Strategy: Halloween Candy

There are two basic approaches for dealing with the piles of Halloween candy that trick-or-treaters collect: disciplined and undisciplined.

"Disciplined" folks believe that setting limits is the best way to ensure kids don't go overboard. These parents may set a daily limit of two or three pieces, may surreptitiously make much of the candy disappear, or might say flat-out: " "x" number of pieces is enough. The rest goes in the garbage." The benefit to this approach is that kids don't eat too much; the danger is that by imposing external limits, parents may make the forbidden candy seem more enticing and may not help kids learn to set reasonable limits for themselves.

"Undisciplined" folks take the opposite approach and impose no limits. They let kids eat what they will and experience the consequences. The children might eat ten or twelve pieces before they hit their limit, but once they do, biology kicks in and they'll almost always be sickened (hopefully just to the point of mild stomach upset). Subsequent snacks, if any, will be increasingly smaller. Of course, some kids will eat a horrifying amount of candy before they get sick of it. It's not the end of the world. At the same time, for kids who are already struggling with food issues, it doesn't make sense to give them a pile of it and say, Dig in.

And then there are people who find a happy medium between the two extremes. Reduce the pile of available candy so that potential binges are smaller, for example. Or give kids an allowance for the week and let them decide how many pieces they'll eat at once. (Sidebar: did you know that the ability to delay gratification is often an important factor when measuring success in endeavors from schoolwork to budgeting to sports?!) Whenever you're adding calories to your daily intake, it's always a good idea to increase activity. Take a walk. Play tag. Dance. Just get up and move. Try pairing healthy foods with treats: an apple and a bite-sized candy bar is a perfectly reasonable snack, and more satisfying than several pieces of candy. Always remember that out-of-sight is out-of-mind for kids and adult, so storing the candy somewhere that you're not likely to lay eyes on it frequently will help limit overindulgences, too.

And now there's this tip from dentists: eating several pieces at once is better for your teeth than doling it out several times during the day. In fact, candy may not be any worse for a child's teeth than potato chips, for example. What matters is what dentists describe as the stickiness of food -- how long the food particles maintain contact with the tooth's enamel. The longer it sticks, the more time the accompanying acid will work on the enamel. So a chocolate bar that melts off teeth is better for them than a starburst or potato chip which may stick around for a long while.

Happy haunting!

--Admin