A pink box. It’s heavy and warm, and sweet aromas are wafting out. Inside are six brightly colored cookies, each the size of your hand.
Crumbl has gained a lot of attention for its aesthetically pleasing, expertly marketed baked goods since cousins Jason McGowan and Sawyer Hemsley opened their first store in Logan, Utah, in 2017.
Now they have more than 1,000 stores in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico, and have caught the attention of the likes of Olivia Rodrigo and Kylie Jenner.
@crumblcookies 🍁 MAPLE CINNAMON SQUARE (NEW) | 🔴 RASPBERRY CHEESECAKE FT. 𝑃𝐻𝐼𝐿𝐴𝐷𝐸𝐿𝑃𝐻𝐼𝐴® CREAM CHEESE |🍦 FRIED ICE CREAM | 🍫 BROWNIE BATTER | 🟠 CARAMEL PUMPKIN CAKE | 🍪 SEMI-SWEET CHOCOLATE CHUNK #Crumbl ♬ original sound – Crumbl Cookies
But in recent months, the hype has been speckled with criticism, with disgruntled customers taking to social media to complain about cookies they dislike, believe are overpriced, or criticize nutritionally.
How unhealthy are Crumbl cookies? Newsweek spoke with three nutritional experts to find out—with one warning that such sugar-rich treats “might promote sugar addiction,” while another said they were best an “occasional treat” as part of a balanced diet.
Crumbl was approached four times for comment.
“Crumbl cookies are unhealthy, full stop,” said Harvard-trained nutritional and metabolic psychiatrist Georgia Ede. “These are not nourishing whole foods, they are made from ultra-processed ingredients such as bleached flour, sugar, soy lecithin and artificial flavors.
“A single Crumbl milk chocolate cookie contains a staggering 96 grams of carbohydrate—and every single gram is refined, so it turns instantly into glucose in the bloodstream, risking dangerously high blood glucose and insulin levels.
“The combination of sugar, fat and salt…is a recipe for metabolic disaster, as it is both fattening and addictive.”
Sam Feltham, founder and director of the Public Health Collaboration, a U.K. charity that aims to support the British health care system by promoting healthy lifestyles, agreed, saying: “These cookies will undoubtedly be tasty, but they’re certainly not a good choice if you’re wanting to follow a healthy diet.”
Janie Perry, a nutritional therapist who specializes in weight management, added: “Given the ongoing obesity crisis in the U.S., I have concerns about Crumbl cookies.” She said that they were high in calories, sugar and fat.
“For example, their classic milk chocolate chip cookie contains over 700 calories, 40 percent of the recommended daily fat intake, and more than one-third of the recommended daily carbohydrate intake,” Perry explained.
The recommended daily calorie intake for adults is between 2,000 and 2,500 calories. The serving size of Crumbl cookies is one-quarter of a cookie.
The calories and servings of Crumbl cookies have been the subject of discussion on social media, largely sparked by TikTok content creator @J9 in a video with 266,400 views.
“So, I just found out something very upsetting today,” she said. “I get Crumbl cookies pretty often and my dumb*** thought that one cookie was 140, 150 calories.
“I was like, oh, that’s not bad at all, right? Then I came on TikTok and found out, oh no, that’s not the case. I didn’t know that when you click on the actual cookie, it tells you, it’s only 170 per one-fourth. The whole cookie is 680… I eat, like, three at a time.”
Commenters responded, saying: “No but who eats just ¼” and “Why would they do thatttttt. So deceitful.”
Of the six flavors available at the time of writing in the U.S.—milk chocolate chip, pumpkin square, s’mores brownie, peanut butter blossom, iced oatmeal and berries & cream—all contain at least 680 calories per cookie. A pumpkin square comes to 920 calories.
Crumbl sells boxes of six cookies with a rotating menu that means the flavors available change each week.
They are known for drumming up hype on social media, “dropping” each new flavor in videos to their 8.8 million followers on TikTok.
Ede called Crumbl’s rotating menu “a brilliant marketing tactic,” saying: “It sets up a pattern of scheduled surprise—a powerful driver of addictive behavior.”
Perry and Feltham agreed that the rotating menu was a great idea, but Feltham said: “I just wish it wasn’t for such a metabolically damaging foodstuff.”
Crumbl has also received attention because of the dozens of TikTok creators who have used the brand for views on their own channels. Mukbang videos of TikTok content creators trying Crumbl flavors each week in front of a camera—often eating half or a whole box of six cookies—receive tens of millions of views.
