For those of you following the Whole30® program, certain upcoming holidays may prove a test of willpower. Halloween candy is everywhere, calling out to you from perky colored wrappers in perfectly portioned bite-sized pieces. So, if you’re stocking up for trick-or-treaters, or dealing with an influx of candy in your child’s own bag o’ booty, we are here to remind you of one simple fact.
You can have candy any time you want.
You’re a grown-up. You earn your own money. And if you wanted a Snickers, a Kit-Kat, or a bag of Peanut M&Ms, you can walk right into any grocery store, gas station or convenience mart and buy one.
Halloween candy is not special. It’s not unique. It’s not homemade, or a once-a-year treat, and we’re pretty sure it doesn’t invoke fond childhood memories of sitting around the dining room table while Mom pulls things out of the oven.
Which means, Whole30′ers… you will NOT be taken out by a bag of peanut M&Ms. Not this time around. No slips, no cheats, no excuses.
You’re in this to slay your Sugar Dragons once and for all, and you are tougher than any Halloween candy.
CREATE YOUR OWN HALLOWEEN TRADITION
For those of you who still want to celebrate the holiday without succumbing to the sugar-fest that is traditional Halloween, here are some alternative ideas from Whole9 readers:
- Have a cookout with your friends and children’s friends. The kids can dress up and you can control the meal. Also, the Following My Nose blog has some creative dishes like Creepy Creature of the Sea Soup and Sweet Potato Bugs. Most importantly, eat before going out trick or treating then you will not be tempted by the sugar demons.
- On Halloween night, the kids (we have 5) pick out 5-10 pieces of candy to keep, and put the rest of their candy in a big pile. We ring a special bell before the kids go to bed and that night the “Switch Witch” comes and exchanges it for a cool group gift. This year it’s a tetherball set!
- Though I do not have children, my Halloween will involve being stuffed at a Brazillian Rodizio before going to a Halloween party so that I am too full off of meats that I could not possibly have anything else.
- This year I simply explained that I feel all the candy is crap and they deserve better than that… I did say that if they agree to handover all their candy we will all go bowling tomorrow night and bring along any friends who want to do the same. We have the neighbor-kid onboard!! I count this as a win!
- Our gym is offering a Halloween Candy Buy Back for all of our community. We are giving an incentive of $2.00/lb of candy, a prize for the most candy returned, as well as a free gym class.
- Right now, with our one child only 11 months old, it’s easy enough – we’re just not going trick-or-treating. If we get any kiddos at our door, they’re getting raisins (yeah, we’re *that* house. I’m over it.).
- As a college student, the pull isn’t as bad because of no kids, but at my job my boss has been passing the candy like crazy! I keep having to explain why I don’t want any. I have been using the Whole30 elevator speech though! I finally feel like I have a grip on my sugar demons, and I finally feel good and happy in my decision to say no.
- I work at a school and you can imagine how crazy this day was! I told the parents I would take care of the treats in the room. We had raisins, carrot sticks, orange slices, and apples for snacks. The parents thought I was crazy! I had the last laugh as the kiddos LOVED the healthy snacks and ate ALL of it! I even had some parents come up and apologize for badmouthing my choices. It just goes to prove that kids do know how to eat healthy foods if they are given a chance.
- I would provide an equally tantalizing option the weekend before Halloween to allow them costume time and something to look forward to. They can invite friends and we would play various “games”: ie. bob for apples, break a pinata filled with non-edible treats, make a craft, have a scavenger hunt, etc. For food, I would play into the fall/Halloween theme offering guts (spaghetti squash and tomato sauce), edible eye balls (hard boiled eggs, black olives), spiders (fudge babies), there are a variety of easily adaptable recipes on familyfun.go.com under Halloween treats.
- My husband and I took our kids trick or treating with their friends/family. When we got home, they dumped out all their candy and we gave them a choice-do you want to eat these or would you like to trade all your candy for money so that you can purchase or save up for something to buy at the toy store? They chose the money!! My kids are 5 and 7 and are committed to eating well.
