HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN – 10/12

Now that it’s here, what the heck should I do with all this Halloween candy?

 

 

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“A little goes a long way,” say some nutritionists when referring to accumulated Halloween candy treats. Consequently these experts often recommend allowing kids to have only one to three pieces of the sweet stuff on any single day, perhaps as a dessert with lunch at school, as an afternoon snack or after dinner as part of the regular meal schedule.  The rest of “the stash,” they suggest, might be better consigned to the freezer to wait in icy storage for future occasions — definitely out of sight that way and hopefully out of mind as well.

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Provide one zip-lock sandwich bag for each of the days in the agreed-upon time frame and allow your youngster to choose whichever piece(s) of candy will be consumed over each of those upcoming days.  Then seal all of the little see-through plastic bags except for the one to be used next day, label each one with the intended date of consumption and promptly deposit them all into your food freezer. Your goal here is to remove the powerful visual cue but at the same time reassure your child that his selected “treat treasures” are not going to disappear overnight. Remove only the designated bag, day by day, until finally all of the treats have been dispensed with only minor impact upon your child’s overall nutrition intake.

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And, as we will see tomorrow here at HEALTHY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN, not only children but also adults need to take care when dividing up and consuming holiday candy.  Please come back to this site Tuesday for more practical management suggestions — this time ones that apply to the big folks in your household.