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Sadly, most Americans follow this accepted, but outdated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.