Halloween: Don't Trick Kids With Candies! Treat Them With Healthy, Fun "Goodies" Instead

Here's an article I wrote to help you and your family have a healthy and happy Halloween.

Halloween: Don’t Trick Kids With Candies! Treat Them With Healthy, Fun “Goodies” Instead

By Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C.

Halloween is downright spooky. And I’m not talking about the cavorting children dressed up as gruesome goblins, ghouls, monsters or pirates.

Rather, the scariest part of Halloween is that it’s become our nationally observed, mandatory “Spooky Sugar Overload Day” (and week).

Sadly, most Americans follow this accepted, but outdated ritual despite our alarming rates of obesity and skyrocketing numbers of children getting type 2 diabetes.

This Halloween, it’s time for us to face the frightening facts: When kids come trick-or-treating, you are tricking them rather than treating them by giving them sugary candies galore to gobble and gorge.

In short, you could be sending unsuspecting children into sugar shock.

When children overdose on sweets, they could become moody, anxious, depressed, unsociable, brain-fogged, obese, quarrelsome, confrontational, hyperactive, rowdy, raging and tantrum-throwing kids. In short, they could be transformed into “Sugar Brats.”

By my calculations, the average child scarfs down between 20 to 50 teaspoons of sugar and hundreds of calories on Halloween night alone. And that doesn’t include the massive sugar overdosing in the days that follow.

What’s more, Halloween sets the stage for sugar overloading year round. And this sugar habit, research shows, could pave the way to obesity, type 2 diabetes, cancer, heart disease, failing memory, early aging and many more health problems. 

Many parents think that since Halloween only comes once a year, they needn’t worry about their child’s sugar intake. Quite the contrary.

The average American consumes between 142.6 pounds to 170 pounds of sugar per year—or nearly a cup of sugar per day. But many children take in much more than that.

These figures are a far cry from the average sugar consumption nearly two centuries ago when the average person only tasted 2.2 teaspoons of sugar a day. 

So, this Halloween, why put your child’s health at risk by handing over sugar-loaded candies?

Hand Out Toys as “Treats” Instead

Thankfully, some savvy, nutrition-minded health experts now recommend that parents give out fun, colorful, non-edible Halloween “treats” and fun party favors instead of candy.

For instance, you could offer such healthy, Halloween-themed goodies as bats, spiders, beetles and mice. Or you could hand out slinkees, kazoos and glow-in-the-dark fingers. (More ideas can be found at www.SugarShockBlog.com.)

Are you worried that your kids and those of your neighbors may rise up in revolt and create a ruckus or even egg your house for daring to take the candies out of Halloween?

Not so, claims Marlene Schwartz, Ph.D., deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

“Children will have just as much fun with toy treats,” insists Dr. Schwartz, who began giving toy treats instead of candies since 2003 in her small town near New Haven. What’s more, kids liked her new healthy offerings.

“Only one kid out of 500 trick-or-treaters coming to our house wanted candies,” reports Dr. Schwartz, whose two children, aged 7 and 11, enjoy helping her select non-sugary toys from www.OrientalTrading.com and other sites.

Now, other parents in the New Haven area and in other parts of the country also are jumping onto the non-candy-giving bandwagon.

“We’ve noticed a healthy contagion effect,” Dr. Schwartz says, noting that “children are just excited to be outside wearing their costumes. We just put the toys on a tray and give them a choice, which makes it more fun for the kids.”

Study Shows Halloween Treats Can Be Toys

Dr. Schwartz made the healthy switch from candies to toys after spearheading a landmark study, which was published in the Journal of Nutrition, Education and Behavior in July 2003.

The Halloween study—which surveyed 284 children aged three to 14—found that, when given a choice between candies (lollipops, fruit-flavored chews and hard candies) or toys (such as glow-in-the-dark insects, stretch pumpkin men or Halloween-themed stickers and pencils), half of the youngsters picked the toys.

I invite you, too, to join us in celebrating Halloween this year in a more fun, healthy way. Prove with us that Halloween—and other holidays—can be just as exciting and enticing without promoting unhealthful sugar-gorging.  

Connie Bennett, M.S.J., C.H.H.C. is author of SUGAR SHOCK! (Berkley Books), with Dr. Stephen T. Sinatra. Connie is a sought-after Sugar-Liberation Expert, speaker, frequent TV and radio show guest ("CBS News Sunday Morning," "Oprah & Friends Radio," etc.), certified holistic health counselor and experienced journalist/columnist. Back in 1998, Connie quit sugar and refined carbs on doctor’s orders, and her many baffling ailments completely vanished, including horrible headaches, crippling fatigue, heart palpitations and “brain fog.” Now, Connie mocks her unsavory sugar past by jokingly dubbing herself an “Ex-Sugar Shrew!” She has helped thousands of people break free from the depressing, debilitating aftershocks of overloading on “culprit carbs.” She runs the popular SUGAR SHOCK! Blog (www.SugarShockBlog.com) and hosts the Stop SUGAR SHOCK! Radio Show. She has been widely published (The Los Angeles Times, TV Guide, Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, eDiets.com, SheKnows.com, etc.) To learn if you've been brainwashed to become a sugar addict, take the SUGAR SHOCK! Quiz at www.SugarShockBlog.com.