Halloween. Admittedly one of my least favorite holidays. Perhaps it’s the sinister imagery that goes along with the day, or maybe it’s the fact that I am dressing my child up to go door to door begging for over processed, over sugared, over packaged treats (which inherently goes against everything else I have taught him about accepting things from strangers). Regardless, I try to lose myself in the excited energy of my son and experience Halloween through the eyes of a child. However, once I snap back into ‘Mommy’ mode I am reminded of the Halloween dilemmas that plague me year to year:

1. What do I do with all the sugary snacks that my son collects?

These treats may be filled with dyes, preservatives, hydrogenated fats and now genetically modified sugar? Joan Waldron (naturalnews) is reporting that products like Kellogg’s Cereal and Hershey’s chocolate may be made with sugar from GMO sugar beets. This makes for its own future blog post, but in a nutshell the beets are being modified to withstand regular applications of Monsanto weedkiller! Yuck! Yet another reason to steer our precious children away from all these damaging sugary snacks. Other than keeping my child in on Halloween, I decided to pick the brains of a few other like-minded moms for their suggestions.

Krissy (mother of 2 under age 6) suggests allowing each child to select the same number of treats as his/her age and donating the rest. This to me sounds reasonable. As long as my vivid imagination doesn’t hone in on the heyday the dyes, preservatives, fats and GMO sugar are having down my son’s digestive track, into his stomach etc… but alas I must be reasonable…right?

Violet (mother of a 6 year old) says that every year she trades her son’s candy for treats of other sorts. Prior to Halloween, she puts together a loot bag that includes organic candy and chocolate as well as other little toys that she knows her son likes. I would definitely be willing to try this!

Bethandy Sanders (parentdish) suggests skipping trick or treating all together and hosting a Halloween party with friends. Her suggestions include carving pumpkins, bobbing for apples, and planning an [organic] candy scavenger hunt. I would suggest gathering a group of like-minded families and this could totally work. It still embraces the fun side of Halloween (costumes), yet would allow me to keep my child relatively healthy by monitoring the types of treats that are included.

2. What are some healthy alternatives to give out to all the trick or treaters that come to my home?

To search for some answers I headed straight to my favorite ‘natural living’ magazine, “Alive“. There I found several excellent and definitely healthier suggestions such as boxed raisins, sugarless fruit leathers, small packets of rice crackers or soy crisps, trail mix, dry-roasted almonds, tetra-packs of healthy juice or soy milk etc…

Encouragingly enough, I was looking through flyers in our local newspaper over the weekend and I came across a Zellers flyer that I found rather refreshing. Nestled on the same page as the usual candy and chocolate treats, were what they titled “Non Candy Alternatives to Halloween Treats”. They advertised stickers, mini puzzles, tops, putty, bubbles, tattoos and more. Nice to know that more and more people are embracing non-candy alternatives. If alternatives are what you are after, I found a very exhaustive list of alternative treats on greenhalloween.org. They classify the treats under various categories such as food treats, non food treats, as well as green choices. Definitely worth a read.

If all else fails and your child still ends up feeling the effects of sugar overload Alive suggests supplementing with spirulina or brewer’s yeast can help control out of whack blood sugar levels.

3. Is there a way to leave less of an environmental footprint, while still celebrating Halloween?

Our species is wasteful. That is a fact. Everything we do translates into some sort of pollution we leave for our children. Interestingly enough Environment Canada reports that “Canadians spend over $1.5 billion on candy, costumes and decorations each year for Halloween. Most of these products will be used once and then thrown away.” I wasn’t able to find any statistics for the US, but you can bet it will be higher. Their suggestions for ‘greening’ up your Halloween are:

• carrying reusable cloth bags or a pillow case while trick or treating
• purchasing organic and fair trade treats wrapped in less packaging and more recycled content that can preferably be recycled
• handing out non food items such as soy-based crayons and coloring pages
• walking instead of driving in between houses and streets or carpool with neighbors and friends
• avoid buying one-time use disposable costumes this year. Instead, reuse last year’s costumes by trading between friends or by visiting a local second hand store. Another eco friendly alternative is to rent a costume
• try to reuse last year’s decorations. If you decide to purchase new decorations, buy the ones that are durable and reuse them from year to year
• consider buying a local, organic pumpkin and decorating it with beeswax or soy candles which burn cleaner than the conventional petroleum-based candles