It's been a great year for Zen Honeycutt and her grassroots advocacy group Moms Across America.
President Trump appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a longtime ally and adviser to her organization — to become the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Honeycutt, who considers herself part of Kennedy's "Making America Healthy Again" (MAHA) movement, literally cried tears of joy when she heard Kennedy was selected. And she traveled to Capitol Hill, where she had a front-row seat at Kennedy's Senate confirmation hearing.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., cited her organization's work when introducing a bill to eliminate toxic substances in school lunches and increase support for organic farmers and others who farm using sustainable practices.
After years of having her research and advocacy dismissed as fringe, kooky or ignorable by mainstream media outlets, scientists, regulators and much of the public, Honeycutt's organization recently co-sponsored a study that got lots of people talking about toxic contaminants in the U.S. food supply.
The study made a big splash probably because it focused on something as American as apple pie: Girl Scout cookies. It found trace amounts of heavy metals (arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury), aluminum and an herbicide called glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weed killer Roundup, in the cookies.
"This is not just about Girl Scout cookies," Honeycutt says. "Pretty much all cookies, unless they're organic, are gonna have probably the same results."
In fact, a lot of food in general — anything that's not organic — is probably going to have similar results. Basically by definition, non-organic, conventional foods are exposed to synthetic pesticides and herbicides like glyphosate. And heavy and other metals can be found in lots of foods, including organic foods, because they're often found in the environment, including the soil that plants absorb and animals then eat.
At least two fact-checking sites have investigated this study of Girl Scout cookies and have concluded that its findings are "misleading" and, basically, not as scary as they may sound. We spoke with a toxicologist, Joe Zagorski at Michigan State University's Center for Research on Ingredient Safety, who said something similar. Zagorski criticized the cookie study for its small sample size (25 cookies), its lack of peer review and other methodological issues. And he contended that the levels of heavy metals, aluminum and herbicide that the study found in the cookies are not dangerous.
The level of glyphosate found in the Girl Scout cookies, for example, is so extremely small, Zagorski says, that a 70-pound child "would have to eat over 73,000 cookies a day to reach a level that could cause concern" over their lifetime. Look, maybe I could do it, but … that's a lot of cookies.
Zagorski says it's a similar story with the trace amounts of heavy metals and aluminum found in the cookies. This is all OK, he assured us. There's a saying in toxicology: "The dosage makes the poison." And this dosage, he says, according to a lot of peer-reviewed scientific evidence and government regulatory standards, is so low that it's not a concern.
The study, nonetheless, has proved to be a PR nightmare for the Girl Scouts. It went viral on social media and was referenced by juggernaut podcaster Joe Rogan. It even recently inspired a pending class-action lawsuit against the Girl Scouts, which generated another wave of bad press.
"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," said a Girl Scouts of the USA spokesperson. The Girl Scouts published a blog post in February addressing the study and assured cookie eaters that "Girl Scout Cookies are safe to consume and are manufactured in accordance with all food safety regulations."
Criticisms of Moms Across America's study aside, the attention it has received could be seen as a win for Honeycutt's goals of getting more Americans to reconsider what they put into their bodies, avoid conventional foods and buy organic, and question whether food companies and the government are doing a good enough job of making sure our food is safe.
This whole saga shines a spotlight on the rising levels of distrust in American institutions. In 2025, no organization is above suspicion, even the Girl Scouts. And this breakdown of trust complicates solutions to a core economic problem we face in our consumer society: We often lack complete information about the things we consume, and we rely on trust in authorities to assure us that what we consume is safe. What happens when those authorities lose people's trust?
The economic problem behind food regulation
When we go to the grocery store and buy something, we face an economic problem. Economists have a wonky term for it. They call it "asymmetric information." It's a mouthful. But the idea is simple in the food realm. We often don't really know or have a hard time verifying what's in the stuff we eat and drink. And that lack of information can create problems in a free market, like companies selling us food that can make us sick, maybe slowly over years without us even knowing it.
