A Non-Candy Approach to Halloween

Candy and sweet treats take center stage at Halloween and remain in the spotlight through the winter and spring holidays. This season, we encourage you to disrupt this domino effect and share more nutritious — and still festive — goodies for kid-friendly Halloween trick-or-treating.

The USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans show that children consume an excess of added sugars. They recommend limiting foods with added sugars, like candy, and focusing on nutrient-dense foods and beverages that are naturally low in added sugars.

5 non-candy Halloween Treats

To help make this a reality, here are five ideas for non-candy Halloween treats this spooky season.

Halloween Chips & Guacamole

Guacamole is an excellent non-candy snack since it contains fruit and vegetables. As kids get older they eat fewer fruits and vegetables and young adults only get half of their recommended amounts. Get more by including avocados as a dip, in smoothies, or as a topping on tacos, sandwiches, and soups.

Give a platter of chips and guacamole a spooky makeover. Save the avocado peels after you scoop out the fruit and use a small knife to “carve” circle eyes, an upside-down triangle nose, and a rectangular mouth to create a skull face. Place the peel on top of the serving dish of guacamole.

Use Halloween-shaped cookie cutters to punch shapes out of flour or corn tortillas. Arrange the tortilla chips on a baking sheet, mist lightly with avocado oil, and season with a pinch of salt, garlic powder, and/or chili powder. Bake in a 350-degree oven for 5 to 10 minutes until crispy.

Good-for-You Ghosts

Transform nutritious everyday snacks, like bananas and string cheese, into friendly ghosts. All you need is a black permanent marker and/or chocolate chips. Draw eyes and a mouth onto bananas with peels or individually wrapped cheese sticks. You can also slice peeled bananas in half and press chocolate chips into the banana to create a ghost.

Monster Applesauce

Turn individually packaged applesauce pouches into mummies or zombies with crepe paper and tape. Wrap white or green crepe paper around the pouches and draw on eyes or attach googly eyes. You can also decorate individual 100% fruit juice boxes this way.

Jack-O-Lantern Fruit

What’s more festive than pumpkins at Halloween? It’s easy to decorate orange fruits like carved pumpkins. Use a black permanent marker (or white acrylic paint) to draw jack-o-lantern faces on the peels of navel oranges, clementines, or sealed containers of orange fruit, like mandarins and diced peaches packed in 100% fruit juice. Stack the fruit on trays to create impressive pumpkin towers.

Vampire Apple Bites

Quarter red or green apples, trim away the core, and cut a v-shape into the skin side of each. Lightly brush the apples with lemon juice to prevent browning. Fill the v-shape with nut or sunflower butter and attach slivered almonds, pumpkin seeds, mini marshmallows, or broken mini pretzel rods to create fangs.

These non-candy ideas are fun, festive, and kid-friendly for Halloween trick-or-treating, seasonal parties, and classroom celebrations.

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