Can you still eat Girl Scout cookies? Here's what to know about risks to consumers
Girl Scout cookie season is upon us. But you may have heard some concerning things about the annual treats (Thin Mints, I'm looking at you).
First, a non-peer-reviewed study found Girl Scout cookies purchased in three states contained traces of contaminants known as heavy metals and a widely used herbicide. The study got a lot of attention after popular podcast host Joe Rogan talked about it two weeks ago, calling the cookies "toxic."
Then, earlier this week came a lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York against the Girl Scouts, citing the study's findings and seeking at least $5 million in damages for U.S. cookie buyers, and a requirement the cookie packaging be updated to disclose the presence of the substances.
The lawsuit echoes the findings of the study, conducted by non-profit groups Moms Across America in partnership with GMOScience, alleging that Girl Scout cookies contain dangerous levels of heavy metals and pesticides. "Further, independent testing verifies what GMOScience found – that there is the presence of Toxins in the Products," the lawsuit alleges.
The New York woman who initially filed the class action lawsuit has since dismissed herself. The plaintiffs are now New York residents Danielle Barbaro and Judy Cholewa in the suit originally filed March 10 by Amy Mayo against the Girl Scouts of the USA and cookie makers Ferrero USA's Little Brownie Bakers and Interbake Foods, also known as ABC Bakers.
Both state in the amended complaint that testing revealed heavy metals as well as the pesticide glyphosate in Girl Scout cookies they purchased. Attorneys for the plaintiffs did not respond to a request for comment from USA TODAY.
Moms Across America and GMOScience say they sent 25 cookie samples of 13 different types of Girl Scout cookies from three states (California, Iowa, and Louisiana) for lab testing. The results: all of the cookies contained at least four out of five heavy and toxic metals – including aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. Most of the samples (22 out of 25, or 88%, were found to have levels of all five heavy metals, the study found.
Nearly all (96%) tested positive for lead; three-fourths (76%) had levels of cadmium exceeding the Environmental Protection Agency's recommended limits for cadmium in water, they said.
All of the cookie samples were also positive for high levels of glyphosate, an herbicide typically used to kill weeds, the groups said. "The sale of cookies containing potentially toxic ingredients raises profound ethical and public health concerns," the groups said.
But the Girl Scouts say the cookies meet "all food safety standards and regulations set forth by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other relevant health authorities," in a response on the organization's website.
"These standards ensure that food products are safe for consumption," the statement said. "As a result, Girl Scout Cookies are safe to consume and are manufactured in accordance with all food safety regulations."
The Girl Scouts did not respond to a request for additional information from USA TODAY.
The FDA has set some recommended lead levels for babies and young children – and is in the midst of developing similar levels for arsenic, cadmium and mercury – but doesn't have suggested levels for the general population, instead saying the agency's goal is to reduce the levels of contaminants such as arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury in food.
For instance, the FDA's "action levels" or recommended limits of lead for babies and young children are 10 parts per billion (ppb) in fruits and baby food, and 20 ppb in dry infant cereals. Several of the Girl Scout cookies had levels of more than 10 ppb and three had more than 20 ppb, according to the group's study.
Heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury are found naturally in the environment, but elevated levels can occur from industrial processes and pollution, the FDA says. The levels found in foods depend on how much a plant or animal "takes up" from the environment, the agency says.
Heavy metals can potentially harm brain development in the womb through early childhood, the FDA says.
Consumption of aluminum used as a food additive in products such as baking powder and cheese on frozen pizza – and in antacids – is generally considered safe. The average adult in the U.S. eats about 7-9 mg aluminum per day in their food, said the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Everyone is exposed to low levels of aluminum from food, air, water, and soil," the ATDSR says.
Arsenic is naturally occurring in nature and used in industrial compounds, which can also get into the environment and foods such as fish, rice and other grains. High exposure can lead to impaired cognitive development in children, as well as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer, according to the Environmental Defense Fund and American Cancer Society.
Prolonged exposure is associated with health effects such as bone demineralization, kidney and reproductive dysfunction, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. A Consumer Reports study in 2023 found cadmium and lead in many dark chocolate products.
Because there is no known safe level of exposure to lead, the FDA monitors and regulates levels of lead in foods. Exposure to lead is most serious during brain development – in utero, infancy and early childhood, and can high levels of exposure can lead to learning disabilities, behavior difficulties, and a lower IQ, the FDA says. For adults, chronic lead exposure is associated with kidney dysfunction, hypertension, and neurocognitive effects. Lead in baby food as been a focus of the FDA and lead found in apple cinnamon treats led to recent recalls.
Mercury: The compound, present in fish, for instance, can be harmful to the brain and nervous system if a person is exposed to too much of it over time.
The FDA did not respond to a request from USA TODAY about whether it was looking into the issue with Girl Scout cookies.
Glyphosate is a widely used herbicide – RoundUp is one commercial brand, for example – that can kill certain weeds and grasses and is used in farming.
Trace amounts of glyphosate may be found in fresh fruits, vegetables, cereals, and other food and drinks, according to the FDA and the EPA. The agencies say low levels present no risk to human health.
However, some research has suggested increased risk of liver and kidney damage in animals from glyphosate – and an increased risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma among farmers and farm workers exposed to the chemical – while other studies have not found a link, The New York Times reported last month.
Moms Across America and GMOScience say in their report that glyphosate and its byproducts are "responsible for multiple health issues including cancer, endocrine disruption, gut issues, miscarriages, sperm damage, autism, neurotoxicity, and reproductive damage."
Yes, you can, but the Girl Scouts' argument that their cookies are OK to eat "feels like they're dodging the point," consumer protection and environmental attorney Vineet Dubey told USA TODAY.
"It's very hard for the Girl Scouts to claim that with any certainty. The fact that this batch was sold containing this many contaminants shows they don't know what's in their cookies, which is worrisome," said Dubey, who is part of the Los Angeles-based law firm Custodio & Dubey LLP. "Young children are especially vulnerable to lead, for instance."