- I have 4 year old twins and a 6 year old. They love trick-or-treating and get a lot of candy. The night of, they get one piece and then they trade it in to the Great Pumpkin who brings them 2 books each. My children were thrilled to get their books. I wanted to bring the candy to work and my husband insisted on throwing it in the garbage.
So, Whole9 readers… what are you going to do with all of your children’s candy? How will you balance the tradition of Halloween with the health concerns of all that sugar? Share your creative and healthy ideas in comments… And happy Halloween to all!
I think the worst part of the candy problem is that most of us are conditioned to never waste food, so we don’t want to toss all that “food,” and we don’t want to have wasted money on it just to throw it away.
I have to insist that this is not food. The amount of real ingredients in these brightly-wrapped monstrosities is laughable, and it’s bound tightly in seven kinds of chemically-extracted sugar. Corn syrup, HF corn syrup, real sugar, fake sugar, kinda sugar… even when there’s real caramel in your caramels it’s just there to lend a little authentic flavor the syrups and chemicals that are acting like caramel. Throwing it away is not a waste of anything but crap.
As to “wasting money,” which I know is another reason people keep less healthy food in the house (you know, when you leave the crackers and pasta in the pantry when you clean out for a Whole30 because you can’t stand the thought of throwing food away?) You aren’t saving much there either. The ingredients in these things are sourced or synthesized as cheaply as possible. That’s why there are bargain bags of it! Nothing in them is rare or special or expensive, and I would argue that the wrappers cost more than what is inside them.
In short, nothing is wasted if you trash it all. Nothing.
Ugh, I already fell victim to some Halloween candy but I am back on the wagon and feeling great. I love candy corn or I should say that I loved candy corn. This year it just didn’t taste as good as I remember. My tastes are changing.
@Kristina, great point!
@Fitness Wayne, isn’t it interesting how foods we once thought we couldn’t live without turn out to be “not so great” after all?
I give out glow sticks! Kids love them, and I’m not staring at a bowl of candy all night. And I don’t get egged later for giving out raisins
Great article! I’m on Day 10 of Whole30 and was nervous about all the Halloween Candy around but so far I haven’t even wanted a single piece (which is RARE for me!!!). I have two small kids and personally am okay with them keeping 10-15 pieces of candy and eating one a day. I remember being a kid and LOOOOVING candy and those are fun memories for me. I want them to enjoy the candy…they understand that candy is junk and what foods really are nutritious.
I’ll be giving out Halloween erasers, stickers, vampire teeth, and bat rings instead of candy!
My wife and I pass out little ‘mini’ play-doughs. They usually sell them by the halloween candy at places like Target. Kids love them!
For the last two years, I’ve done ‘goodie’ bags for my ‘hood kids….No candy, just rings, eyeballs, pencils, pencil sharpeners, cool ‘bones’ necklaces, tattoos, etc. They LOVE it!!
Last year I made 40+ goodie bags and ran out of supplies. The only treat that I include is pretzels…Not the best treat, but, I guess it is better than straight up sugar via candy!!!
I decided not to give out candy this year. Too tempting for me to have it in the house. Instead I bought glow in the dark vampire fangs, mini activity books and mini paddle ball games. Spent under $20 and there is enough to last me a couple Halloweens (not many kids come through my area when Halloween is a weekday). Feeling pretty good about not giving the kiddos a bunch of candy garbage!
Love all of these ideas! Keep ‘em coming!
Thanks for all the great ideas! I was just at Target today and looking at the shocking prices of candy! I flat out refused to pay that price for something that doesn’t even qualify as food in my book. All I kept thinking was how much they expected people to pay for something to give to kids who will get all hyped up on it and it will rot their teeth and guts. Terrible but maybe that is the “trick” side of “trick-or-treat”
What an interesting sentence, “what are you going to do with all of your children’s candy?” If it is their candy, it is not yours to “do” anything with.
More important than sugar overloads or upset stomachs (barring kids with deadly allergies or diabetes, etc.) are the other messages our kids get from us–do we respect them? Do we respect their property? Do we acknowledge that they are autonomous human beings, with their own path to learning?
