I plan on letting my kids devour as much of the junk as they want on Halloween, since they don't eat much crap the rest of the year. Of course, I will just secretly hope it makes them miserably ill. :)

It's too much of a downer, IMO to be restrictive on the holidays as far as the kids are concerned -- instead of making them feel like they are "missing out," I let them have it and see that they're not missing much in the first place. And seriously, if you are careful with the day-to-day sugar intake, the kids don't seem to go crazy with the stuff when they do have access to it.

Ha - I can imagine the looks on kids' faces if I managed to track down single-square packs of Lindt 99% dark.

That said, if you know your neighborhood's general amount of trick-or-treater traffic, consider giving out:

• Nonchokable toys (remember the kids still have younger siblings). Bonus points if they're fitness oriented. Just don't give the costumed mites some kettlebells. Save the kettlebell giveaways for the Christmas stockings! ;op
• Dark chocolate (as dark as you can find)
• Single-serve packs of trail mix, if you can find'em. (Consider Amazon or Sam's Club/Costco for this...). Have a couple of alternatives if kids with allergies show up.
• Single serve packets of almond butter (you can get these on Amazon)

Paleo-Friendly Halloween Activities and Menu Ideas:

• Bobbing for bags of sug-....errr... organic apples
• Pumpkin carving and associated pumpkin's seed-roasting
• Chili (as mentioned by Deidre) or pumpkin soup. If you do paleo baking, you could make some coconut bread or muffins to go with.
• A game of "go fish" with someone behind the silkscreen attaching Halloween tchotchkes (no candy) to the fishing line
• Card games! A good game of poker could be enjoyed by older kids (tweens and up). Offer to trade poker chips for candy at the start before the cards are even dealt.
• Offer to "buy" your kids' candy at a nickel or a dime (or whatever) per piece.

Edit to add: I saw this Candy Hierarchy on The World's Best Ever and realized that my above suggestions may put me squarely in the bottom tier... :) Shares a category with white bread, but at least "whole wheat anything" is a tier below trail mix.

Im with Angelo! Seriously guys, if your kid is paleo then one day of the year eating ~100-200g of sugar is literally nothing. It doesn't even register on the health radar other than maybe setting up bad habits.

I would go with paleo brownies/cookies, chocolate covered nuts, and some glucose (as opposed to fructose/sucrose) lollies[candy] like jelly beans or something...

I wish I could afford to pass out Lara Bars :D

Paleo chili for dinner, creative dark chocolate treats and my favorite "ball" recipe:

1 cup of nut butter (I use sunflower butter due to tree nut allergies) 2 TBS of cocoa 3 TBS of Ground Flax Seed 1 Mashed Banana

Mix all and drop from round scoop - roll in something of your choice: coconut, seeds, nuts, dark choc chips. My kids take these for lunch. You can also add Whey Protein powder instead of the flax or cocoa for extra protein (depending on how paleo strict you are) I like the MRM Natural Brand that IHERB Sells.

Good thread, i think theres a lot of us here with little ones. I have always thought that kids (im talking 3 year old but) are pretty resilient generally. Tess sometimes eats some bagel, rice and beans, birthday cake etc and shows no signs of chub or unhealthiness. I always chalk it up to simple growing child-thing, yknow? The body is in such a state of growth that it can deal with some less-than-ideal stuff whereas homeostasis-oriented adults like all of us might have to be more thoughtful with our choices. So, with that in mind i see some reeses peanut butter cups sneaking in once/year as not too big a deal. I came up with that junk and it didnt hurt me too bad i dont think. That being said, i'd love some good ideas from maybe bakers, more experienced homemakes, etc.

I'm in a perfect dilemma over Halloween. The kids want to trick or treat, they have their costumes all ready to go. But how do I let them pollute their little bodies? I used to love the occasional candy myself so I don't know what will be decided.

For those that don't want to keep their candy or have some left over you can get rid of it through the 'Halloween Candy Buy Back' program.

