This year, Americans will purchase over 600 billion pounds of candy for Halloween. Even if your house isn’t in a prime trick-or-treating area, it’s likely that you’ll purchase a few bags of the sweet stuff just in case – and perhaps to sneakily satisfy your own sweet tooth. If you’re worried about overindulging, experts advise to buy the candy that you don’t crave; if you’re a chocoholic, buy a mixed bag of Smarties, Blow-Pops, and Sour Patch Kids, and if you can’t get enough of chewy, sour candy, buy the bag with Snickers, Milky Way, and Reese’s. This will reduce the temptation to sneak into your candy stash. But if you must eat your favorite candy at Halloween – it is a holiday, after all! – use this guide for smart buying tips.
The Good
Kids will probably leave disappointed if you hand out apples, stickers, and tattoos. If you’re good with portion control, pick candy that has low per-serving calories, such as DumDums (26 calories), Smarties (25 calories per roll), and Tootsie Roll Midgees (23 calories). These can satisfy sweet cravings for relatively few calories, and you can even have two or three without breaking the calorie bank. Halloween Specialty Peeps are also a great pick. They have 15 calories per serving, and because of their fluffiness, serving sizes seem big. Stick with other puffy, fluffy candies, such as 3 Musketeers Minis – one has just 24 calories and zero grams of fat, compared to a Butterfinger Mini with 45 calories and 2 grams of fat. If you like a nutty crunch, pick candies with whole peanuts, such as M&M Peanuts (90 calories per Fun-Size bag). Even though they have more calories, candy with nuts provides filling protein, potentially limiting cravings. Just be careful with individually wrapped candies: studies show that participants eat more calories when they eat individually wrapped candy as opposed to full-size candy bars or candy in a bowl.
Kids will probably leave disappointed if you hand out apples, stickers, and tattoos. If you’re good with portion control, pick candy that has low per-serving calories, such as DumDums (26 calories), Smarties (25 calories per roll), and Tootsie Roll Midgees (23 calories). These can satisfy sweet cravings for relatively few calories, and you can even have two or three without breaking the calorie bank. Halloween Specialty Peeps are also a great pick. They have 15 calories per serving, and because of their fluffiness, serving sizes seem big. Stick with other puffy, fluffy candies, such as 3 Musketeers Minis – one has just 24 calories and zero grams of fat, compared to a Butterfinger Mini with 45 calories and 2 grams of fat. If you like a nutty crunch, pick candies with whole peanuts, such as M&M Peanuts (90 calories per Fun-Size bag). Even though they have more calories, candy with nuts provides filling protein, potentially limiting cravings. Just be careful with individually wrapped candies: studies show that participants eat more calories when they eat individually wrapped candy as opposed to full-size candy bars or candy in a bowl.
The Bad
Most of the Fun-Size candy bars, such as Snickers, Milky Ways, and Kit Kats, are under 100 calories. But they can also be high in saturated fat, and their ingredients lists contain more than just chocolate: teeth-pulling caramel as well as partially hydrogenated soybean oils and additives such as TBHQ and PGPR. And although most of the non-chocolate candies are low in fat, they’re still sickly high in sugar. Candy corn, the top-selling candy (20 millions pounds are purchased every Fall), is a sugar bomb: it’s made with sugar, corn syrup, and additives. Combined with their unworthy serving size – nineteen pieces per 140 calories – cravings will be strong, setting you up for a caloric disaster. Sugar-covered chewy candies, like sour gummy worms and Laffy Taffy, are similarly dangerous, and their chewy, sticky texture allows them to linger on your teeth – attracting enamel-rotting, acid-producing bacteria.
The Ugly
Probably one of the worst things you can grab out of the candy bowl is a Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkin. The package contains 180 calories, 11 grams of fat, and 16 grams of sugar. Granted, some of the fat comes from the healthy monounsaturated kind found in peanuts. But surprisingly, most of the peanut filling is not peanuts: additives, fillers, and sugar make up a good amount of the dense filling. If peanuts and chocolate are your Halloween gold, stick with simple chocolate (aim for dark) with whole peanuts. Of the chocolate-, nougat-, wafer-, and caramel-filled bars, Twix bars are the biggest offenders. Three minis contain 150 calories and 6 grams of saturated fat, filling almost one third of your daily allowance for saturated fat. And with all the splurges that occur around the holidays, you’ll have little room for error after eating these bars. Avoiding these treats is best, but if you think you’re saving calories, fat, and sugar by choosing a caramel apple, think again: these sugar- and fat-covered fruits can run as high as 300 calories. And when you add nuts, candies, and chocolate dips, they turn into a calorie bomb. For a sinless swap, pick sliced apples with peanut butter dip; add chocolate chips for a sweet punch.
-Contributor Kate Schlag
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Very interesting points. Thanks!