Making Halloween fun while choosing healthy options
Halloween feels like the official kickoff to two months of indulgence of sweet treats and unhealthy eating. How can you not deprive yourself but have a healthy outlook starting with Halloween?
Themed Fruits and Veggies
If you are serving up witches brooms, spiders or body parts, you are on theme for Halloween. Fun dishes can often use fruits and vegetables while taking on a creepy crawly look. If you are looking for fun ideas, Women’s Day has a great article showing vegetables used to build a skeleton, carrots cut to look like fingers served with an edamame dip or hummus, caterpillars formed from celery and peanut butter topped with fruit, and clementines made to look like pumpkins along with other ideas. Don’t you want to make all of these fun dishes?
Taking one of these dishes to a party will surely be a hit. You can also leverage these ideas for after school snacks or even sneak something into your child’s lunchbox.
Limit sweet treats
Your children are sure to want a sweet treat after trick or treating. Allow them to pick one or two pieces of candy. Be sure to brush their teeth thoroughly before bed to prevent the sugar from sitting on their teeth as that can lead to cavities.
Some families choose to trade the sweet treats for a toy. This could be the child’s choice or you could leverage the “switch witch” that trades the candy out after trick or treating while the kids are in bed for a toy.
Risks of sugar
Everyone is aware of diabetes. No one thinks they will get it themselves. The groundwork for this disease is laid when you are just a child. You eat too much sugar when you are a child and it creates unhealthy cravings when you’re an adult. Excess sugar can lead to type 2 diabetes along with high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol. These health risks are serious. We all need to be setting the younger generation up for a lifetime of success and helping them make smart choices.
If you are looking for a medical team to help support your family as you work to make healthy lifestyle choices and improve your health, Healthstar Physicians Premier Medical welcomes you. Our established medical team has two offices in Newport, TN and a newly opened office in Sevierville. Our osteopathic medicine team focuses on the unity of body systems rather than just symptoms. We provide preventative care, treat chronic conditions, and acute and urgent care for their patients. You’ll find our team includes a talented staff that provides more than osteopathic medicine for patients of all ages including: family medicine, obesity medicine, and podiatry.
Our team is accepting new patients and takes most forms of insurance. To make an appointment in one of our Newport offices or in the new Sevierville office, please call 865-446-0224. Contact us to find out more.
