Halloween without the scary sugar
Food is fun, kids expect it to satisfy, to surprise, to reward. And so should we - just not in a package or otherwise with ingredients we can’t know. And no more so than at halloween. but there are ways and means.
Food has many more mechanisms besides nutrition: from hydration to bile flow to joy, especially the latter with the sharing of food and laughs with family and friends. If you are eating something to "heal" you out of a state of constriction and fear, good luck digesting anything at all. (Nb: Remember "rest and digest").
Eating thoughtlessly is one of the biggest problems we have. And if we’re not thinking ‘they’ can get us to eat sorts of stuff - the more thoughtful we are, the healthier we’ll be. Simple!
Who we eat with, the quality of conversation we're having, the shrill joy of collecting candy! With your kids!
But… do you feel good after eating candy let alone all that candy? What would halloween look and feel like without all the scary ingredients? Is candy really a ‘treat’ after all? So many have actually be ‘declared unfit for consumption’ but only after being on the market so many years! How can they ban some colours in one country and not others? Is that something you’re wanting to ‘treat’ your kids with this halloween? Oh and if you wouldn’t feed these to your kids why would you hand them out?
SKITTLES: Artificial colors linked to hyperactivity in children and Titanium Dioxide linked to cancer
REESE'S: linked to increased risk of food allergies and immune system disruption.
DUM DUMS, MEM's and HARIBO: Full of artificial colors and other nasties.
ROLO & MILKY WAY: Corn syrup and
artificial flavors that are heavily processed. Vote with your dollars and buy brands who are doing better things or try some cool swaps .
We do halloween, don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t miss it. We loved in the USA for 8 years and it’s hard not to get involved in community parades, dress ups and haunted houses. But we do three things differently:
We all get involved in the creeping cooking
We all get dressed up and trick or treat with our friends. We had a eat a small packet of ‘not so dreadful’ sweets for the walking
We then talk to the switch witch afterwards!
We’re doing a halloween without the scary ingredients - dinner with ‘mummified pizzas’ of cheese stripes that look like bandages and olives for eyeballs, severed sausage fingers with tomato sauce blood spurting out, string cheese broomsticks and guac filled spider crackers. Followed by witches fingers (date roll with cashew ginger nails), frozen bananas ghost pops and I did make lychee eye balls floating in blood jelly last year but my son doesn’t like jelly (he did eat the lychee eyeballs tho)!
While we never eat as many sweets at once as halloween, these are quite tasty even for adults!
And the switch witch arrives when, at the end of trick or treating, we weigh in all the candy we’ve collected and switch it out for a toy of our choice. Lego wins every time at the moment and we actually look forward to building that together - who knows how many more of those we have so I’m taking them as a treasure too for now!
Food is fun! And while they’re trick or treat age, kids’ relationship with food is building. Rewards in the form of weird foods their growing bodies don’t recognise as food don’t strike me as a good choice. Someone mentioned we only get the first 10-12 years with our kids before they become more of their own independent being and head off with their own friends. Enjoy it together while you can!
