Okay, so everyone knows it is Girl Scout Cookie season, right?

And I dutifully put in my order for 3 boxes – 2 Caramel deLites and 1 Shortbread.  Between placing my order and receiving them, I just happened to find something similar at Kroger, so I thought we’d do a little comparison:

First noticeable difference is the quantity.  Kroger gives 18, but Girl Scouts only give 15.

The ingredients and nutritional panel are virtually identical.   The Kroger brand has 0.5g more Saturated Fat, but 1g less sugars, and a bit more iron.   Also note, that both contain some high fructose corn syrup.  This box of Girl Scout Cookies was made at ABC Bakers/Interbake Foods LLC.   (A similar product, called Samoas, is baked by Little Brownie Bakers and claims on their web page to have No HFCS.)

You will also note that there is a color difference (Kroger brand is slighly darker), but they are the same size and both have 4 chocolate stripes across the top.  I also found no discernible taste difference, from organic chocolate chips for sale too.

The biggest difference is that the Girl Scout cookies cost $4.00 per box (in some parts of the country they are $5.00 a box), but the Kroger brand cost me $1.89.  The Girl Scout cookie is 26.6¢ per cookie, and the Kroger cookie is just 10.5¢ per cookie.

So, since they are virtually identical in every important way, you no longer have to wait until Girl Scout cookie season to enjoy the taste of their Caramel Delites/Samoas.  Certainly, the Girls Scouts of America deserve our support, but you can enjoy the cookies all year ’round.   🙂

Other than the shortbread cookies (which leave something to be desired) I don’t buy the other types of Girl Scout cookies.