Don't eat poison...

Good day everyone! This weekend, I had a frustrating conversation on Saturday about candy and Halloween. This is the first year that I refuse to buy candy to pass out to trick-or-treaters and I was looking for OTHER ideas of things to hand out (like pencils, stickers, etc). Well the conversation started out well, and then took a turn for the worse.

Take a look at some of the frankenfood (thank you Jillian) ingredients in one of the most popular Halloween candies:

(This candy will not be named, as I am calling it CRAP. It's that square, individually wrapped fruit flavor candy, very popular.)
CORN SYRUP, SUGAR, HYDROGENATED PALM KERNEL OIL, FRUIT JUICE FROM CONCENTRATE (APPLE, STRAWBERRY, LEMON, ORANGE, CHERRY), CITRIC ACID, DEXTRIN, GELATIN, FOOD STARCH-MODIFIED, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C), COLORING (RED 40, YELLOW 5, YELLOW 6, BLUE 1). Product is not Kosher

Who knew that a fruit candy would have trans fat? And of course there's CORN syrup... and colorings....

Unbelievable. It's so much more than fat and calories, and SO many people just don't get it. The biggest argument there was in my conversation on Saturday was "One day of candy won't hurt anything, and it won't lead to childhood obesity". Ok, really?! REALLY?! Fine. Poison your kids. Contribute to the obesity and diabetes problem in the US. ...unbelievable.

How can parents feed this stuff to their kids and still feel good about themselves? There was another argument that they feel good giving this particular candy brand to their kids because it's made in America and not outsourced to China. PEOPLE, POISON IS POISON NO MATTER WHERE IT'S MADE.

When parents are new parents, they take SUCH CARE in what they feed to their baby, what their baby can and can't put in their mouth, locking cabinets full of cleaning supplies, etc. When is this idea forgotten? Where along the way to they think it's ok to feed them crap? Do new parents feed their 6-month-olds pureed candy bars? Of course not!

And don't tell me that they do it because they can't afford anything else. I think that's a bunch of bull. Give your kid half of an orange instead of a candy bar. Come on, people!

I guess the moral of the story is- look beyond fat and calories and READ YOUR INGREDIENTS. Don't feed your kids CRAP. And by crap, I mean things that don't grow on trees or from the ground, and didn't at one point have a mother. If it was created in a lab... it's JUNK. End of story.