstandard shifts were also the most likely to drink on the job.