The risk is "generally minimal when consumed occasionally, but for products with higher levels, it's advisable to limit intake," he said.
If you are concerned about contaminants, Dubey recommends people avoid the varieties with the most such as Caramel deLites, Peanut Butter Patties, S'mores and Toffee-tastics.
Note to Thin Mint fans: The study tested three samples and the suit tested one. The substances found at the highest levels were lead (findings ranged from about 6 to 12 ppb) and cadmium (13-16 ppb). The FDA's "action levels" for lead in lead for babies and young children are 10 parts per billion (ppb) in fruits, vegetables and baby food; 20 ppb in dry infant cereals and single-ingredient root vegetables.
Food safety attorney Bill Marler recommends moderation. "If you are eating box after box after box, you probably have an issue," he said. "If you're a parent and your kid is six years old, maybe you want to curb how much they're consuming."
Fact-checking site Snopes.com deemed: "While it is clear that high exposure to the chemicals found in these tests can potentially cause health issues if consumed in enormous quantities, the levels found within the samples – assuming children aren't eating 9,000 cookies in a day – are within the safety guidelines as outlined by the FDA, EPA, CDC, and public health experts."
Lead in baby food: Baby food brands contain 'concerning' levels of heavy metals. Homemade may not be better.
The FDA has set some recommended lead levels for babies and young children – and is in the midst of developing similar levels for arsenic, cadmium and mercury – but doesn't have suggested levels for the general population. Instead, the agency says its goal is to reduce the levels of those contaminants in food.
So far, the FDA has issued these recommendations:
Aluminum: 0.2 milligrams per liter of bottled water.
Arsenic: 10 parts per billion for inorganic arsenic in apple juice.
Cadmium: 5 ppb for cadmium in bottled water.
Lead: The FDA has set "action levels" or recommended limits of lead for babies and young children including 10 parts per billion (ppb) in fruits, vegetables and baby food; 20 ppb in dry infant cereals and single-ingredient root vegetables; and 5 ppb in bottled water (which is more stringent than the 15 ppb of lead in public drinking water set by the EPA, due to potential for lead in pipes).
Mercury: 2 ppb in bottled water
Glyphosate: The FDA cites the Environmental Protection Agency's established tolerances for glyphosate on food of 0.1 to 400 parts per million (ppm).
While the FDA continues its work to classify heavy metal recommendations, the Girl Scouts should be forthcoming and address the issue, Marler says.
"It strikes me that it shouldn't be a consumer group that was doing the testing and making it public, he said. "Whoever was manufacturing the cookies for the Girl Scouts should have been doing the testing and being clear to the public as to what the real risks, if any, are."
Dubey agrees. The organization "should be concerned about the presence of any contaminants, and test multiple batches, nationwide, as part of their production process going forward," he said. "Consumers trust the Girl Scouts to do the right thing and I hope they do."
Contributing: Jonathan Limehouse.
Follow Mike Snider on Threads, Bluesky and X: mikegsnider & @mikegsnider.bsky.social & @mikesnider.
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Chasing Big Money With the Health-Care Hustlers of South Florida
Listen: Chasing Big Money With the Health-Care Hustlers of South Florida 00:00 36:33 ✕ 'Hi guys, it's Taylor Swift. Remember those stimulus checks? Well, there's a new thing going viral.' If you were poor and online last year, the ads were inescapable: flashing images of cash and Amazon boxes, narrated by AI-faked celebrities such as Swift, podcaster Joe Rogan or game-show host Steve Harvey. Each described a secretive government program that handed out money—all you had to do was ask. 'They're giving out $6,400 to anyone who makes the call,' intoned a fake Dr. Phil. 'If you don't act now, you're basically throwing away $6,400,' said a shirtless rendering of misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate as he tossed something at the camera. 'That's just stupid.' Health-Care Hustlers This story is the second in a series about the shady side of health-care telemarketing. Part One: A Former TV Writer Found a Health-Care Loophole That Threatens to Blow Up Obamacare The ads were so pervasive that the administration of then-President Joe Biden had to deny the existence of a secret stimulus program. The government was offering valuable insurance subsidies, but not any kind of cash card and certainly not $6,400. That didn't stop the ads. The news outlet 404 Media was able to find hundreds of them, which had been viewed more than 195 million times on YouTube alone before being taken down. The ads were deceptive, but they weren't trying to con people out of their money—at least not directly. The goal was to sign them up for actual government-subsidized health-insurance plans, whether they wanted them or not. People responding to the ads were routed through a network of middlemen to call centers, many of them in South Florida. Telemarketers there would wave off questions about cash giveaways and sign up customers for health insurance instead, sometimes without their knowledge. The plans were free after federal subsidies, but they nevertheless upended many lives. Some people were switched off their old plan without their knowledge, finding out only when they were turned away by a doctor who didn't accept their new coverage. Others had to repay subsidies they hadn't actually qualified for. Hundreds of thousands of people complained to federal regulators that they'd been duped. One of the largest call centers selling the plans was outside Fort Lauderdale, in a three-story building flanked by palm trees and guarded by hulking men wearing body armor and carrying assault rifles. The Batmobile-esque motor trike belonging to the boss was often parked outside. Flush with cash, he commissioned a diamond-encrusted necklace with a saucer-size pendant in the shape of interlocking M's, for his nickname: Money Matt. Listen to The Big Take podcast: Telemarketers' New Trick to Sell Bare-Bones Health Plans His business, Enhance Health LLC, was in his telling one of the most prolific brokers of Affordable Care Act-compliant health plans in the country, collecting more than 1 million signups in 2023 alone. Money Matt, whose real name is Matt Herman, wasn't the operation's main financial backer, nickname notwithstanding. That was Bain Capital LP, the Boston-based private equity firm, which had staked him $75 million to create Enhance. As chief executive officer, Herman directed much of that cash to a former electronic dance music promoter turned online marketing guru, Brandon Bowsky, who connected him with internet advertisers. Together they turned the dull business of selling health insurance into a wild get-rich-quick scheme. The song opens with a woman panting suggestively over a staccato keyboard beat. 'Unnnhhhhhh, Money Matt,' she moans. Then Herman comes in. 