In the spirit

I got pretty excited for Halloween as a kid.  I wasn't necessarily all that into the costumes- I had a princess dress and a light-up tiara, and that was the standard for a few years.  No, the decorations were far more exciting.  You know what's a fun project?  Taking all the tissues in the house, wadding them up, using a marker to draw eyes and a mouth to make tiny "ghosts" to leave all around the house.  Hilarious.  Also fun?  Listening to the Ghostbusters theme song over and over on your Fisher Price cassette player.  

Those were the days.

Now that I'm an adult, I'm much more sophisticated with Halloween.  Goodbye Princess costume.  Hellooooo Honey Boo Boo.

You might think that as a dietitian, I'm the one in the neighborhood handing out apples and bananas.  Not so much.  You think I want kids coming back late at night to egg my house out of revenge?  Heck no.  M&M's packs for everyone!

Here's a list of the 5 worst fun size candies, according to Mens' Health.
5. Butterfinger
 
   100 calories, 2 g saturated fat, 10 g sugar

Better choice?  A fun size 3 Musketeers- only 63 calories

4. Airheads
 
 In a 3-piece serving, you get 140 calories, 1 g saturated fat, and 19 grams of sugar.  These use partially hydrogenated oils to keep them soft and chewy, which are filled with scary trans fats.  Instead try a Dum-Dum sucker for 25 calories.

3. Twix
 
Twix has the worst saturated fat profile of any Halloween.  Each serving (2 fun size bars) of these bite-sized candies carries 20 percent of the saturated fat you should consume in an entire day.  Swapping out 3 Tootsie Rolls cuts the fat by 79%.

2. Caramels


90% of the fat in these caramels is artery-clogging saturated fat, plus packs 160 calories.  Choosing 4 Now & Later chewy candies saves you over a hundred calories and eliminates the fat.

1. Reese's Pumpkin
 
So this may or may not be my favorite candy.  And I may or may not have eaten 3 Reese's peanut butter stacked together after trick-or-treating.  They were always the first candy in my stash to be depleted (the last?  Bit-O-Honey.  Whenever someone was handing out those chewy logs of awfulness I would make a mental note to egg their house later skip this shack next year).  Sadly one of these babies packs170 calories,10 g fat (3 g saturated), and 16 g sugars.  A better suggestion?  Eleven pieces of candy corn is only 70 calories, fat-free, and 14 g sugar.



So now that we all have preemptive guilt about the leftover candy we will inevitably have and inevitably eat, Happy Halloween!

I mean, a dolla makes me holla!  Happy Halloween, y'all!