For example, a user who goes by @shhhhimeating has posted a video trying Crumbl’s new flavors every week since June 13, receiving between 3 million and 13.7 million views for each one.
Perry said that mukbang videos “promote overconsumption and normalize excessive eating of hyperpalatable, high-sugar, low-nutrient foods.”
“This trend could negatively impact viewers, especially in a culture where obesity and poor metabolic health are already significant concerns,” Perry said. “It’s important to encourage a more balanced approach to enjoying treats, rather than glamorizing indulgence without considering its health effects.”
And there are health effects of eating so much sugar—sometimes more than 2,000 calories in a single video, in the case of @shhhhimeating.
“Excess sugar consumption is a prime driver of insulin resistance, which is at the root of most metabolic diseases,” Feltham said. “And these cookies have a high amount of sugar, which if eaten in excess, will lead to insulin resistance and inevitably, type 2 diabetes.”
Perry explained how this insulin resistance could develop, saying: “Eating these cookies in large quantities, as seen in viral mukbang videos, can lead to blood sugar spikes and crashes, which negatively affect metabolic health, a marker of how efficiently the body processes energy from food, particularly sugar and fats.
“This blood sugar rollercoaster can contribute to sugar cravings, weight gain, low energy levels and, over time, issues like insulin resistance.”
She said foods that contained protein and fiber could provide steadier energy, help manage weight and support better metabolic health, but that Crumbl cookies were “largely devoid of these critical components.”
Ede said that high-sugar foods such as Crumbl cookies “might promote sugar addiction,” and that refined carbohydrates could be “addictive.”
Quoting from her book, Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind, Ede explained: “Sugar triggers the brain’s reward circuits to release dopamine, a neurotransmitter that signals pleasure and motivates us to seek more of the same.
“Repeated use of sugar can eventually dull the dopamine pleasure response, leading to compulsive overeating.”
She said that refined carbohydrates were “mood destabilizers” because they raised blood sugar to dangerously high levels.
“Every time your blood glucose spikes, your brain glucose spikes as well, setting off waves of inflammation and oxidative stress that physically damage the brain’s delicate architecture and destabilize the neurotransmitter systems involved in the regulation of mood, concentration, energy, sleep and memory—the same neurotransmitters that psychiatric medications are designed to try to rebalance,” Ede said.
Crumbl has received similar negative attention online from influencers and content creators who say the cookies are too sweet or express concern or skepticism toward those who ate the cookies on camera.
In a YouTube video with 1.1 million views, creator @Edvasian called Crumbl “a symbol of overconsumption,” describing their products as “facetuned.”
He said: “I saw someone [on TikTok] eat six face-sized cookies in one sitting. Oh, is this what we’re doing now? But then, when I kept scrolling, I saw another one, and another one, and another one, and another one…”
A particularly vocal critic of the brand, @Bee better, has tried the cookies in several videos, gagging and spitting out mouthfuls in some.
“I’m sorry, am I hallucinating?” he said in a video that has received 498,700 likes. “Who is paying you guys? No, seriously, who is paying you guys to say these cookies are good?
“And this is $30? I genuinely feel like someone’s playing a prank on me…It’s terrible!”
Could Crumbl cookies feature as part of a healthy diet and lifestyle? The nutrition experts had mixed opinions.
Perry said: “While occasional treats like Crumbl cookies can fit into a balanced diet, they should be consumed mindfully and in moderation.”
Eating them weekly or consuming them in large quantities “could undermine long-term health goals,” she said.
Feltham added: “I wouldn’t recommend having these on a weekly basis. If you have good metabolic health, you might be able to get away with having a box every few months. But for those with poor metabolic health, they should definitely avoid them altogether.”
In this context, “poor metabolic health” refers to insulin resistance, obesity, overweight, prediabetes, type 2 diabetes or a heart condition related to diet and lifestyle.
Ede took a stronger stance, saying: “Products like these are all risk and no benefit, so complete avoidance is the safest and healthiest strategy.
“For those who choose to indulge on occasion despite the risks, a single cookie should be more than plenty, and if you can’t limit yourself to just one, you could have a problem with sugar addiction.”
Do you have a tip on a food story that Newsweek should be covering? Is there a nutrition concern that’s worrying you? Let us know via science@newsweek.com. We can ask experts for advice, and your story could be featured in Newsweek.
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