In Case You Missed It #4 - Halloween Horrors - Clovis

In Case You Missed It #4 - Halloween Horrors

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Halloween Horrors!

Halloween in America: Some fun... and slightly terrifying... Halloween facts:
  • Americans buy approximately 600 million pounds of candy for Halloween...
  • That's over 6x the weight of the Titanic every year in candy!
  • What does this cost us?
  • Approximately $2 billion per year in America alone!
  • The most popular tool for candy collection is plastic jack-o-lanterns…
  • The average kid can fit 250 pieces of candy in a single plastic jack-o-lantern
    • That’s over 9,000 calories and 3 pounds of sugar per kid!
​​The History of Trick-Or-Treating: We explored the history of trick-or-treating which dates back to the middle ages… Game of Thrones style…
  • A blend between trick or treating and a 100-year-old holiday called “Candy Day” (invented by the candy companies) led to the birth of Halloween Trick-or-Treating as we currently know it
Candy and Dental Health: We explored how candy impacts dental health!
  • The same way you have a gut microbiome, you also have an oral microbiome
  • Sugar changes the pH in your mouth and helps specific types of bacteria thrive
  • Most notably, a strain of bacteria called "mutans streptococci"
  • These bacteria consume sugar for energy and excrete end products in the form of lactic acid
  • That acid leeches away the calcium in your enamel and eventually decays your entire tooth
  • This is why people get fillings. To prevent lactic acid from making its way to the nerve endings and rotting the entire tooth, which would require removal!
By the numbers...
  • In the months following Halloween, Americans spend over $800 million on emergency dental visits… involving Halloween candy!!
  • Cracked teeth
  • Broken fillings
  • Broken braces
  • Damaged retainers etc. etc.
So, let's be clear about all of this...
  • We spend $2 billion per year...
  • To buy 600 million pounds of candy...
  • Which gives each kid at least 9,000 calories and 3 pounds of sugar...
  • Which leads to $800 million in emergency dental visits...
  • Could we possibly get this more... "wrong?!"
How Much Sugar?: Even the broken, food pyramid pushing, mainstream recommend less than 25 grams of sugar per day... The Top 5 Halloween Candies (per standard package):
  1. Skittles - 47 grams of sugar
  2. M&M's - 30 grams of sugar
  3. Snickers - 30 grams of sugar
  4. Reese's Cups - 20 grams of sugar
  5. Starburst - 39 grams of sugar
How to Handle Halloween... Responsibly!: Don’t be a total bummer and stop your kids from partaking… I love Halloween. I loved it growing up. I loved trick or treating! Just step in with some good old-fashioned parenting!
  • Give your kids a few pieces of candy on Halloween night, then lock the candy away where they can’t get to it.
  • Give them 1-2 pieces, as a dessert treat, after dinner for the next few days… Then the candy magically disappears!
  • We talked about the Halloween candy buyback program
  • www.halloweencandybuyback.com

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