Trick or treat?
With Halloween quickly knocking at the door, a lot of supermarkets are offering plenty of good deals on candies because let’s face it, even adults are tempted to buy them. But before you fill your Jack-O-Lantern buckets with sweets and candies for your grandkids, you might want to read more about the ingredients of some of the most famous candies on the market.
Of course, they are delicious, but eating them in large quantities may affect your health and your overall well-being. Being packed with sugar and artificial colors, these candies are a big NO-NO this Halloween.
1. Skittles
Taste the rainbow of hydrogenated fats! Wait, what? Such a nice and funny commercial would not make you think about something poisonous rather than what’s beneficial to your health. These candies contain almost 9 different artificial colors and trans fats that can spike your cholesterol levels in the blink of an eye. Despite the fact that a lot of doctors advise us to avoid these candies, especially during the Halloween season, a lot of people are buying them for their kids under the pretext that they are “tasty” and they “are just kids.”
Let’s leave these candies on the shelves this year!
2. Reese’s Pieces
These peanut-butter candies might fool a lot of people into thinking they are healthy. But how can a product packed with soybean oil, corn syrup, and sugar be good for your body? Instead of buying these candies for Halloween, if your grandkids are fans of peanut butter, try and make them some healthier alternatives. And if you still want to satisfy their sweet tooth, you can melt some chocolate on top of whatever you choose to make.
3. Whoppers
Nobody who adores candies can limit themselves to just one or two. This may happen when you eat these chocolate balls, packed with almost 24 grams of sugar and who knows what other saturated fats in just 18 tiny pieces. Can you believe these tiny devils have 419 calories per package? You might want to avoid these Halloween treats for the sake of your teeth’s health!
4. M&Ms
This might be painful to read about, especially if you love these candies as much as I do. But unfortunately, they are also filled with sugar and artificial colors that give them this outstanding look. That’s why these chocolate candies are not as good as they taste. Although Peanut M&M’s have fewer calories than the chocolate ones, they also have two more grams of fat. Once more, while choosing which candy to eat, consider how many pieces are in a package because the king size of M&M’s Peanut has 180 calories and 20 grams of sugar. And that’s a lot!
TIP: When it comes to the healthiest candy choices (if that’s possible) for this Halloween, you might want to choose the hard ones that are low-fat instead of the ones with chocolate packed with a high percentage of fat and a lot of sugar in them.
5. Mounds
I’m sure you’ve eaten these chocolate candies at least once in your life and thought to yourself, “It won’t hurt if you stick to the diet.” Well, that’s true, but have you read the ingredients? Because a lot of people tend to believe that coconut and dark chocolate together can’t be that bad for a cheat day. But the truth is that the king-sized pack of Mounds contains 486 calories per 100 grams. It’s true that it’s lower in sugar compared with other candies, but it’s full of saturated fats.
However, until Hershey’s removes all the artificial flavors from their products, you might want to avoid these candy bars for this Halloween.
6. 3 Musketeers
Wow! Because of its clever marketing, you might think this candy bar is actually not that awful to eat. But I honestly bet that the 3 Musketeers weren’t as unhealthy as this candy bar is. It may be advertised as “light chocolate” and safe for everyone to eat, including kids. But one candy bar contains almost 5 grams of saturated fat and more sugar than three “Krispy Kreme doughnuts.” So, this Halloween, choose some other choices because the 3 Musketeers aren’t your friends!
7. Starburst
This might be a burst of sugar! Even if these candies are owned by Wrigley, which also makes sugar-free chewing gum, it’s not the case with these particular goodies.
Although free of gluten and loaded with flavor, a significant amount of sugar is responsible for the juicy texture that we all appreciate in these delightful morsels. There are nine pieces weighing precisely 22 grams. Sugar, corn syrup, and apple-juice concentrate (also known as pure sugar) are the main components of Starbursts. Imagine how much damage these candies can do to your teeth and also how much they can spike your insulin levels! That’s even more disturbing when I think about it more. Do yourself a favor and stay away from these unhealthy treats!
8. Snickers
You’re not yourself when you’re hungry, but that doesn’t mean you have to buy a bar of Snickers whenever there is nothing else at your disposal. You have to love every commercial that encourages people to buy unhealthy chocolate bars. Snickers are by far one of the worst chocolates, according to numerous recent studies, due to their high calorie, fat, and sugar content. However, that doesn’t stop people from buying them as sweet treats for Halloween or for any kid’s party because they are considered an indulgent candy due to their combination of flavors: peanuts, chocolate, and caramel.
What is your opinion regarding these candies mentioned above? How often are you sneaking them into your diet?
9. Milky Way
This treat is found either as a candy bar or small bites individually wrapped, and even if they taste beyond delicious, this is one of the worst options of all the chocolate candies mentioned above. Why? because it contains more than 30 grams of sugar, which is three times the amount of sugar found in one chocolate glazed donut. The main cause of heart disease, according to Harvard Medical School, is added sugar, which is what you’ll find in the majority of candy bars. And even in unexpected items that you never imagined would be high in sugar.
Instead of purchasing these types of candies for Halloween, why not try baking apples glazed with dark melted chocolate? Besides being healthier, they are also tasty, and your grandkids are going to love them!
10. Kit Kat Bar
“Gimme a break, break me off a piece of this KitKat bar!” said the 90’s commercial that involved a lot of happy people ready to eat these crispy wafers. But the best advice I can give you is “don’t break off a piece of this!” A product full of sugar, soy lecithin, and palm kernel oil can’t be a good, healthy one, right? Furthermore, one bar contains 20 grams of sugar and another 7 grams of saturated fat. Avoid their dark chocolate and white chocolate variants at all costs!
It’s not the end of the world to indulge in your favorite Halloween sweets. But as you can see, certain candies have nutrition profiles that are laughably exaggerated. If your grandkids eat candy at school or while they’re going trick or treating, why not be the house with fun, non-candy treats? You can either bake some pumpkin pie, some apples, or even some cute bagels in the shape of tiny ghosts!
