How to handle Halloween sweets and have fun with food at Halloween, with Emma Martyn – Food For Kids Podcast episode 44

Joanne Roach (00:13)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. This episode's going out in the week before Halloween and since it's one of our celebrations that does involve food, I thought it'd make sense to cover it here. If you had a family fortune style survey of what people think about when they think about Halloween, I'm willing to bet the top five would include dressing up in costumes, trick or treat, buckets of sweets, spooky things and carving pumpkins. And this is very much reflected on social media in the weeks running up to Halloween, where there's lots of costume ideas, spooky party food, and then lots of advice to parents about their children eating all those sweets. Some of this is helpful advice, and a lot of it is very black and white advice, which is unhelpful for kids and very pressurising for parents.

So thought I'd get a children's food professional on to talk about what to do about Halloween candy if you want your child to have a healthy relationship to sweet treats in the long term. I interviewed Emma Martin from Little Gannets. Emma is a certified nutrition coach who works with schools and daycare settings on their menus and nutrition education, as well as running weaning workshops and baby brunches for families. Because Emma also offers party food catering for children, I thought she'd be the perfect person to ask about celebration food and how handle those times where everyone including children are prone to overindulging a bit. So here's that interview.

Joanne Roach (01:45)

So Emma, as it comes up to Halloween, a lot of parents get really stressed about the amount of sweets that their kids are going to eat, especially from like trick or treat. And there's like loads of advice around on social media and government advice about reducing sugar When parents ask you about this, what do you tell them?

Emma Martyn (02:01)

Oh yeah, I mean we are constantly bombarded as you say with these messages on reducing the sugar and I think what you have to do is take that step back and think about your diet as a whole and think this is a one-off event. It's the same conversation around Christmas and Easter as well. You know these are just singular days in the year, it doesn't affect your overall diet if you think one meal out of not even 365 because you've got to times that by three plus and snacks on top of that. You know, this is just a really small portion of your overall diet. So take that step back and then actually take another step back to think what actually is healthy and what is a balanced diet because yes, we've got all our fruits and vegetables, you know, our carbohydrates, our protein, but food is so much more than that. It's our, you know, it's our culture, it's tradition, it's socializing as well. And if you think about trick or treating, it's that time with your friends and going out and about. And it's so much more than just getting those sweets. So you've really got to take that holistic view of that whole experience and not just the sugar. it is really worrying you and stressing you out, think about how you can covertly restrict so that means that you're not restricting them in a way that they know they're being restricted because once you start going, no, sugar's bad, or it's a treat and you start putting it up on a pedestal, they almost like want it more. So it's how do we balance it in a way that they're still getting that experience and being part of the Halloween trick or treating scene, but at the same time it's in a way that you're happy with.

So things like just simply taking a smaller bag out with you ⁓ or having a big meal before you go out, so that when they come back and enjoy some of those sweets, they're not going to be eating a whole mountain of sweets because they're already full. So it's just really simple steps like that that you can take. Another thing that you could do is just plan a shorter route you don't have to hit every house it might be that you only go to your friend's houses or know Nana down the road or whoever it might be you have like a hit list that you go and then right we're done we're heading back.

Joanne Roach (04:07)

But ultimately, if they come back with a haul of sweets you've given them a dinner already before you've gone out. If they overindulge themselves, they overindulge themselves. It's one day out of the year.

Emma Martyn (04:16)

Exactly, exactly. And you can ask them, you know, as they're eating, like, have you had enough? You know, what's your body telling you? You can add prompts like that, should you want to. have two kids myself and I've got two very different eaters in the house. My eldest will eat until he's ultimately we've had to say Okay, you go for it. He's learnt his lesson the hard way. There was no amount of me saying, know, are you sure? You sure you're not feeling poorly? he's old enough now, he's nine, he's getting to the point where he's like, I'm done. But he's had to learn that lesson the hard way. My youngest she's really in touch with her body and she just kind of goes, I'm done now, I'm saving the rest for tomorrow. So we've had both sides of the story and they've both been raised the same, you know.

Joanne Roach (05:01)

But ultimately they've both got to that position by being allowed to feel what they want, what their body wants and to come to that conclusion themselves.

Emma Martyn (05:07)

Absolutely. You need to know those cues in your own body, really. Don't you think, my body's telling me I've had enough now. you know, that's something, ultimately, no one can tell you how that feels. You've got to learn how it feels yourself, I think.

Joanne Roach (05:22)

Yeah, So when we think of Halloween we pretty much think about sweets, maybe we think about pumpkins as well in terms of food. But if we want to use use that enthusiasm for Halloween and all the spooky things, how can we use their enthusiasm about Halloween to get them to explore foods?