Dentists nationwide "buy-back" Halloween candy from children in their communities and then send the candy to U.S. Military deployed in combat through Operation Gratitude or other Military support groups.

halloween buy back program

I published a series of Halloween recipes here:

http://paleodietlifestyle.com/paleo-halloween-recipes/

LOL, a few years ago as a newlywed without kids (when I knew everything about kids...), I bought good candy (top tier) and bags of pretzles. Fat kids got pretzles. Normal sized kids got good stuff like chocolate. I thought I was so awful and funny!! From a paleo-viewpoint I was trying to kill all sizes of kids, but from a SAD point, LOL, I was a big meanie!!! Ha Ha Ha!

posted here by mistake - plz delete :(

I think I'd let my kids do their trick or treat thing but tell them they could only keep, say 10 pieces of candy of their choice. The rest will get donated to... something. Where can you donate candies? Some kind of charity event maybe. Have them sell the candy for charity would be a nice touch. At one of my social clubs, we have candy and bags of nuts out and members pay 50 cents for them and the money goes to run the club. After Holloween, the club usually gets a big candy donation from the leftovers. Or the kids can sell it for profit for themselves!

I would go with dark chocolate or chocolate covered peanuts for giving out to other kids. Have that plus the option of some small cute toys to tempt the younger kids. For younger kids, things with lots of colors and sparkles will tempt them. I remember when I was four, I loved to get chiclets just because of all the beautiful colors, even though I didn't like gum that much. You don't want to give out homemade food items as that might freak out many parents if they don't know you. And I can safely say, when I was a kid, I and my friends would not have wanted any of that chili or homemade things and my parents would not have let me eat it anyway. If you give out things the kids don't like or can't have, then it's just a waste of money and time because the items will end up in the trashcan and the kids will be disappointed.

Frozen heavy cream. Yummiez.

We're one of those neighborhoods that sees maybe 4-5 kids maximum each year, so my dad always gave out "uncommon" denominations of money. First it was 50 cent pieces, he even did $2 bills last year - I'm surprised word didn't get around on that one!

Personally, I'd probably do very small bags of trail mix or nuts (usually the ones I've seen are pretty large/~500 calories). As a kid I personally hated dark chocolate (Hershey's Special Dark was the bitterest I could take).

One year we gave out mini raisin boxes. I've heard of others giving out tooth brushes. My mom would send each kid off with some candy and a hearty "Happy cavities!"

As for kids, some friends of ours used to let them eat all the candy they wanted to the evening they collected it and trashed it all the next morning. Since they did that since they were small it wasn't a big deal... until they were teenagers! LOL!

I saw a suggestions somewhere to hand out peanuts in the shell (letting the kids grab a handful). However, for safety reasons I wouldn't let my kids eat anything that wasn't pre-packaged (even though now I'm suspicious about the health of any pre-packaged food). Right now I'm leaning toward single-serving trail mix packs. Or maybe I'll just hand out unadulterated razor blades ;-).

My mom used to hand out bottles of water, juice boxes and bags of popcorn. In our neighborhood the kids were actually grateful for the water/juice because we'd go trick or treating for hours and hours.

Seems like lots of kids get escorted by their parents in SUV's nowadays. So lame...

I don't agree with the idea of being too limiting in what you hand-out to other people's kids. Halloween is supposed to be fun! And other kids can be really mean about making fun of your children if your family has a reputation for handing out lame treats on Halloween! When I was a kid, the guy who handed out nickles seemed kind of cool. So did the families that handed out play-doh and bubbles. But the apples, raisins and toothbrushes seemed lame, and those kids really did get picked on. Last year I settled on a quality candy with some redeeming nutritional value and let it go at (okay, very little redeeming nutritional value :->). I think it's very important to let our children experience fun and important social traditions. We don't want them to feel so weird or so unable to relate to their peers experiences because we deny our kids those experiences that our kids rebel against the health values we are trying to instill. They are just kids. And yes, our culture has terrible food habits, but it is part of the culture our kids are growing up in and learning to navigate.