Tricks and Tips For Surviving Halloween Treats

Time for honesty:

Some holidays are harder than others when it comes to avoiding sweet treats. Halloween qualifies as one of the tougher holidays for those of us who not only want great health for ourselves, but also for our children.

I remember the first time my son had chocolate. It was during a holiday, and we had kept it from him his whole life. But a family member walked up and gave him a little bite of chocolate, and we could see it in his eyes…magic. We knew this was the new taste he wasn’t going to get out of his head easily.

A funny thing happened over the course of his life, though. He had the chocolate, and it wasn’t his last. But he isn’t a slave to it. He doesn’t like soda. On Halloween, it’s more fun for him to be with friends than it is for him to sort through candy. In fact, he usually gives most of it away. Each year, the Halloween he has in his candy sack is almost entirely there a year later.

Another funny thing is that he walks around with a sober-minded attitude about sweets and treats. We decided not to use fear as our educating principle.

He knows Doug’s fungus message and actually has a fascination with how it all works. He sort of takes that mindset with him into any holiday, getaway, or place where there’s going to be a plethora of junk offered. Amazingly, he just grabs a piece or two of the treat, enjoys it, (usually he asks for a blood sugar supplement, like cinnamon or chromium pic before eating it), and then moves on. His mindset is so much better than mine was at his age. He just quietly enjoys a bite and then imagines the fungi multiplying in his body if he were to go much further with it than the tiny pleasure bite. That, alone, usually prevents him from going any further with the feasting.

I’d love to tell you that we have this grand plan for how to keep all children away from junk food forever and ever, but I don’t. But I do think there are a few things to keep in mind when navigating through holidays…and every day.

Fear Equals Failure

There’s a natural health newsletter I get each week, and every single subject line arrives with some horror story.

“This Common Food Gives Everyone Cancer.”
“Five Reasons Why You’ll Die If You Expose Yourself To This Common Household Cleaner.”

I’m exaggerating…a little bit.
But it really is true that fear is used more than anything else to try to persuade people to change their behavior.

I don’t believe in using fear. I do think it’s a good idea to talk about potential consequences for certain actions or thoughts. But it just sets the wrong tone for how one should think about things.

I also see well-meaning parents cast extraordinarily negative thoughts onto their children, like:

“Fine! You’re going to get a shot at the dentist’s office now.”
“Nobody likes fat kids.”
“See? That’s what you get for……”

I think it’s awful to thrust that on children. It’s like a curse.

I understand talking about potential consequences. But when we shame them and cause them to identify with a possible consequence, it’s damaging, in my opinion. “Who can recover from a broken spirit?”

Educate. Talk about behaviors. But don’t break their spirits just because they like the taste of candy.

Enjoy! Just Don’t Overwhelm

Parents…If a child has a bit of candy one day out of the month, it’s not the end of the world.
Even the Bible says, “Have you found honey? Eat only what you need, lest you vomit it up.”

Now, it’s one thing if a person is fighting a life-threatening illness. In those cases, we like to keep things as untainted as possible. But for otherwise healthy individuals, it’s not what you do one day out of a month that counts. It’s what you do all the time.

Think about it this way.
What if you wanted to lose some weight. If you ate well and exercised only one day out of the month, would you see much progress? Of course not.

When we’re talking about great health, we have to think about what we do most of the time, not once in a great while. And by the same token, we shouldn’t take an occasion for a sweet treat and turn it into a no-holds-barred gorge-fest. Be good to yourself. Enjoy a bit…but don’t overwhelm yourself.

If There Are Decent Alternatives, Have Those Instead
This is obvious, but it bears repeating. Know the Cause has lots of dessert recipes that allow you the pleasures of sweetness, but without the consequences.

On Halloween, it’s a little different, though. As a parent, if someone gave my child a dessert item that they said they made, and wrapped it up and gave it to him, I’m sorry but I wouldn’t let him eat it. I hate that we’re living in an era where people’s homemade items aren’t trusted, but that’s just the reality nowadays. Most parent’s worry about something that could be slipped into an unsealed muffin or baked good. It may be fantastic, but most parents just won’t be comfortable accepting those kinds of treats, thoughtful as they may be.

I do see more and more candy items at the health food stores that are sweetened with xylitol, erythritol, and stevia. I say go for it! If it’s affordable, it would be great to give those as treats rather than the corn syrup-laden stuff we normally see. And if you just want some for yourself, these are great alternatives to everything that’s out there.

Post-Halloween Strategies

Even with so little candy in our household, we still do a few things after Halloween to mitigate against possible fungal overgrowth from sugar.

1). Try a little chlorophyll for the next week or so. Whether it’s in the form of actual greens or straight chlorophyll, I love this green nutritive because it has been shown to neutralize some of the nastier known mycotoxins.

2). The night of Halloween, if anyone has indulged too much, activated charcoal has a way of sopping up toxins. It must be done on an empty stomach, particularly if you take medicines or supplements because charcoal can grab up absolutely everything! Follow directions for children’s dosing.

3). Make the day after a banner nutrition day. Go all-in on Kaufmann Kaufmann 1 the following day to bring things back to normal. I’m pretty sensitive to junk food these days. I feel swollen the next day if I have an indulgence meal. Getting back to Kaufmann Dieting is always the trick for me, along with fish oil, curcumin, ginger, and other anti-inflammatory antifungals.

4). Speaking of antifungals, you may notice some sniffles and coughing after an evening of indulgence. This is why I always have powerful natural antifungals on hand, such as the ones listed above, along with oregano oil, olive leaf extract, garlic, caprylic acid, berberine, and others. It just makes sense to have these at the ready, both for some weekly rotation as well as for dealing with anything that creeps up during the holiday season.

IN SUMMARY…
Don’t use fear. Enjoy a little. Look for alternatives to traditional candies, if possible. Recover quickly with Kaufmann strategies.

And have a safe, happy family time this week!