If so, did they get a good haul of candy?

Do you still have any left?

If you are like many families, you still have a lot of leftover Halloween candy that your kids dig into now and then. Depending on how fast your kids eat it, you may find that you still have Halloween candy leftover at Thanksgiving and even Christmas.

And since the National Confectioners Association states that 'ninety percent of parents admit to sneaking goodies from their kids' Halloween trick-or-treat bags,' that can mean that you are still digging into your child's leftover Halloween candy too!

Leftover Halloween Candy

So what can you do with all of that leftover Halloween candy so that you and your kids aren't tempted to eat it?

The easiest thing would be to simply throw it all away, but that seems like such a waste...

• Instead of throwing it away, you might donate it to a food bank, school, or church. Although not a very nutritious thing to donate, it can likely still be used as a special treat at parties and carnivals, etc.
  
  
• Or consider using to in a recipe to make a cake, pie, or other treat. The Candy Bar Cookbook 'offers sixty-four delicious recipes made with some of American's most popular candies.'
  
  
• Making a gingerbread house and decorating it with leftover candy can be a fun family activity.
  
  
• Freeze some of it and then chop it up and use it as a topping on ice cream for an occasional, special treat.
  
  
• Put some of your child's favorites away and save them for occasional treats or as a dessert. Although you don't want to give your kids unrestricted access to sweets and candy, a small treat as part of an otherwise healthy and well balanced diet is usually considered to be okay. In fact, many experts warn that if you don't allow your kids to have any sweets, then they may try to sneak them behind your back or overload on them when they are away from home.
  
  
• Avoid getting too much candy by limiting how much trick-or--treating your kids do or have a limit on how much candy they can collect.
  
  

Halloween Candy Lessons

Suprisingly, Halloween and all of that candy provides some healthful lessons which may even help you combat the rising childhood obesity epidemic.

How?

Consider how most Halloween candy is packaged...

Instead of the large and even oversized candy bars that kids may eat at other times of year, most Halloween candy comes in smaller bite size packages. Using smaller, single serving packages of all of your child's treats would help avoid your child getting too many calories from sweets.

Even if you can't find single serving packages of the foods you buy, consider repackaging them yourself. So if you buy a bag of cookies, take out the two or three cookies that make up a single serving and put them into a smaller plastic bag. Then instead of eating half a bag of cookies, your child will just have his single serving.

You can identify a food's portion size by learning to read food labels.

For more information:

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