As Halloween is fast approaching, parents and caregivers are hard at work planning activities for their kids to make sure they are safe and entertained for this exciting & spooky tradition. Costumes and treats need to be purchased well in advance and social calendars need to be planned out. In fact, anticipation and preparation for Halloween often starts months ahead of time for hardcore Halloweeners like our family.
If you are somewhat concerned about the intake of sugar by your loved ones, planning a sugar-free healthy Halloween Party may feel like you are a single salmon swimming upstream against the strong and fast current of confectionary consumerism. The mention of a sugar free Halloween Party is guaranteed to elicit eye rolling and questions concerning your sanity, but if we step back and observe from a larger perspective the actual harm that sugar wreaks on society at large, a Healthy Halloween may not seem such a bad idea after all. We all know heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide and according to a recent article from Harvard Medical “too much added sugar can be one of the greatest threats to cardiovascular disease”.
As the adults, and therefore the ones with the wallets, we are the last line of defence against the advertisement of maddeningly sweet sugar toward children. Parents and caregivers should be raising their eyebrows and sounding the alarm. Right under our noses the sugar and junk food industry have turned this simple pagan celebration into a Disneyed-up commercial sugar free for all. This would be fine if it hadn’t a negative effect on our health and well being but the fact of the matter is it is killing us fast. It’s time we made some changes for the better.
In North America and much of Europe the celebration of Halloween is largely non-religious marked by the carving of jack-o-lanterns, the wearing of costumes, and legions of children and teens knocking the doors saying those magic words “trick or treat!” According to the National Confectionery Association of America, Halloween is a 6.4 billion dollar business celebrated by 94% of Americans and 97% of Americans hand out on average 3 pieces of candy to each trick or treater. In fact, there’s more candy sold for Halloween in North America than Christmas and Easter combined. Hersey and Mars accounted for over 50% of all candy sales in 2021. The figure is steadily increasing as post-pandemic candy sales continue to soar. In fact the Confectionary Industry in the US, already a 48 billion dollar industry is on track to become a 108 billion dollar industry in 2029. But before the Candy industry took over Halloween what did people do? How did people celebrate and what was it about?
Halloween’s origins go back more than 2000 years prior to the Romans concerning the Celts in 1st century CE where they “added their own festivals of Feralia, commemorating the passing of the dead, and of Pomona, goddess of the harvest.”. The harvest was traditionally associated with the Great Mother Archetype, the nurturing and sustaining womb of the world. This is a far cry from gorging yourself on a poisonous level of candy.
So why not forgo the consumer sugar trip entirely and keep your children at home for Halloween? Throw a party for them and wrestle Halloween away from the hands of the big sugar conglomerates. With a little planning and educating people on the positive benefits or a healthier diet you’ll be promoting a healthier lifestyle likely to win over other parents that are fed up with the emotional and health roller coaster that sugar laden foods cause. From a safety standpoint it’s much to keep children indoors or in your own backyard during Halloween anyways. For example children are four times as likely to be stuck by car on Halloween than other holidays so why not forgo the trick or treating with Corporate America and hold your own Halloween party where you supply the treats to your loved ones and friends.
You can plan cool activities like pumpkin carving, pumpkin seed roasting, a halloween sensory game, custom parties, and offer cool alternatives to sweets with this cool halloween fruit carving or healthy cookies or nutritious and tasty bars.
Let’s not forget the classic game: Bobbing for Apples! Whatever happened to that game? Fruit is a satisfying alternative to processed sugar. It’s still delightfully sweet but fructose, the form of sugar found in fruit is utilised very differently by the body than what is found in processed sugary foods.Fructose doesn’t trigger the body to release as much insulin as glucose does. Apples have gotten a bad reputation ever since the infamous urban legend of the “razor blade in the apple”, which was really just a symptom of wider public paranoia. Candy companies fed into the idea so that competition from healthier foods like apples would be knocked out, making people more dependent on corporate candy. No children have ever actually been killed by halloween candy in Canada but there certainly have been accidents in candy factories.
Want another sweet option? Carve frightening faces in watermelons instead of pumpkins. Scoop out the inside and children in your area will gobble it up. For the macabre-minded, make a gory Halloween scene with the juicy red innards. What about the grape-eyeball trick? Remember that from when you were a kid? Make a sensory experience where children are blindfolded and put their hands in a bowl of “eyeballs”. With a little imagination, the opportunities are endless!
If de-corporatizing your Halloween is important to you, why not make your own costumes as well? Just like the sensory games and fruit sculptures, let the Halloween holiday be another opportunity for exercising your creativity. You’ll feel more empowered, taking charge over every aspect of your holiday instead of buying prepackaged experiences that have no sense of individuality and no soul. Even if you’re in a bind and don’t have time to make something, buy a used costume from Value Village. You’ll save money too.
I think by now we all know the dangers of a diet high in sugar so why continue to promote this lifestyle? Type Two Diabetes is on the rise in children after all. While Type 1 Diabetes is genetic and shows up in children, Type 2 Diabetes is avoidable with a change in diet paired with regular exercise. But Type 2 is growing. This is something that shouldn’t be celebrated. It should be met with horror, and steps should be taken to fix it at the source. Halloween candy is a $4 billion dollar profit in the U.S. alone. Is that money going back into our communities? No. We are being pillaged and sickened by looming corporate America.
So take your holiday back! Inject your personal creativity and ingenuity back into the holiday, get your health back, and enjoy the bountiful harvest of the earth!