Consumers need information to make the best choices for themselves and their families when they shop, and without that information, companies may not face strong enough market incentives to produce high-quality or safe products. It's often cheaper to cut corners, use lower quality ingredients and make food products in unsanitary conditions. If consumers don't really know what's going on, then companies may not face market pressure to do the right thing. The economics literature suggests that, because of imperfect information, the free market can fail to operate in our best interests.
Economists and policymakers have long cited the problem of asymmetric information as a core reason that food companies need to be regulated. Over the 20th century, lawmakers created the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies to ensure trust and safety in the food supply. And they required food companies to label their products with ingredients and nutritional information. This has helped consumers make the leap of faith when buying and ingesting stuff made by strangers — and overcome the asymmetric information problem.
But as Moms Across America's studies have shown, there are often small amounts of substances in our food that are not labeled. It's not just Girl Scout cookies. The organization, for example, sponsored tests of school lunches, fast food, beer and wine, and baby formula — and Honeycutt says they've found contaminants that concern her in all of them.
In some cases, scientists have directly engaged with these findings and concluded that the levels of contaminants they've found aren't a significant concern for public health. For example, an article in a scientific journal, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, investigated one of Moms Across America's studies that found glyphosate in urine and breast milk. It concluded the finding "does not support the conclusion that [these] glyphosate concentrations … present a health risk to the public, including nursing children."
However, Honeycutt believes ingesting even small levels of contaminants can affect our health. She says that these contaminants are so widespread throughout the food supply that they add up in our diets over a lifetime.
Honeycutt is a strong believer in the health benefits of eating organic and non-GMO (or non-bioengineered) foods. She says when making that switch for her family, they saw real health benefits.
Having grown up in hippie-dippie California, and as a frequent shopper at health food stores, I can tell you that many people — including my loved ones — believe that organic is healthier. They also tend to believe that organic is a signal of other desirable attributes, like tasting better or being made by small, local farms with more love and care (although this might not always be true). Despite these products typically costing more, the market for organic food has exploded over the last couple of decades.
This is maybe why I was a bit surprised to hear from Zagorski that scientists doubt whether organic and non-GMO foods are really better for us. "The scientific consensus on organic farming practices, and GMO versus non-GMO, is that non-GMO and organic foods are not safer than conventionally grown crops," Zagorski says. "There is no major health benefit to eating organic versus non-organic. And so the fact of the matter is that, no, non-GMO and organic are not healthier for us."
That may be a tough one to swallow for many of us. Like, really?! What about all the pesticides and herbicides and hormones and antibiotics and bioengineering in conventional foods? I've talked to various organic eaters about this scientific literature that suggests that organic isn't safer or healthier, and they told me things like "scientific conclusions change over time." This certainly seems to be true in the area of nutrition science, which is difficult to conduct and evolves as new evidence comes to light. Take wine. Scientific studies used to suggest that a glass of wine a day was fine, even healthy. Now evidence is suggesting any amount of alcohol may be a cancer risk. It's a huge bummer.
America is in the midst of what you might call a food awakening, and people are questioning what we're putting in our bodies like maybe never before. Researchers are connecting our diets to a surge in all sorts of health maladies, including obesity, heart disease and cancer. This food awakening can be seen beyond just the explosion in demand for organic and non-GMO foods. It can also be seen in the growing concern about the health effects of consuming things like ultraprocessed foods, sugar, alcohol and seemingly ubiquitous microplastics, as well as in movements to ban food dyes and preservatives.
Regulatory capture: Another economic problem for food safety?
For regulations to work in overcoming the problem of asymmetric information, it's critical that people trust that the regulators are looking out for them.
But economists have long pointed out that sometimes regulators don't serve the public interest. They can come under the influence of the powerful companies they're regulating. Economists call this "regulatory capture." It's an empirical question and a big debate in economics and policy circles when and why that happens and how to combat it.
In defending their cookies, the Girl Scouts of the USA stressed that their "trusted bakers remain committed to compliance with all food safety standards and regulations set forth by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and other relevant health authorities."