'You know there's money in the building when I walk in this motherf---er,' he blusters. The track, Hate Us, was released in April 2023. Herman, then 37, had long wanted to be a hip-hop mogul, and with Enhance's profits he could at least act the part. He's tall and buff, with a beard so closely cropped it looks painted on. On Instagram, he amassed more than 1 million followers with photos of his jealousy-inducing lifestyle: his Bentley, Lamborghini and McLaren; his private jet flights, race-car team and parties with Paris Hilton, Rihanna and Fat Joe. He was also prone to posting hustle-bro aphorisms. In 2023 he shared a photo of himself wearing a suit and blue tie, shaking Biden's hand. Under it, he wrote, 'In order to become the 1%, you must do what the other 99% won't.' During a phone interview, Herman comes off much less brash. He defends his work at Enhance, saying that any misleading ads were the work of 'external vendors' and that he stopped doing business with anyone he caught making them. He says he reported some of those vendors to regulators but can't get into the details. 'I am proud of the work our team did to deliver real coverage to millions of Americans and to operate responsibly,' he adds later on in an email. 'Healthcare is a right and no American should be taken advantage of by predatory actors.' Before he hooked up with Bain Capital, Herman was just one of many hustlers trying to sell health insurance in South Florida. There are hundreds of call centers for this purpose around Fort Lauderdale alone. People who work there refer to them as 'rooms' and say they live up to the shady reputation that Florida has had at least since Charles Ponzi, on the lam after the demise of his namesake scheme, set up shop there a century ago and started pitching swampland as prime real estate to unsuspecting investors. The South Florida rooms tended to push what health-policy experts call junk insurance—cheaper, noncomprehensive coverage that often leaves customers stuck with giant bills. The sales pitch was generally that the insurance would cover almost anything, but in fact it covered almost nothing, according to Matt Panzer, a former salesman who worked early in his career at a room with Herman. Each sale generated hundreds of dollars in commissions. 'These terrible plans only benefit the agents,' Panzer says. 'Most of the people we sell to are broke. They're scraping together their last dollars, and it doesn't do anything for them.' By the time Herman was in his early 20s, he was in charge of his own sales team, according to two of its former salesmen. They say they worked out of a warehouse behind a strip club north of Miami, tricking customers by passing off junk insurance as major medical coverage. 'We're assassins, we're real killers on the phone,' recalls Gary McDonald, one of the former salesmen. 'It doesn't take us long to gain someone's trust.' McDonald says he dealt heroin and worked as a pimp before getting into insurance. He remembers spending lunch breaks with his sales colleagues at the strip club ('for their free wings'). But unlike others in the business, who'd blow their money on partying and drugs, McDonald says, Herman was focused solely on getting ahead. In a book McDonald self-published about his experiences in the industry, he describes Herman as possessing an almost preternatural confidence. 'I've rubbed shoulders with a lot of cocky, narcissistic, sure of themselves motherf---ers before, but nobody on the level of Matt Herman,' McDonald wrote in the book, Buyers Are Liars: The Untold Stories of Downlines. (A 'downline' in industry jargon is a smaller brokerage that sells on behalf of a larger one. Herman disputes McDonald's claims but declines to discuss the details. A lawyer for Enhance said in an email that McDonald 'seems more interested in producing shock value than verifiable and reliable substance.') After Donald Trump became president in 2017, his administration loosened insurance rules to make it easier to offer cheaper, skimpier plans, and the South Florida brokers seized the opportunity. A company called Health Insurance Innovations started selling junk insurance on a massive scale. Herman brokered deals between the company and Florida rooms. But in 2018 the Federal Trade Commission started investigating whether it was using deceptive practices, putting a chill on the entire junk insurance business. The company, which later changed its name to Benefytt Technologies Inc., eventually paid a $100 million fine to the FTC over what the regulator called its 'sham' insurance; one top broker was convicted of fraud last year and sentenced to 25 years in prison. (Herman wasn't an employee of Health Insurance Innovations and wasn't a defendant in either case. In the phone interview, he says it isn't fair to call the plans 'junk' and denies misleading anyone about them. Outside of open-enrollment periods, he says, the plans were the only option for many customers. 'It's not the greatest coverage, but it's better than having nothing.') By 2021, Herman was promoting a night club in Miami, still brokering deals between insurers and rooms, and looking for his next big thing. That's when Bain came along. 'All of life is manipulation. Social engineering is, like, the most basic thing as a human' Co-founded by Mitt Romney before he ran for office, Bain Capital is one of the most prestigious names in private equity, with $185 billion in assets. In 2021 it hired Matt Popoli, an executive with long experience in insurance finance, to raise a $1 billion fund for insurance investments. One area Popoli wanted Bain to get into was call centers, but the company needed an expert to facilitate the play. An executive at a Bain-owned company knew Herman and made introductions. Bain ended up buying Herman's brokerage business for $9 million, according to a person with knowledge of the deal who requested anonymity because the terms were private. But the company had bigger plans for Herman. It formed Enhance Health, put up the cash and named him CEO. The deal was the first for Popoli's insurance fund. The original plan was for Enhance to sell Medicare Advantage plans, which are privately managed alternatives to traditional insurance for retirees. The market was growing fast, and Enhance's pitch was that it could help customers find the best plans from a confusing array of options. Then it would earn money from the monthly commissions the insurers paid. 'We like the economics of the business,' Popoli told the Wall Street Journal in November 2021. (A spokeswoman for Bain and Popoli declined to comment for this story.) The Medicare Advantage strategy proved challenging. It was hard to find new customers, and many of the ones Enhance did land would get pitched by other telemarketers and switch plans soon after. The company was losing money, according to a former Enhance executive who requested anonymity to discuss internal matters. Luckily, Herman had a connection elsewhere in the South Florida insurance rooms who'd found plans that were easier to sell: Bowsky, the marketing expert. In his own telling, Bowsky had hit rock bottom when he discovered the South Florida rooms. The worst moment came around 2016. He was living in his Honda Civic, so broke that he stole a dinner roll from Walmart, he said on the Digital Social Hour, one of several podcasts on which he's told his life story. On the same episode, he recalled being raised in a family of salespeople and learning, by the time he was 3, how to manipulate others. 