But What Are You Going to Do With All That Halloween Candy?

Halloween is over!  Phew. Now ask yourself this question:  Next Halloween, will you have to engage in the same old candy-control struggle with your kids?

Or, will you and your kids have evolved so that you are off the hook and they moderate more of the mess themselves?

I know you want to know what you should do with all the candy and I’ll get to that in a minute.  First, though, it’s important to consider how you want next year’s Halloween to go.

In my last post I talked about the unintended lessons parents often teach their kids by becoming the Sugar Police. This week I want to make the point that if you dump your kids’ Halloween delights, even after a few days of full-on gorging, you will have opted for a short-term solution to a long-term problem.  True, you will have controlled the situation—the candy will be gone—but your children won’t have learned a thing about how to handle this holiday eating mess. 

And next year, you’ll have to recycle the same set of strategies, and gear up for the same set of struggles, to get you and your kids safely through the celebration. Yet again. 

On the other hand, if you get out of the candy-containment mindset, you can use your children’s mega-candy Halloween haul to teach them a thing or two about healthy eating habits.  Including how to:

• Eat without over-indulging.
• Experiment with new foods and flavors.
• Fit inferior “foods” into their diet in a healthy way.

Strategy One: Think of Halloween as a Big Buffet.

Buffets are challenging eating environments where many people over-indulge.  So many choices.  So much food! (Sounds like Halloween to me!)

Researchers at Cornell University  recently discovered something about how people serve themselves from buffets that is useful to Halloween parents.  Some people browse buffets before serving themselves; others begin loading up at once and don't stop until they reach the end.  

You probably won't be surprised to learn that the browsers tended to be thinner than the loaders. Because this was a strictly observational study, the researchers never asked the eaters why they choose one serving method over the other but I think it's safe to say that the browsers scanned the buffet as a way to make sure they filled their plates with their favorite foods before their plates were filled to capacity (or beyond).

Teach your kids to be browsers not loaders. Encourage them to scan their stash—perhaps sorting by category first—so they choose to save (and eat) what they like best. Read A Better Buy-Back.

Strategy Two: Encourage Your Kids to Taste Test.

Imagine the world from your children's perspective: Halloween is a time when they get to taste an entire range of goodies—at once.  What could be more exciting?  Especially for younger kids who haven't explored all the different kinds of candy...yet.  All those packets of candy look so pretty, so shiny, so inviting.

Even veteran haunters, those kids who have been around the block a time or two, are often tempted by the sheer volume of treats that they haven't tasted before.

Every year I'm surprised to hear parents telling their children, "You won't like that candy. Choose this one." This mindset—be cautious about trying new foods, even if those new foods are candies—ends up biting parents in the butt. Instead of teaching kids to be adventurous when it comes to eating, these parents are inadvertently teaching their kids to be cautious.

Encourage your children to take a taste test.  Have them sample one bite from any (and every) candy that looks intersting and compare how different candies look, taste, smell and how they feel in their hands, in their mouths and in their tummies. Your kids' mission? To find the candy (or candies) they like best.

Yes, I know that in the process of sampling your kids will consume a lot of candy. However your kids will:

• Eat fewer candies in a sampling session than they would by grazing.
• Cull the collection as each partially eaten candy hits the trash.

Strategy Three: Teach Your Kids to Think BIG.

Proportion—eating foods in relation to their healthy benefits—is, hands down, the most important thing you can teach your kids about eating.  Especially in today's environment where sweets and treats (read crap) are everywhere.  Rather than getting caught up in the control struggle, teach your kids to think BIG. Talk to them about proportion and how to integrate inferior foods into their diets in a way that works.  It's only by talking about sweets in context of the overall diet that kids can learn to manage their eating.  Read Have Your Cake and Eat It Too!

Still want to lighten the Halloween Load?

You could conduct a series of science experiments! 

• Which floats better: Skittles or M&Ms? 
• What happens when you dissolve Nerds in water and then add baking soda to the brew?