Candy may still have some power over me, but it doesn’t have the power to make me treat my child with disrespect.
I have a very healthy five year old little dude. We’ve cut most sugars out at home, as a result of my whole 30 in August. He tends to make great choices (ie, this week he chose an apple over dark chocolate chips for a treat). He says he can feel how badly sugar makes him feel when he eats it–and that he doesn’t want “sugar bugs” destroying his teeth. (He’s seen the pictures in Dr. Price’s NUTRITION AND PHYSICAL DEGENERATION.) But he loves the idea of trick or treating. So this year, the Switch Witch is going to visit our house. He’ll leave his candy out, and she’ll fly by Halloween night, and switch out his candy for a toy. He is super psyched!
@Susan: Respectfully, unless your kids are old enough to earn their own money and buy their own candy (and I’m not talking about an allowance for doing chores around the house), I could not disagree more.
The job of all parents is to make good decisions for their children, because their children are constitutionally incapable of showing good judgment themselves in certain areas of decision-making. It’s why they can’t drive cars or drink alcohol before a certain age. (If your kid came home with a pack of smokes in their plastic pumpkin, would you “respect” them enough to let them light up?) It’s a parent’s job not to let their children do things that harm their health – things that would set themselves up for longstanding negative consequences (physical and psychological) in the future. A busload of candy certainly fits that bill.
Your kids don’t know any better. You do. It’s not about respect, it’s about a parent’s responsibility.
Best,
Melissa
Thanks for the response, Melissa. The area where we differ is certainly on whether or not children can make good decisions for themselves. My own opinion and experience is that (again, short of immediately life-threatening situations) children become good decisions makers by making decisions, not by being controlled.
One of my major problems with candy and sweets is that (a) they were always “treat” foods, so when I want to “treat” myself now, it takes effort to get past that idea, and (b) that they were always restricted, so when I try to restrict them for myself, I can easily get into a “you’re not the boss of me” argument with my paleo superego.
I don’t know any kid who wants to be sick or unhealthy. Given some experience and good information and good role-modeling (not to mention, given an environment where candy is just another food, and not, you know, produced by Satan Itself and strictly regulated), children can make great decisions about food, even candy.
There are some stories about people’s experiences with this here: http://sandradodd.com/eating/halloween
I am not expecting to change anyone’s mind on this, just putting another perspective out there for people to consider. Our actions with respect to food affect more than just our children’s bodies, but their psyches as well. I think it’s worth considering that getting kids not to eat candy is not the be-all, end-all goal of parenting.
My four year old had a pre-school “trunk or treat” event. I handed out toys instead of candy. For anyone who lives near a Walmart, they have Halloween toys that are as cheap as candy and the kids loved their spider bouncy balls, pencils, and vampire teeth. I have gone there for this stuff the last couple years and it is wonderful not to bring processed sugar into the house.
I also got some 90 percent dark chocolate, organic, with no soy lethicen and did let my four year old have some of that. I broke it into pieces, wrapped it in tin foil, and put dinosaur stickers on it. He didn’t have a single piece of conventional candy. We did let him “trick or treat” in the cars at the event, and then we regifted the candy to the greedy older kids who were coming back for seconds and thirds. He and his two year old brother were perfectly happy to have about half a dark chocolate bar apiece- it was rich enough to satisfy them and last a while.
Susan- Letting my four year old eat high fructose corn syrup candy until he vomits isn’t my idea of “respecting him”. It’s one thing to teach your kids about private property, and another to let them do whatever they want with it.
I LOVE the many parents who give their kinds the choice to trade their candy in for something more appealing. It gives the kids some autonomy and say in the matter. But by offering something they would want more than candy – I would be the kid gunnin’ for cash! – you can still influence their choice without making it for them. Genius!
We are mid-Whole30 right now – luckily we both work on Halloween night so we don’t even have to deal with it! This is my 4th-ish Whole 30, and I think it’s really encouraging to know that Halloween candy doesn’t even tempt me anymore. Boom. Freedom!