'All of life is manipulation,' Bowsky said. 'Social engineering is, like, the most basic thing as a human.' His peripatetic career honed his ability to persuade people to do things they probably shouldn't. On the podcasts, he described hustling for real money in online games such as RuneScape, recruiting models for BangBros porn videos and selling 'a ton of drugs.' Bowsky said he started selling health insurance after seeing Craigslist ads dangling pay as high as $4,000 a week. Florida state business records show that, like Herman, he distributed plans for Health Insurance Innovations. Bowsky recalled rising quickly through the ranks to become the manager of a large call center, then starting his own small one. He sold the room to Enhance not long after it was founded, helping Herman get his operation off the ground, according to a filing in an unrelated lawsuit. The room had been a sideline for Bowsky. By then he was focused on a different aspect of the call center business known as lead generation. Lead generators place ads on Google or social media promising to help people find the best health plan. Anyone who responds to the ad is redirected to a call center, which pays a fee to the lead generator for each prospect. Bowsky's company, Minerva Marketing, acted as a middleman, paying the people who placed the ads for each call they generated and reselling those prospects to call centers. Minerva also made some ads itself. In 2021, Bowsky realized lead generators were ignoring a big new market. That year, as part of its response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Biden administration had boosted subsidies for Obamacare, making plans free for potentially millions more people who hadn't previously been able to afford health insurance. The plans didn't pay big commissions, but rooms could still make money if they sold enough of them. All Bowsky had to do was find call centers to try it out. 'Shit, I gotta find somebody who likes to sell poor people,' he recounted in 2023 on a podcast called The Affiliate Marketing Show. He spent months working to persuade Florida room owners to give his new leads a shot. Most weren't interested, he said, but Herman and Enhance were game to try. How the deepfake ads entered the picture is unknown. No one Bloomberg Businessweek spoke with for this story could pinpoint their origins. They're generally posted by fly-by-night operators who leave little trace. One person who worked for a US-based company that made some, including ones depicting Biden and Steve Harvey, remembers the ads being prevalent by late 2022. The man, who requested anonymity because he still works in the business, says they were based on a kernel of truth—on average, people who receive Obamacare subsidies get a discount on their insurance of about $500 a month. But the promise of free insurance alone didn't generate clicks. Advertisers competed by making their ads more and more misleading. 'The only ads that make money are like, 'Hey you get a $6,400 flex card,'' the man says. He recalls selling leads to Bowsky's Minerva, which he says they resold to call centers. Bowsky didn't respond to questions for this story. But a lawsuit he filed against one advertiser says that the terms of Minerva's contract prohibited misleading ads and that the company cut off the advertiser after seeing a proposed ad touting a 'spending card.' And Bowsky has criticized competitors for using false advertising. 'You've got guys that are running crazy, aggressive, borderline free-money ads,' Bowsky said on The Affiliate Marketing Show in 2023. 'It drives my costs up, and it doesn't look good for the industry.' But a former sales manager who worked at a downline affiliated with Enhance that bought leads from Bowsky, and who requested anonymity to avoid angering others in the insurance business, says almost all the prospects his call center got from Minerva expected cash cards. In an internal Minerva group chat that was quoted in a separate lawsuit, an employee joked about it, saying, 'EVERYONE thinks they're getting money… Which they are… In the form of a subsidy… Lmao.' Eliakim Brown, a former sales agent at an Enhance-affiliated call center that also bought leads from Minerva, says prospects would regularly mention seeing ads featuring celebrities. 'I saw the ad with Andrew Tate. I want that money,' Brown recalls more than one client asking. Armed with Bowsky's leads, Enhance's call center was buzzing. Herman hired more agents, who needed more leads. 'We kind of scaled them to the moon,' Bowsky later recalled of Enhance. A former Enhance executive, who asked for anonymity because speaking about a former employer might affect job prospects, says that at times in 2022 the company's payments to Bowsky reached $1 million a week. By then, Enhance's office was packed with hundreds of agents fielding calls on headsets in their cubicles. More than a dozen former employees Businessweek interviewed said almost all the callers were looking for cash cards, not insurance. Top performers made as much as $5,000 a week. A barber who carried his clippers in a Louis Vuitton fanny pack would come by to cut Herman's hair. Less successful agents would smoke weed in the parking lot. As one of the former employees put it, 'Bro, it's Florida.' The armed guards were hired after an employee who'd been fired threatened to come back and shoot up the office, according to Herman. The guards ended up intercepting other disgruntled workers who really did try to bring in guns, he says. 'It became a common thing. We arrested several people with guns on-site.' One of the former agents, Andrew Lara, says fast money was what drew him to an Enhance downline. He was 21, still living with his mother and working at another call center, when he heard that top agents at Enhance could earn $3,000 a week. The gig seemed easy enough. All he had to do was answer the phone and sign up callers for health insurance. He soon noticed, though, that most of his callers were asking about some kind of stimulus program. One was particularly insistent, saying he'd seen an ad with Steve Harvey urging people to call and get the money. Scrolling through social media later that day, Lara saw the ad for himself. 'I've been telling you guys for months to claim this free $6,400,' Harvey appeared to say, wagging his finger. Lara could tell it was fake. He remembers asking his boss how to handle the issue and being told to deflect questions about free cash and sign up the callers for insurance instead. 'We weren't allowed to say they were going to get it, and we sure as hell weren't supposed to say they weren't,' Lara says, sipping a Sprite at a taqueria in Fort Lauderdale. 'You have to throw away a little bit of your morality.' Lara says he knew it wasn't right but felt conflicted because he wanted to earn money to help his family. He also made enough to buy his dream car, an Infiniti Q60, and move out of his mother's house. He convinced himself that even if customers were being misled, signing them up for free health care was harmless. 'The way I made my peace with it, some of these people don't have health insurance,' he says. 