Making sure youngsters eat a healthy snack or meal before they go trick-or-treating could help make their Halloween a bit healthier according to a tip sheet put out by the Florida Department of Health Tuesday.
“Halloween and fall festivals are a great time to remind your children to make healthy choices while having fun,” said Florida Surgeon General and Secretary of Health Dr. John Armstrong. “Let’s encourage everyone to make safety a priority when visiting with family and neighbors.”
According to National Retail Federation data, the average American eats 3.4 pounds of candy during Halloween – and many children can chew through nearly 7,000 calories worth of sweets on their own. Assuming a brisk walking pace, costumed kids would have to trick-or-treat for 60 hours to burn off their candy binge.
The Halloween the Healthy Way one-pager has a handful of other tips for parents and partiers looking get through the holiday without any scares. Some are old standards – only eat candy that’s in a sealed wrapper. Others, such as the suggestion to use party games and trick-or-treating to get kids up and active, are newer.
The guide was released as part of the Healthiest Weight Florida initiative, a public-private collaboration that aims to bend Florida’s weight curve 5 percent by 2017.
