How to Have a Healthy Halloween + Kiddylicious Snacks Review

How to Have a Healthy Halloween + Kiddylicious Snacks Review

It’s Halloween this weekend and as we all know it’s a holiday that is very focused on sweet treats. This piece below was written by Kiddylicious‘ nutritionist Laura Southern (DipION) and contains some helpful tips on how to make Halloween healthier. Further down you’ll find my review of some healthy Kiddylicious snacks.

How to Have a Healthy Halloween by Laura Southern

Halloween has to be one of the most enjoyable holidays for kids. Dressing up, games, knocking on strangers’ doors, a bit of fear, and plenty of sweets – what’s not to love!

For us parents however Halloween can be a much more terrifying prospect. All that excitement, staying up late, and so much sugar! It can make bedtime almost impossible, and ruin everyone’s mood the following day.

Well believe it or not, it is possible to limit the sugar on Halloween, and dare I say it, even make Halloween a little bit healthy!

The trick (not the treat!) is to start your Halloween antics at home. Play some traditional Halloween games such as Bobbing For Apples, and Pin the Hat on the Witch, and substitute Halloween sweets from the supermarket with healthy Kiddylicious snacks instead.

It is also helpful to feed your little terrors some substantial dinner or tea before they embark on trick or treating. If you provide them with a protein-rich meal (eggs, chicken or lentils) and some wholegrain carbohydrate (wholemeal pitta bread, brown rice), they are going to be full, and therefore less likely to gorge themselves on too many sweets.

During ‘trick or treating’ (and this does depend on their age) you can limit their sweet intake by keeping control of the sweet bucket. If you’re a mean mummy (like me!) then take one sweet out of the bucket for every two sweets in! Make a big deal about saving some of the sweets for tomorrow and they might have forgotten the exact quantity by morning.  Not all sweets are created equal, and some are going to be more harmful to your little one’s health than others. Try and avoid those full of artificial colours (bright blue is usually a give away). Sucky sweets and lollies are the worst on the teeth because of the length of time they stay in the mouth. And try and get your children to eat an individual sweet, rather than the whole contents of a little bag.

Halloween can also provide really nutritious food for your little ones to try. Instead of chucking away all the seeds and flesh from the pumpkin when you carve them – keep them. The flesh can be easily cooked (put it on an oven tray, sprinkle with cinnamon and roast for 45 mins). Blend it with stock and you’ve got a delicious immune-supporting soup. And pumpkin seeds are packed full of health giving properties. Simply clean them, pop them on an oven tray and roast them on a low heat. Pumpkin seeds are high in magnesium (needed for strong muscles and bones), zinc (for immunity), omega 3 (for mood and brain) and protein. Take a supply of home-made pumpkin seeds for your kids to munch on whilst they’re trick or treating and you might be able to offset their sugar highs, and end up with angels at the end of the night, not scary little monsters.

Kiddylicious Snacks Review

Kiddylicious is one of our go to brands when getting snacks on the go. The snacks are packaged in perfectly sized bags or wrappers and the snacks are healthy too. We’ve tried quite a few of the snacks from the range but the hadn’t had a chance to try the new Wafers until now.

The wafers are made from rice and remind me of Japanese style rice crackers, which I love. They are flavoured subtly with fruit or vegetable flavours and are a great way to help get your baby or toddler used to different tastes. The wafers are large and easy to hold for small hands. They dissolve easily and are mess free. The flavours are baked into the wafers and not added as a coating afterwards which is great because those coatings always make a mess.

You can eat them as they are or use them as a spoon for purées or dips. There are two wafers in each wrapper which is a great snack portion when on the go.

I always try my daughter’s snacks to see what they’re like and to make sure that they’re nice. These have the same texture as the Japanese crackers that I mentioned and the flavour is very mild but nice. They’re recommended from 6 months+ and come in the following flavours: Banana, Blueberry and Carrot. They don’t contain any artificial preservatives, artificial colours, artificial flavours or gluten.

We’d tried the Fruit Wriggles before but not in all the different flavours. These wriggly things are made from the finest and juiciest fruit that has been cooked, pureéd, whizzed and a shaped into tasty wriggles that are fun to eat and tasty too.

Each bag contains at least 1 of the recommended 5 servings of fruit or veg per day so they are full of goodness. Again, they are packaged in perfect snack sized bags to enjoy on the go or pop into lunch boxes. You can also use them as toppings for cakes and other bakes.

They don’t contain any added preservatives, added sugar or salt, milk, lactose, nuts, seeds, wheat or gluten. There’s no artificial stuff in them at all — just fruit, rice flour to stop them sticking together and citrus pectin to hold their shape.

These wriggly snacks are delicious! They are full of flavour and taste like the fruits they’re made of. The different flavours available are Apple, Strawberry and Tropical (mango, papaya, pineapple). They make a wonderful fruity snack or fun, healthy treat for kids of all ages. They’re recommended from 12 months+.

Read more on the Kiddylicious website and buy from your supermarket or Boots.

We were sent these snacks to go with this review. As always, all my reviews are 100% honest and all thoughts and opinions are my own.