'At least I'm getting them something to help them.' Herman says the company trained agents to be honest, not deceptive, and those who were caught misleading customers were fired. 'We probably terminated more agents given how big we were than anybody in the country,' he says. Michael Faccibene, a spokesman for Enhance, says that the idea almost all callers wanted cash cards is 'demonstrably false' and that the company required anyone it bought leads from to conduct themselves ethically. Lead vendors caught violating the rules were blacklisted and reported to regulators, he adds. 'Our rigorous policies around enrollment have always required that lead vendors conduct themselves ethically in full compliance with the law,' Faccibene says. 'Whenever we received any incoming calls asking about cash cards, our policy was to ensure that callers understood they were enrolling in health insurance, and they were referred to the health-plan carriers who would have the accurate information about what they were offering.' The ads themselves, Faccibene points out, were made by companies Enhance didn't own or control. Former employees say the rules left room for maneuvering. Some insurers do in fact offer cash rewards of a few hundred dollars through wellness programs, though not cash cards worth thousands of dollars. Instead of setting callers straight, they recall, they would wave off questions about giving away money by saying the carrier would have the details. 'Half the time they didn't even know they were signing up for insurance,' says Jason Horton, who worked in Enhance's customer retention department and would field complaints from people who were angry they hadn't received cash cards. 'It's crazy to say, but it's true.' Some people who called Enhance already had ACA-compliant health insurance, which they would lose if they signed up for a new plan, even unknowingly. An unexpected change in coverage could leave customers unable to visit their preferred doctors or losing money they'd paid toward their old deductible. One woman from Georgia wrote in a 2024 complaint to the Better Business Bureau that she'd had to put off surgery to fix a detached retina after Enhance switched her to a plan with a deductible she couldn't afford. Another person from Georgia complained of signing up to get free cash and being surprised to find instead that their insurance policy had been switched. 'These guys are nothing but CROOKS who TRICK people,' the person wrote in their complaint. 'I was STUPID to believe them!!' To qualify for the subsidized insurance Enhance was pitching, callers generally had to earn at least $15,000 a year. Those who made less should have been referred to Medicaid, the government's insurance program for the poor. Instead, some former agents say, they would coach callers to put on their applications that they planned to earn at least $15,000 in the coming year and sign them up anyway. An unemployed caller would be asked if they thought they might be able to get a job. The agents say they didn't explain that, when the customers filed their tax returns for the year, they'd face penalties if they hadn't actually earned enough money to qualify for Obamacare subsidies. Enhance was structured so that many of its sales managers ran independent companies—the so-called downlines. Some worked in-house, others ran call centers nearby. But all were supervised by Enhance's quality-assurance department, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of the managers had come up in the Florida rooms. Others had more unusual résumés. One was a 6-foot-6, 330-pound former bodyguard. Another ran popular celebrity gossip accounts on social media. The jeweler who'd made Herman's Money Matt necklace, Johnny Dang, became a manager too. 'You want to make big money? Text me,' Dang said in a recruiting video he posted on Instagram, holding up a big chain outside Enhance's headquarters. (Dang didn't respond to requests for comment.) McDonald, the former employee who wrote about his experiences working for Herman, recalled in a sequel to Buyers Are Liars that he was shocked when he first arrived at Enhance's shiny new office and saw so many people from his old downline days there. 'All those crooked ass motherf—ers under one giant umbrella,' McDonald wrote in Buyers Are Liars 2: American Greed. He says Herman recruited him to run teams of agents who canvassed malls and went door to door in poor neighborhoods to sign up customers. McDonald remembers that his field agents would hand out $20 Subway or Burger King gift cards to encourage people to enroll. The plan worked so well that he was soon managing 150 people and making $10,000 a week, he says. He was fired after some of his field agents signed up homeless people who didn't actually earn enough to qualify, he says, adding that there's no way it could have been his fault, because he was in jail for driving under the influence when the problematic signups happened. McDonald wasn't the only one who'd been earning a large paycheck. Herman's terms were extremely favorable for the downline managers. One of them says a single agent could generate $6,000 a day in commissions. A former employee recalls a 19-year-old manager bragging about being able to afford private jet flights. The 23-year-old son of Bain's Popoli secured a downline, too, according to people with knowledge of the matter. 'It turned into literally thievery. South Florida can ruin anything' Enhance's growth helped Popoli finish raising Bain's $1 billion insurance fund. New Mexico's state employee pension fund committed $60 million in 2023, after officials were given a pitch that mentioned Enhance's success and said Bain was targeting 20% annualized returns. The California Public Employees' Retirement System put in $125 million. Bain also cited Enhance's hiring of minorities as an example of its investments in diverse communities, writing on its website that 'Enhance Health's rapid success has proven it's possible to do well by doing good.' Enhance's success was also allowing Herman to live out his dreams of celebrity, captured in a stream of posts on his @MoneyMatt305 Instagram feed. At the company's Christmas party in 2022, the rappers Jim Jones and Fabolous performed. A few months later, Herman sat next to Floyd Mayweather Jr. at a press conference promoting a fight with John Gotti III, the mob boss's grandson. (After Mayweather beat Gotti in a controversial decision, guards wearing Enhance hats got into an arena-clearing scuffle with Gotti's entourage.) In July 2023, after an Enhance-sponsored team won a Nascar race in Chicago, Herman celebrated in the winner's circle, then posted a photo of himself on a private jet. The next month he posed for a picture with Vice President Kamala Harris at a party to celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. And that November, Herman helped sponsor an awards show in Los Angeles. When he took the stage in a Louis Vuitton dinner jacket, the comedian Tiffany Haddish looked him up and down. 'You got a wife? Mmm hmm,' Haddish said. 'Lookin' like a snack!' Herman says the sponsorships weren't about self-aggrandizement. Instead, they were part of a plan to move away from paid digital marketing, which had proven to be rife with misleading ads, and find other ways to reach low-income consumers. 