Happy Halloween!
Here are a few Halloween fun facts from the National Confectioners Association:
* 93 percent of children go trick-or-treating every year.
* Each Halloween $2 billion is spent on candy.
* 30 percent of kids report that they SORT their candy first when returning home with trick-or-treat loot
* Kids say they prefer homes that give: anything made with chocolate (68 percent) followed by lollipops (9 percent), gummy candy (7 percent) and bubble gum or chewing gum (7 percent).
* Parents favorite treats to sneak from their kids’ trick-or-treat bags are snack-size chocolate bars (70 percent sneak these), candy-coated chocolate pieces (40 percent), caramels (37 percent) and gum (26 percent).
Halloween is the most child-centered holiday of the year, with Christmas and Hannukah running closely behind. It’s also the most sugar-centric day of the year, and perhaps should be considered the grand kick-off to a season of overindulging our appetites, climaxing at Thanksgiving, ending sometime between Christmas and New Year’s Day, when we vow to shed the holiday ten.
Most of us allow our children to enjoy some of the spoils from Halloween, but doling out loads of candy over the weeks and months that follow can skew a child’s sense of the amount of sugar needed to make a treat sweet (and yummy), making healthful treats made with lower quantities of sweetener unappealing (a.k.a. yucky.)
Deborah Mumm
Healthy Environments
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