Check out Candy Experiments for more ideas.

Or use leftover candy to decorate Ginger Bread Houses.  This Mamapedia article is loaded with ideas.

There are a lot of over-the-top eating events during the course of the year. Halloween is just one of them.

The myth about Halloween is that this once-a-year candy-fest is a unique event in the scheme of things.   But Halloween isn’t the only time during the year when your kids are going to be bombarded with lots of free bonbons.  In a few weeks there will be Thanksgiving. Then Christmas and Hanukah.  New Year’s Eve. And then birthday parties, sporting events, school picnics, family reunions. And the list goes on…

These events are all eating orgies too. Teach your kids to cope or they might just explode.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

The How-to Control-Your-Kids'-Candy-Consumption Con

The Internet is teeming with ideas on how to curb your children’s consumption of candy over Halloween.  DON’T DO IT!

Don't fall for the idea that your job at Halloween is to cut off the candy.  Being the Candy Police is no fun. Worse. It’s high risk for teaching your children the wrong habits about candy, about eating, about holidays, about power dynamics, about fun, about LIFE.

Last year I wrote about the "hidden" problem with Halloween: it teaches kids to eat what they have, not what they want. I countered the problem by encouraging my daughter to turn in any candy she didn't absolutely LOVE and then I gave her money to go shopping for candy she adored.  Read A Better Buy-Back.

From a nutrition perspective, sugar is everything.  From a habits perspective, however, there are lots of other pitfalls—especially during Halloween.

5 Unintended lessons kids learn when parents try to restrict Halloween candy consumption.

1) I'm going to dump it so you better eat as much as you can now.

All the suggestions to take candy away from your kids are especially high-risk.  These include letting your kids go at it for a week (or giving them one candy for every year old they are) and then dumping the rest. Buy-back programs that send candy to overseas troops are wonderful if your motivation is to teach your children the habit of generosity.  But this strategy only works if your children want to share their haul.  If they don’t, they'll feel that what is theirs isn’t really theirs.  This type of insecurity leads to gorging, hoarding and a lack of parent/child trust. 

Want to limit how much candy your kids have? Limit the amount of candy your children can collect. Reduce the number of houses your kids can hit up, or make sure their Halloween bag is somewhat smaller than a suitcase.

2) Candy has power.

Allowing your children to trade their candy for something else, such as a trip to the toy store, teaches kids that candy has power. Powerful items are sought after, not discarded.  But even if this strategy works for awhile, it won't teach your kids a thing about how to moderate their own candy consumption. What's more, you're not always going to be willing to pay their trade-in price. What then? Can you say car?

Neutralize the candy by letting your children choose when they eat their Halloween delights... until they are all gone. The only caveat is this: the candy has to be folded into your kids' sweets routine—candy or a cupcake, candy or an ice cream, candy or a cookie—not supplement it.

3) Feel guilty when you eat candy.

Some people advocate that you show your children pictures of decayed teeth, rotten from candy consumption. This is like showing smokers pictures of tar-filled lungs. These kinds of pictures don't do much to change behavior, but they do a great job producing guilt.  And for what? These pictures are misleading. Halloween isn't to blame. One day (or even one week) of extreme candy eating won't make your kids' teeth fall out. It's chronic candy consumption the causes all the damage.

Similarly, the suggestion to use Halloween to talk about nutrition is misguided.  Nutrition education doesn't change behavior because kids (actually all people) make food choices based on their hedonic value -- i.e. their taste.  Besides, kids already know the difference between candy and carrots. One more lecture won't tip the scales.

Instead, teach your kids the difference between plenty and greed.

4) It's best to eat candy when you're full.

In theory, filling your kids up on a healthy meal before they go trick-or-treating will dissuade them from sampling their stash...too much.

Unfortunately, when it comes to candy, it's more likely that if you fill your kids up on a healthy meal before sending them out on the hunt they'll still snack, I mean overeat.  It's better to give your children a small or moderate healthy meal, thereby teaching them to save room for their Halloween haul.