'The digital ads were the problem,' he says. 'You have to figure out other solutions.' A former Enhance executive says the company stopped doing business with Bowsky in late 2023, though not because of any misconduct. By then, Enhance wasn't Bowsky's only client. His reputation for marketing Affordable Care Act plans had grown to the point that other lead generators were calling him 'the King of ACA.' He began driving a $1 million blue-and-white Bugatti Veyron and bought a mansion in Las Vegas, decorating the exterior with a brightly colored, geometric mural. The Las Vegas Review-Journal said the house looked like 'a lava lamp had a baby with a box of crayons.' As word spread around South Florida about the money to be made in Obamacare, the competition for signups became increasingly cutthroat. Some brokers at other agencies realized they didn't need to talk to customers to earn a commission. The online portal they used allowed them to switch someone's insurance with only their name, address and birth date, according to several brokers familiar with the activity. Data released by federal regulators shows that policies were switched by the tens of thousands. 'It turned into literally thievery,' says one health-insurance call center executive who asked not to be identified because he does business with some of the people involved. 'South Florida can ruin anything.' When it came time for the annual open-enrollment period, Enhance fought back. Several former employees say the company assigned a team to go through the computer system, find customers who'd left and switch them back. Jimmy Fitzsimmons, who worked on that team for a few months, says his group switched thousands of people a day, without speaking to any of them. 'I kinda felt like from the beginning it was just wrong,' he says. 'I kept getting told and trained that these guys are already approved to be reenrolled this year.' (Enhance wrote in response to one complaint filed with regulators that the customers consented to being reenrolled when they originally signed up. The company didn't respond to questions about policy switching.) Agents across the country started noticing their customers disappearing, according to the trade group Health Agents for America. John Stanton, an independent insurance broker in Mesa, Arizona, says Enhance swapped the plans of several of his clients. When he wrote to the company to complain about one of the switches, Enhance wrote back saying it had spoken to the client. Stanton says the man was in a coma at the time. In January 2024 a man who'd had his policy switched by another brokerage, TrueCoverage LLC, contacted a team of class-action lawyers. The lawyers, Jason Doss and Jason Kellogg, had grown accustomed to tips like this after winning a $27.5 million settlement for people who'd allegedly been scammed by Health Insurance Innovations. They didn't think much of it at first. Then, a week or so later, an agent who'd recently left his job at TrueCoverage contacted them and said the company was involved in misconduct. Two leads suggested to Doss and Kellogg that something was up. They put out a press release saying they were investigating TrueCoverage for allegedly misleading consumers with deceptive ads that offered cash cards, and tips started rolling in. Some of them were about Enhance instead. (TrueCoverage didn't respond to a request for comment.) Some days, Doss recalls, he'd line up back-to-back meetings with agents on park benches or at Starbucks coffee shops around Fort Lauderdale. 'There are people who are tired of the unlawful conduct, who are good agents or good folks who happen to work in maybe a bad place,' he says. Several of them signed affidavits describing what they'd seen. That April, Doss and Kellogg sued Enhance, Herman, Bowsky and TrueCoverage, seeking damages on behalf of consumers who'd allegedly been deceived and insurance agents who'd allegedly had their clients stolen. They later added Bain Capital to the ranks of the defendants. One woman in Texas alleged in the lawsuit that she'd been switched at least 22 times without her consent by various brokers, including Enhance, after she responded to a cash-card ad. All the defendants denied the accusations. The allegations reverberated throughout the industry, where the misleading ads had been something of an open secret. Soon after the suit was filed, former Enhance agents say, they were told to gather at the call center for a meeting. With a lawyer by his side, Herman told everyone they had nothing to worry about. Within a few weeks, though, he'd stepped down as CEO. He sold his $3 million house near Enhance's office in December. This March, Herman posted on Instagram that he was retiring his @MoneyMatt305 username to show a 'more professional edge.' The following month, he, Enhance, Bain and Bowsky settled the lawsuit. Faccibene, the Enhance spokesman, says the company paid 'a de minimis amount funded almost entirely by our corporate insurance coverage' to make the 'meritless' case go away. Ryan Lehrer, an attorney for Bowsky, says his client 'denied all wrongdoing' and is pleased to be moving on. TrueCoverage said in a May 27 court filing that it had also reached a settlement, on undisclosed terms. Enhance has shut its Fort Lauderdale headquarters and now operates out of a smaller office across the state in Clearwater. The new office has no armed guards, according to someone who's visited. 'Enhance Health helps millions of Americans access affordable, quality health-care plans, and we will soon be announcing a significant expansion of our offerings,' Faccibene says. The free-money ads did help boost Obamacare enrollment: The total number of insured people jumped by about 67%, to 20 million, during Biden's term. Both Biden and Harris bragged about the increase during their presidential campaigns. The federal agency that oversees health insurance, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, hasn't sanctioned Enhance or any other large call centers, even though it received more than 270,000 complaints in 2024 from people who say they were either switched to or enrolled in plans without their consent. (The agency declined to provide any of the complaints or to comment.) As of last year, though, federal regulators have stopped allowing agents to switch a new customer's insurance directly through the computer system. Instead, they have to ask customers to do it themselves or get on a conference call with a government representative. Regulators have also proposed requiring customers to provide at least a token payment for a new plan, making it more likely they'll understand they're buying something and not just signing up to receive cash. But the rooms need to keep selling. Some are pushing new types of junk insurance, according to people in the industry. They expect demand for low-cost, low-quality plans to grow during the Trump administration, which has talked about creating more exemptions to Obamacare rules. Others are still using the free-money ads. Ronnell Nolan, president of Health Agents for America, the trade group, says regulators have failed to punish the agencies responsible for the problem. 'They haven't been stopped,' Nolan says. 'They haven't been slowed down.'
