It’s time once again to support the future of America by buying deliciously fattening cookies from troops of Girl Scouts. We sampled several varieties this year ... all in the interest of helping out the youth, of course.

Thin Mints The classic (according to Wikipedia, they account for 25 percent of all Girl Scout cookie sales). No explanation necessary.

Thanks-A-Lots These sort of brittle shortbread cookies with chocolate icing on the bottom were new to us, and turned out to be not as good as they looked. Very institutional-tasting.

Lemonades We remember sandwich cookies with lemon cream filling, but apparently those weren’t around this year. Instead, these soft shortbread cookies, with designs on them to make them look like lemon slices, just have lemon icing on the bottom. They taste about the same, though.

Caramel deLites (aka Samoas) Vanilla cookies coated with chocolate on one side, and caramel, coconut and even more chocolate on the other. Basically, a candy bar in cookie form. Super addictive.

Shortbread Apart from the Girl Scout logo baked into the top, they’re pretty basic and fairly bland. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, since it prevents us from eating too many at once.