According to the Boston Herald, each potential trick-or-treater (aged 5 to 13), gets about $31 worth of candy per child tonight!
Now that’s a scary Halloween fact!
Indeed, the National Retail Federation predicts that Americans will fork over $3.29 billion on Halloween this year, including $1.16 billion on candy.
But, as the Herald observes, the U.S. Census found that only 36.8 million potential trick-or-treaters — kids aged 5 to 13 — exist in this country.
So that comes to about 31 bucks of candy per kid!
That’s an awful lot of candies making these children’s blood sugar levels bounce around — and sending them into SUGAR SHOCK!
What’s more, much of this candy is laden with high fructose corn syrup.
In fact, the Herald notes — as do a number of scientists and observers — that as obesity has skyrocketed, so has our soaring consumption of HFCS.
To learn more about the perils of high fructose corn syrup, read Greg Critser’s fascinating book, Fat Land.
One thought on “Get Spooked: On Halloween, Each Kid Will Get $31 Worth of Candy!”
Happy Sugar-free Halloween! We don’t participate in the trick-or-treating thing at all (there’s enough candy and junk toys out there in my opinion), but we’re going to an Autumn Festival with a free chili dinner. Yum. I know there will be candy there, but there will be so much else to do that the candy isn’t the whole celebration. My husband’s work invited all the families to come and though they did give out candy (which we just didn’t eat), they also had meat and cheese sandwiches on whole wheat bread, which we did enjoy. We just found some water to drink instead of the pop. So there is good stuff out there to do. If you don’t want to stay home and hand out candy or toys, why not go swimming (very incompatible with eating candy 🙂 ) , go to the movies, go ice skating, or go mini golfing? Anyway, hope everyone has a happy Halloween!
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