Is it Possible to Limit the High Level of Fructose Corn Syrup on Halloween?

It’s a battle every year to keep the sugar to a minimum in your child’s diet. But it all seems to come to a head on the holidays. Halloween has always been a candy holiday but now Easter, Christmas, Valentine’s Day are also sugar fests. Two months before the holiday drug stores and market stock up on the bags of candy and decorations that serve only to fill your child’s heart with anticipation for the magic of the day but also the cute and tantalizing candy that goes with it.

With Easter, Christmas and even Valentine’s Day you can find a way to limit the sugar without too much incident. After all, there are plenty of symbolic gestures you can give as a gift and there are eggs to dye. Stockings can be stuffed with small toys and trinkets. More importantly, on those days you control what your child has access to. If you want to use “health food” chocolate you can. But Halloween? Forget about it. Their bags are going to be held open and various sorts of treats will spill forth.

Halloween is big business and your child is the main consumer. Why not just let them go for it. But what if you aren’t comfortable letting them fill their body with that very controversial high fructose corn syrup that is sweetening our candy lately? It isn’t even sugar anymore; it’s that sinister syrup Oprah’s heart doctor warned us all about: stay away from it, he warned. It is poison. So what’s a parent to do?

Option #1: All You Can Eat….Tonight. Offer your kids a deal. They can eat as much candy as they want Halloween night. Any what’s left over you get to put away to be handed out at a more reasonable pace, like once a week in their school lunch. Or better yet, throw away or give away the remainder. But here’s the real trick: feed them something they can’t resist that is very filling before they go out for the night, preferably a lot of protein. If they are feeling full the last they’re going to want to do is eat. Yes, even candy!

Option #2: When All Else Fails…Offer a Bribe. Set your kid up with a proposition. Tell him you’ll buy his candy off of him at .50 cents a treat. This separates the true candy addicts from the greedy money grubbers. Look at this way, at what cost peace of mind? The candy haul can then be given away as charity to the needy. Or not. Your kid could cash in big at Halloween, making the whole thing about earning money rather than eating, well, high fructose corn syrup.

Option #3: Drastically limit the amount of candy they have on the day. Five pieces and not a smidge more! Nobody really wants to be that parent, though, that bums out their kid on the spookiest night of year. Sooner or later that candy will be eaten. If you take it away they will feel deprived and all they’ll want to do is stuff candy in their face for all eternity. Are you just postponing the inevitable? Why not just keep them home if you feel that way about it.

Option #4: Surrender, Dorothy. Your might as well let your child get sick on the mountains of lolly pops, mini candy bars, and gummy worms. Sooner or later that candy is going to taste like a really big headache. And that’s no fun. It’s not going to kill them to let them learn the hard way.

Perhaps it isn’t the day itself we parents should focus on but all of the days before and after Halloween. Birthdays and other holidays that so often turn into an excuse to buy bagfuls of candy. Paying attention to how much high fructose corn syrup is going into your child’s body on a daily basis means more than how much they actually consume on Halloween.

There is an upside to this, parents. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 25 percent of America’s children are overweight because they consume too many calories and don’t get enough physical activity. One thing kids are doing on Halloween is walking. For miles. They may burn off as much they consume.