Trick-or-Treat
Trick-or-Treat
Give me something good reasonably healthy to eat
This is the long awaited healthy Halloween post, as promised. If your conscience has been nagging you about cavities and childhood obesity related to Halloween, you are not alone. In the nineties the big concern with Halloween was safety, after scares (fiction and non) over razors in apples and poisoned candy. We are well into the new millennium and the latest concern is childhood obesity, cavities, and type 2 diabetes. I am not suggesting we all hand out toothbrushes and dental floss to the trick-or-treaters, nothing annoyed me more as a child! (If you are a family that hands out toothbrushes I commend you, but when I was 8 I thought you sucked). So how can we strike a balance between health conscious treats and kid-friendly fun?
Here are a few simple ideas: boxed raisins, bagged peanuts, microwave popcorn, sugar-free gum, or hot cocoa mix. Young children may not object to non-food items such as balloons, sidewalk chalk, stickers, crayons, or colorful pencils. My mother, bless her ♥, hands out king size candy bars to every five year old on the block! So if you are planning on passing out candy, opt for the "fun size." Lollipops are a good choice because they take time to consume, and are typically low in calories. For example, tootsie pops and blow pops contain 60 calories each while a fun size milky way contains close to 100 calories. I could easily eat 3 or 4 small candy bars in the time it would take me to consume a tootsie pop.