Eater
5 days ago
- Eater
The Forgotten History (and Slippery Science) of Canola Oil
If you've been hearing that canola is a killer, you're not alone. It's one of the so-called 'hateful eight' seed oils: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says it's among the most deadly things you can eat, and Joe Rogan agrees. But is it true? In a recent episode of Eater podcast, Gastropod, co-hosts Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley get to the bottom of the debate over the plant formerly (and still, in some places) known as rapeseed. Why does it have such an unfortunate name, and how did it transform into canola, at least in North America? Is it really engine oil? Does it actually contain a poisonous solvent? And why on earth are Brits buying up a fancy cold-pressed version by the gallon, as the new, home-grown olive oil? Are they roasting their potatoes with an inflammation- and disease-causing disaster? Listen to the episode for the forgotten history and slippery science of this much discussed, little understood oil. And read on for an edited excerpt from the episode, in which Carla Taylor, professor in food and human nutritional sciences at the University of Manitoba, Matti Marklund, nutrition scientist at Johns Hopkins University, and Darriush Mozaffarian, cardiologist and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, share the most rigorous and up-to-date scientific consensus on canola oil and health — and the evidence behind it. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Fox News : Seed oils are one of the… most unhealthy ingredients that we have in foods. [...] They're very very cheap, but they — they are associated with all kinds of very very serious illnesses. Including body wide inflammation. Joe Rogan, The Joe Rogan Experience : Seed oils are some of the worst fucking things your body can consume. There's some sort of a correlation between seed oils and macular degeneration. Like, it causes inflammation, and inflammation is fucking terrible for you, no matter what. Nicola Twilley, Gastropod co-host: We, like many of you, have been hearing this anti-seed oil propaganda for a while now. Thanks to all the haters out there, a lot of people are now cutting out canola along with its fellow seed oils. So what's the truth? Cynthia Graber, Gastropod co-host: Inflammation is blamed for just about every health problem these days, but the science of it is definitely more nuanced. Inflammation can be bad, but also a little inflammation can sometimes help you heal. That's part of why this immune system response exists. Twilley: The problem with canola — again, according to the critics — is to do with the particular fatty acids it contains. Carla Taylor, University of Manitoba: Canola oil is known for its high monounsaturated fatty acid content. Graber: The term monounsaturated has to do with its structure. Monounsaturated fatty acids are the kinds of fatty acids you find a lot of in vegetable oils like olive oils. Our bodies can make monounsaturated fatty acids, but it's also important that we get them from food. Twilley: Saturated fatty acids are fats like in meat, cheese, coconut oil, and palm oil, and science has shown pretty clearly that these aren't as great in large amounts for most of us for our overall health. Canola oil has very little saturated fat. Graber: And then there's what's known as polyunsaturated fatty acids. These are the omega fats — omega-3 and omega-6 are the main ones. Twilley: Guess what, canola oil has those, too. Taylor: It also has a fairly good level of omega-3 as ALA, alpha linolenic acid. And the other polyunsaturated fatty acid there, besides the ALA, is primarily what we abbreviate as LA or linoleic acid, which is an omega-6 fatty acid. If we get those in our diet, then we can convert them to all these other fatty acids that we need in our body. Graber: Omega-3 and omega-6 are called essential fatty acids because our bodies need them, and we can't make them ourselves. We have to get them in food. Twilley: So: great! Canola has both of these essential polyunsaturated fatty acids. But then the argument goes, the linoleic acid, the LA — which is the omega-6 — in our bodies, that becomes something called arachidonic acid. Matti Marklund, Johns Hopkins University: Another omega-6 fatty acid. Which can be turned into pro-inflammatory metabolites. Graber: Matti Marklund and a team of researchers around the world tried to figure out whether eating linoleic acid was connected to arachidonic acid and to bad health outcomes. And, as we discussed in our recent episode about nutrition science, it's hard to get good information on what people eat, so they found a way to measure it that was much more scientific. Marklund: Instead of asking people what they are eating, can we take a blood sample and measure the fatty acid concentration in the blood? Twilley: Matti and his colleagues analyzed the data from more than 30 different studies involving more than 70,000 people from different countries. Some of them were short term studies, some ran for more than thirty years. Marklund: And during that follow up time, we are looking at how many people are developing cardiovascular disease. We also looked at cardiovascular mortality as an outcome. And what we found was that those with the highest levels of linoleic acid in their blood had the lowest risk of developing cardiovascular diseases. Twilley: So that's good, right? Lower risk of cardiovascular disease sounds like a win to me. Graber: But what about this idea that linoleic acid or omega 6 turns into arachidonic acid and that's where the problem lies? Well, Matti told us that first of all arachidonic acid turns into different chemicals in the body, some cause inflammation and some actually are anti-inflammatory. But even more importantly, it seems as though, inside our bodies, linoleic acid doesn't turn into much arachidonic acid at all. Marklund: Studies using a stable isotope — so they can actually look at the specific molecules — they have found that there is very limited conversion of linoleic acid to arachidonic acid in the human body. Twilley: So that whole mechanism that's supposed to be behind the omega-6s in canola and other seed oils causing inflammation — it turns out that's not what's actually going on. In fact, Matti told us, the evidence suggests that linoleic acid — the supposedly bad stuff in canola oil — it not only doesn't increase inflammation, it also seems to have some real health benefits, and not just for lowering the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Marklund: We also found that linoleic acid was strongly associated with lower risk of type two diabetes. So linoleic acid, we know, can, can also improve glucose metabolism. And there are other data suggesting that linoleic acid reduces inflammation, it can also reduce blood pressure. Graber: But another thing that seed oil haters claim is that it's the ratio, that we have way too much omega-6 compared to omega-3 in our diets today, and that's what's making us sick. Matti checked for that, too. Marklund: Yeah, we did. So we did statistically adjust for omega-3 fatty acid levels, and we also did kind of stratified analysis where we look specifically in those with low omega-3 and those with high omega-3 acid levels. And we didn't see any difference in this association between linoleic acid and cardiovascular disease. So our study and other studies does not really suggest that the ratio itself should be changed by reducing omega-6 fatty acids. It's more, probably, that you should increase