Honeycutt says she agrees that the Girl Scouts are complying with existing regulatory standards. But she questions whether those regulations — or lack of regulations — are keeping the public safe. Honeycutt made clear that she believes big corporations have a big influence on the food and agricultural regulations that get implemented. "Our system is corrupt," she says. "I think we must strive as a democracy to overcome industry capture."
Zagorski expressed a general faith in the food regulatory process. He went on at great length about ethics rules that discourage conflicts of interest, transparency rules that enable consumers to look at the evidence behind regulatory decisions, and how federal regulatory agencies make decisions based on peer-reviewed science. Zagorski says that regulations on glyphosate, heavy metals and other contaminants are guided by the best available evidence and that regulatory standards for allowable amounts in our food are set extremely low "out of an abundance of caution to make sure that everybody is safe in the population," even the most sensitive.
"I have three little kids, and I would have no issue giving them these cookies," says Zagorski. He stresses that the experts who analyze this data and set safety standards "live in the same environment we live in. They're going to the same stores we go to. They're likely feeding their kids roughly the same things our kids are eating. And so I can't imagine a situation where someone would say that, for the sake of monetary gain, I'm OK with making my child sick."
But these days, Americans, fed an information diet from social media and subversive podcasts, seem to increasingly distrust the experts and regulatory authorities. For a long time, their authority helped American consumers overcome the problem of asymmetric information about their food. But now, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a growing number of Americans are distrustful when authorities go against something seemingly intuitive — like the idea that ingesting low levels of herbicides and heavy metals over your lifetime will be bad for your health.
And it can be easy to cast aspersions. Zagorski, for instance, is a highly credentialed professor at a university who has spent his career steeped in the science of this stuff. He has spent years studying the effects of food ingredients and contaminants and promoting public health. At the same time, his institution, the Center for Research on Ingredient Safety at Michigan State University, discloses that it gets some of its funding from "industry partners," which include major corporations, like the Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo, the Hershey Co. and ConAgra Brands. Should that make you trust him less?
And what about Zen Honeycutt? She is not credentialed in science and often challenges scientific consensus. And her organization, Moms Across America, sells alternative-medicine supplements and products like "Vaccine Detox Herbal Extract" and "LifeWave Frequency Patches" on its website. Should that make you trust her less?
Honeycutt rejects what seems to be the scientific consensus on issues like the health effects of small doses of glyphosate, aluminum and heavy metals in cookies, as well as the claim that organic is not really better for us. We asked her, if we can't trust what's considered the scientific consensus on what's safe, and if we can't trust the regulators tasked with looking out for our health, who can we trust?
"I think we should trust independent scientists that are not funded by corporations," she said. "I think we should trust ourselves and our friends and family members, our community members that are close to us, that have either used certain products or eaten certain foods and it's worked for them. This is why we encourage in-person connections, and we should tune in to ourselves. Our bodies tell us what is not good for us. When you really tune in, when you eat something and it doesn't work for you, you should trust that."
Honeycutt also expressed hope that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will help improve trust in our system of food regulation. The Trump administration, however, is slashing the workforce of the Department of Health and Human Services, including 3,500 jobs at the Food and Drug Administration. A recent department fact sheet stresses, "This reduction will not affect drug, medical device, or food reviewers, nor will it impact inspectors." But still, with a significantly smaller workforce, won't that undermine the FDA and other regulatory agencies' work? Honeycutt says she believes that Kennedy can do more with a smaller workforce than others have done with a bigger workforce and that he will improve trust in our system of food regulation by, for example, making sure "the people that are hired to fill the positions in these regulatory agencies can't be bought."
In fact, she says, she has submitted her résumé and, if she's offered the right position, she's ready to enter public service. She says she trusts Kennedy "more than probably any other political figure I've ever come in contact with." Since taking office, Kennedy has prioritized going after contaminants in our food supply, including in baby formula.
So what would it take for Honeycutt to eat some Thin Mints? For the uninitiated, that's a popular kind of Girl Scout cookie, one that her study found had the highest level of glyphosate among the cookies tested. Her answer was simple: "If they were organic."
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