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Have a Healthy Halloween: Tricks For Coping With Halloween Treats
Your children might not agree, but Halloween candy is not much of a treat. It's more like a trick on healthy habits. Candy has sugar, fat and not much (if any) nutritional value.
It's hard to keep kids from eating candy on Halloween. So what's a parent to do? For starters, feed your kids a nutritious snack before they go out so they aren't hungry while they trick-or-treat. Give them apple slices or a peanut butter sandwich on whole-grain bread.
If you are hosting a party, make healthy snacks rather than buy ready-made foods. The website 365Halloween suggests alternative ingredients for cookies, cakes and munchables. For example, for the color black, use poppy seeds, raisins, currents, black beans, cocoa or carob. For red-colored foods, use beets, strawberries, cherries or peppers. All of these foods contain nutrients, and many are high in fiber. Check out these low-fat or high-fiber cookie and muffin recipes.
You can set a good example for your children by passing out alternatives to candy. For example, give stickers, fun pencils or erasers, noisemakers, kazoos, rubber worms and spiders to the little ghosts who ring your doorbell.
Healthy food treats include string cheese (keep refrigerated), Gogurts (freeze them the night before to keep them fresh when you hand them out), granola or cereal bars, single-serve bags of microwaveable popcorn, or small boxes of raisins, nuts, pretzels or dried fruit. Start a new Halloween tradition this year--a healthy tradition. Read more "Healthy Halloween Tricks!" here. |
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