omega-3 fatty acids to improve the ratio. Twilley: In other words, cutting out seed oils is not going to help boost your omega-3 levels. For that, you have to eat more omega-3s. And, outside of oily fish, which are delicious but which most Americans consume very little of — and outside of tofu and chia seeds and flaxseed, which are also pretty underrepresented in the standard Western diet — canola is actually a bit of a omega-3 superstar. Taylor: It is at a level that is a little bit higher than soybean oil. Definitely much higher than the omega-3 found in something like corn oil or the traditional sunflower, safflower oils and so forth. And also compared to olive oil, canola oil has a much higher level of omega-3. Graber: Darriush Mozaffarian is director of the Tufts University Food is Medicine Institute and he's one of the co-authors of Matti's study. He says basically there's no reason to avoid canola or any other seed oil. Darriush Mozaffarian, Tufts University: This is, you know, one of the great Internet myths that's out there, that seed oils are harmful. Canola oil has been studied in well over a hundred randomized control trials and overwhelmingly been shown to improve every risk factor that has been looked at, and never been shown to be pro inflammatory, which is kind of the theory. We have all the science. Like, we don't need any more studies on canola oil. This is one of the most well established areas of science there is, is the health effects of plant oils. Twilley: So, long story short: RFK and Joe Rogan, and a whole bunch of other online influencer types are, to put it politely, completely and utterly incorrect on this issue, as well as many others. Graber: Now, just saying that a processed junk food like cookies or chips has canola oil won't give it magical health-promoting properties, of course. And we certainly can't say that there won't ever be research linking omega-6s to increased risk of any disease. Still, Matti and Darriush and Carla and everyone else who studies it say that canola and other seed oils are fine. The freshest news from the food world every day
New York Post
6 days ago
- New York Post
Joe Rogan among the fans of revolutionary anti-aging peptide
Highway to heal? An experimental peptide is in the spotlight for its potential to promote tissue repair, reduce inflammation and protect gut health. Count podcast host Joe Rogan, 57, among the fans of BPC-157 — he reported that it cleared up his elbow tendonitis in just two weeks. Biohackers hope its regenerative and anti-inflammatory powers lead to longer, healthier lives. 5 Podcast host Joe Rogan said BPC-157 cleared up his elbow tendonitis in just two weeks. Youtube / The Joe Rogan Experience 'The people who have tried it say it is life-changing,' Dr. Michael Aziz, an internist in New York and author of 'The Ageless Revolution,' told The Post. 'So is BPC-157 going to revolutionize physical therapy?' he mused. 'We hope the research comes soon.' Here's a look at the science behind the emerging therapy. What is BPC-157? BPC-157 is the short name for Body Protection Compound 157. It's comprised of 15 amino acids and derived from a naturally occurring protein in human stomach juice. Dr. Christian Muller, a sports medicine physician with Northwell Health Orthopedics in Westchester, said BPC-157 was discovered in the early '90s during research into substances that could protect the body from harm. 5 BPC-157 is in the spotlight for its potential to promote tissue repair, reduce inflammation and protect gut health. Amazon How it exactly works in the body is not fully understood. 'Research suggests BPC-157 may work by enhancing the formation of new blood vessels, which improves blood flow and nutrient delivery to injured tissues, accelerating healing,' Aziz said. 'It also influences the expression of various growth factors, such as growth hormone receptors, which are crucial for tissue repair and regeneration,' he added. Inside the potential benefits The Food and Drug Administration has not approved BPC-157, as much of the research has been conducted in animals. 'There are few, extremely limited studies on humans,' Muller told The Post. 'One study showed that knee injections with BPC-157 helped with arthritis pain in 11 out of 12 subjects, but the study did not use verified survey tools to obtain reliable answers regarding efficacy.' 5 BPC-157 may be able to help with recovery after a knee injury. Dragana Gordic – BPC-157 is being explored for: Tissue repair Healing of muscle, tendon, ligament and skin wounds Collagen production Neuroinflammation Nerve regeneration Arthritis Gastric ulcers Inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis) Leaky gut syndrome Irritable bowel syndrome 'Had a recent knee surgery? Had an injury at the gym and your doctor suggested physical therapy for six months? Not so fast. BPC-157 can help,' Aziz said. How much should you take? Dr. Pooja Gidwani, a double board-certified internal and obesity medicine physician based in L.A., noted that there are no standard doses because human data is limited. She suggested that oral forms of BPC-157 may be helpful for gut issues, while injections are typically preferred for systemic healing, such as joint or tendon recovery. She has 'nuanced conversations' with patients eager to try it. 5 How BPC-157 exactly works in the body is not fully understood. Research suggests that it may accelerate healing by enhancing the formation of new blood vessels. Sanhanat – 'We begin with an open, informed discussion about the current evidence — what's promising and what's unknown,' Gidwani told The Post. 'For some patients dealing with chronic gut issues, tendon injuries or post-operative healing challenges,' she continued, 'we discuss where the science currently stands and make a collaborative decision based on goals, risk tolerance and alternatives.' Some researchers recommend cycling it to prevent side effects. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist and professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology, suggests limiting BPC-157 usage to eight weeks and taking an eight-week break — or more. 'My concern about taking BPC157 continuously: it promotes vascular growth, and if you have a small tumor, it will vascularize that tumor as well. Not good,' Huberman tweeted in April. And beware if you purchase capsules online. 'Many times it is fake or not safe,' Aziz advised. Behind the possible downsides 'There are potential safety concerns, but given the lack of human data, they are not truly known,' Muller said. 'Since BPC-157 has been shown to be biologically active in several complex body processes,' he added, 'there can be a multitude of unknown potential dangers across several organ systems.' 5 New blood vessel growth may help promote healing, but it could also fuel tumors. phonlamaiphoto – Since it can cause uncontrolled growth of new blood vessels, people with a history of cancer or concerns about tumors should approach BPC-157 with caution. Because it has been shown to interact with growth hormone pathways, Aziz warned of potential hormonal disruption with extended use. It's also on the World Anti-Doping Agency's prohibited list for professional athletes because of its unproven claims and possible health risks. Scientists hope to learn more about it soon. 'Peptides like BPC-157 are part of an exciting frontier in longevity and regenerative medicine — but they're still evolving,' Gidwani said. 'It's not about hype — it's about understanding the potential while also respecting the limitations of what we know.'
