Healthy Halloween tips

Americans typically spend $5.8 billion on Halloween celebrations. That's $66 for average American, including $20.29 for candy. Approximately $1.78 billion of candy is given to children on Halloween.

Laura Buxenbaum, a nutrition expert with the Southeast United Dairy Industry Association, shares tips on how to have a healthy Halloween.

No matter how hard you try, there’s sure to be an overload of candy for most Trick or Treaters. Talk to your children in advance about sharing extra edibles. Identify a couple of “favorites” and separate those from the rest of the candy. Agree to give-away what’s left by adding them to your next food pantry donation.

Seperate packages of round, candy-coated pieces (M&Ms or Reese Pieces, for instance) and use them in a trail mix made of whole-grain oat cereal Os, pretzels and raisins. Stash the rest of the candy to enjoy later.

You'll find recipes for these cute-and-spooky mummy dogs all over the web. But – in our humble opinion – this one takes Halloween recipes fun to a whole new level. Why? Because as well as cute and tasty, these mummy dogs are super easy to make, as they use breadstick dough instead of the biscuit dough called for in most recipes. So your dough will already be perfectly suited to making mummy wrappings. This will be one of the kids' favorite Halloween treat recipes, without a doubt.

Ingredients

Instructions

A better bag of treats begins at home. Try offering healthier food and non-food alternatives when your doorbell rings:

Homemade goodies are no-no’s for many neighborhoods, so give away the goods for little goblins to make them at home: small apples, craft sticks and caramels.

To break the chill of a typical Halloween night, serve a “bewitched” version of hot chocolate: hot chocolate made with chocolate milk powder, low-fat milk and green food coloring. Keep warm in a slow-cooker, and top with marshmallow “ghosts” after the trick or treating is complete.