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):
Skittles - 47 grams of sugar
M&M's - 30 grams of sugar
Snickers - 30 grams of sugar
Reese's Cups - 20 grams of sugar
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
