Re-Working Holiday Traditions: Making Halloween Healthier with Switch Witch

As many of you know, Dr. Seth and I have three wonderful children, ages 7-11.   As a mom,  everything I  do and learn is  centered around making their bodies and minds as healthy as possible within the information I have available to me.  Some of you may know that all of our kids have food sensitives of one kind or another.  The main offenders in our house are gluten, dairy and artificial coloring.

Now my FAVORITE holiday is coming up: Halloween.  It is the opportunity to pretend to be someone else for a day, and to have everyone else go along with it! What fun!! Not only that, but we get to parade around town, showing off to our neighbors and friends our pretend selves, AND get rewarded for it! With candy!! Oh… wait…..  None of it will I allow my children to eat.

I could write a whole blog on just the health effects of GMO’s, sugar, artificial coloring and unhealthy fats.  I will save that for another day. Instead, I wish to empower you as parents and caregivers of children to not let them gorge on these neurotoxic, inflammatory and hormone disrupting candies.  Even doling them out over the course of a month still puts these offensive and disruptive chemicals in to our children’s bodies.

I have a life hack for this: Switch Witch.

Now, Switch Witch is not my own idea, but it has been adopted into my family’s tradition of Halloween with very little or no complaint.  

Here is how it goes:  We get dressed up and go Trick or Treating!!! What fun! When we get home, Dr. Seth and I go through their treats and take out things they can have and any toy items they may have received.  Then, we leave out their trick or treat  buckets on the table and the Switch Witch comes and ‘switches’ out  the candy that they can’t have with some higher quality candy and other toys/items.                                     (Santa Claus style.)

 It’s really that simple. They look forward to see what surprises Switch Witch has left for them, and                  I donate the candy to a friend or send it overseas to our troops. My kids never feel like they have missed out on a childhood tradition and I keep their endocrine systems working better. Everyone wins.
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I hope that you see this and maybe give out something other than candy this year, or have Switch Witch come to your home. You won’t be disappointed, I promise.
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