10/31/2026
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🎃 Halloween candy can bring up a lot of anxiety for parents. How much is too much? Should we hide it? Limit it? Take it away?
Research suggests that when we make certain foods highly restricted or ""forbidden,"" it can actually backfire.
Here's what can happen:
❌ ""Forbidden"" foods become MORE desirable.
When sweets are tightly controlled, children may become more preoccupied with them and more motivated to seek them out (Fisher & Birch, 1999).
❌ Children may eat MORE when they get access.
Research has linked restrictive feeding practices with increased eating in the absence of hunger, particularly among young girls (Birch et al., 2003).
❌ It can interfere with healthy eating habits.
A systematic review found associations between certain restrictive feeding practices and less adaptive eating behaviours in children (Say et al., 2023).
💚 **So, what can parents do instead?**
✅ Offer candy in a calm, matter-of-fact way.
✅ Consider including a little Halloween candy alongside regular meals or snacks.
✅ Create predictable opportunities to enjoy sweets, rather than treating them as forbidden rewards.
✅ Allow children to practise listening to their hunger and fullness cues while maintaining supportive, age-appropriate boundaries.
✨ The goal isn't unlimited candy. It's helping children develop a healthy, balanced relationship with food.
Sometimes, the less power we give candy, the less power candy has over our kids. 💛