Emma Martyn (05:29)

Yes. Yes. Gosh, there's loads we can do. And I always think it's really nice because Halloween normally falls over half term as well. So you can do lots of different activities with that time you've got. I mean, you're right, there are so many pumpkin activities. You can go pumpkin picking and things and just kind of get outdoors with that. But I mean, there's so many other things you can do. You can do things like make potions with them. You know, let's be witches today and what can we do with what the foods we've got? So it might be things like bicarbonate of soda and some vinegar. I can get a bit of frothing going. I've done a sensory tray thing on Instagram recently where, you've got chia seeds, like goop. You can use jelly and like set things in the jelly. I mean, there's just so many possibilities, things like dried pastas that you can do all lovely little colours, know so many kids, particularly toddlers, love doing things like that. And then you've also got like the really traditional apple bobbing, you know? I know in COVID, that was a bit of a no go, but it's such a great, you know, game to play with kids.  So it's just one of those like thinking outside the box, what time do you have as well? You know, is it something like apple bobbing takes seconds to set up, you know? Whereas if you've got a bit more time to do those sensory trays, fabulous. You can also do things like crafting with some new foods. I'm a massive fan of potato stamping and painting with celery and things like that. So you could do a Halloween scene using some of those foods because the amazing thing that you've got is they're exploring the foods in a no pressure environment. They're not expected to eat it. They're still getting really hands on with all of those foods. And you've just got to think it just teaches them so much, doesn't it? They're not even thinking about it really. They learn through play, don't they kids?

Joanne Roach (07:23)

Yeah, it's literally letting them play with their food in a spooky Halloweeny sort of a way.

Emma Martyn (07:27)

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Another thing that you could do is getting them cooking. One of my most popular recipes, actually, is like some spooky toasts. So there's four different images. You've got one as a Frankenstein guacamole, some cherry tomato eyes and you know, their earpieces. You've got ⁓ peanut butter on toast with some banana ghosts, there's just a simple ham and cheese mummy on there, the other is a cream cheese ghost on the toast as well and that's something you know a two or three year old could help put together or you could also have some older kids doing that simple snack idea for you as well so you're getting on board with the theme of Halloween without it being all around the sweets and I think that's something that we really need to have a think about. What is Halloween to us? It's the costume, it's the going out, it's all of the spooky elements. It's not just about, I'm going out to get as many sweets as I can. ⁓ So it's doing those activities really helps enforce that, I think, with your kids.

Joanne Roach (08:34)

I thought that Emma's ideas about how to prepare for trick or treat were really helpful there and I hope it was helpful to have someone who works in children's food to reassure you that not only is it okay to let children have indulgences at food-related holidays, but it's even helpful for them to learn to listen to their own intuition rather than focusing on fighting against a rule that they see as unfair.

Like in Emma's family, one of my children would have preferred to eat until they felt sick, rather than be told that they weren't allowed something that they felt belonged to them and that they were longing for. But they did respond to more practical messages about how it might be helpful for them, such as if they ate them all on day one, there wouldn't be any left for another day, but if they left some, they'd have enough to add into their after-school snacks for the following week. So they were putting some aside for their own future self. Or sometimes reminding them that a previous time they found it hard to sleep or they found it hard to play football well when they felt sick from lot of sweets so they could maybe think about stopping when they felt like they'd had enough to have enjoyed themselves.

Those sort of gentle, morality-free, practical reminders often work better for them to think about the stash of sweets as a whole rather than getting more in right now. If they can be confident that whatever they leave will be there tomorrow and that you won't be disappointed if they get the amount wrong and learn from it for next year, then they are more likely to trust their own judgement. I will also link in the show notes to a couple of helpful reels from children's dietitians about this exact question. In her chat I liked that Emma not only reinforced the idea that we shouldn't demonise sweet treats or conversely elevate them to something so special we have to restrict them, but that she also talked about all the other ways we can help children to celebrate this holiday that helps them to understand that food is always part of a wonderful tradition but doesn't have to be the only focus. At most traditional holidays the food is a wonderful way to come together and share and have some indulgent moments together but the sharing and having fun together is the main purpose of having these traditions in the first place. So I really like her idea of having all kinds of play around spooky themes including some playing with spooky foods that don't actually get eaten but just explored so I will link to Emma's post about those ideas that she mentioned.

I think you can also have fun together making some very simple spooky foods that you can eat like the toast ideas that she mentioned but also some of the fun fruity ideas that I mentioned in the seasonal meals roundup back in episode 40 and I also have a blog post on my website with other Halloween related foods that children can make so I'll link to that one too as well as all of Emma's links including her lovely recipes on Instagram.

Whatever you're doing for Halloween, I hope you have a fun and spooky time and don't forget to eat your carved pumpkin pieces in something delicious as discussed back in episode 43. According to the World Economic Forum, only a third of people who carve pumpkins actually use the edible carvings for food, and this means that in the UK alone we throw away enough pumpkin to make 360 million pieces of pumpkin pie. So cooking with your pumpkin carvings is a great way to explore making new recipes and teach your children about using up food to help the planet while we eat something delicious.

I'll see you on Thursday for the last episode of October and in the meantime I'm wishing you some happy and spooky eating.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:43 What to do if your child wants to eat lots of Halloween sweets

05:21 Other ways to explore Halloween with foods

08:33 Summary and outro