5) You're not to be trusted around candy.

Some people suggest that parents give their children a few treats and then put the candy where the kids can't get to it.  Of course, the idea is that what's out of sight is out of mind.  This definitely is a strategy that works to limit consumption but at what cost? It teaches kids to feel out of control and to covet the candy they crave.

Kids need to learn to regulate their own intake of candy and sweets, and they can do this even when they are young. Put the power in your kids' hands. They'll eat less than you think. Read Lollypops Whenever They Want?

Don’t get me wrong; I understand the concern about candy.  By some reports, our kids stuff 5% of their yearly candy consumption into their Halloween candy bags.  

From a nutrition perspective, that’s a lot of crap compressed into a short amount of time.

From a habits perspective, though, 5% is no big deal.   Flip the statistic around and, well, that’s another story.  If 5% of all candy is consumed around Halloween, then 95% of all candy consumption happens during the rest of the year.  In other words, when it comes to candy, Halloween isn’t where the action is.

Research backs this up. Kids are increasingly snacking throughout the year on…you guessed it…candy.  In the longrun, this is a much more detrimental habit than Halloween, but no one's writing about it.

Halloween is a great holiday.

It's communal, silly and thrilling.  It's also filled with candy.  No wonder kids enjoy it!  This year, instead of worrying about the sugar, think about the lessons you want your kids to learn.  It's a strategy that pays off.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

A Better Buy-Back

Halloween Buy-Backs were all the rage this year, so I decided to get in on some of the action. 

But instead of buying my daughter’s candy back with money, toys, or other non-consumables, I offered to buy back my daughter’s candy with … more candy.   Not just any candy, though, better candy.

Yup.  Instead of trying to de-candify Halloween I upped the ante.  I allowed my daughter to swap any candy she didn’t absolutely LOVE for candy she adores.

Volume is the Halloween problem “poster-child.”

The central food-message of Halloween has got to be gluttony (or is it greed?).  In my neighborhood, some kids use pillowcases to lug around their loot.  And the buy-back programs bring a level of sanity to the situation by reducing the sheer tonnage.

The buy-back programs, however, don’t do much to teach kids a general strategy for surviving other situations where there’s also an onslaught of sweets and treats.  That’s a lesson they really need to learn. After all, kids still have to navigate past Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthday parties, the drugstore candy aisle and, of course, Grandma’s house. (And I don't know about any buy-backs for those occasions.) 

The “hidden” problem with Halloween is that it teaches kids to eat what they have, not what they want.

My daughter isn’t the kind of kid who goes crazy for candy.  In fact, it only takes about a week before she’s basically forgotten about the Halloween bag, even though it’s usually still overflowing with goodies.

The mere presence of the Halloween candy bag, however, means we almost never buy candy for my daughter (and she’s too careful with her allowance to buy candy for herself).  As a result, whenever my daughter gets a craving for some candy, her only choice is to go for whatever goods she’s got. And therein lies the problem.

You can only be truly satisfied by eating foods you love.  Unfortunately, Halloween teaches kids to eat what they get. It's a kind of scarcity-response, even in the face of abundance.

Eat what you LOVE, not what’s available.

If there were ever a message that kids needed to learn, this is it.

Instead, the real Halloween lesson goes something like this: eat as much candy as you can even if you don’t like it that much.

And if you have a kid who doesn’t get candy that often, the message goes something like this: you better take advantage of this candy because you’re not getting a lot more of it in the near future.

I was surprised when my daughter sorted her candy to find out how few items made the cut.

And surprised when we went shopping by what she bought instead. (I guess there is no accounting for taste!) But there was even another surprise: my daughter bought less than she gave away, reducing the size of her supply by about one third!

Now, I'm confident my daughter's stash is stocked with delights and that she'll savor every bite. That's the habit I want her to learn for a lifetime of holiday eating. 

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~