Halloween is a day that every child in the United States looks forward to. They pick a costume and make sure it is the right one because they won’t get another choice for a year. However, the highlight is when friends go out at night around the neighborhood to get candy. 

With childhood obesity on the rise in the Unites States, many Americans will look to healthier alternatives such as fruit snacks, granola bars, and pretzels. Majority of kids would find the so called “healthy snacks” a blow to their trick or treating experience. People should give out candy on Halloween instead of looking for alternatives. I believe that this holiday is exciting purely due to the fact that kids can eat as much candy as they can for the next few days. Most of us were guilty of this as children. One week of overdoing it on sweets is not going to make a child fat.

Research from The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that 17 % of calories in a child’s diet aged six to seventeen comes from sugar and added sugars. People looking at these statistics may find it daunting to give children Halloween candy. However, it should be up to their parents to manage their diet and consumption of Halloween candy. People should not try to control the diets of children that are not theirs.

More than one-third of children were either obese or overweight in 2012, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, this is no reason to take it out on other kids. Handing out healthy snacks during Halloween will not help fix the problem of childhood obesity.

Halloween is an annual holiday, and not a weekly occurrence. This should be considered the cheat day for kids all across the United States. People should not be concerned and give away “healthy treats” that most of these kids find in their everyday brown bag lunch. If people are concerned with how much candy is consumed, they can limit the portions of candy they give each child. To give a child something that they are going to eat on a daily basis is not much of a holiday.

 Children should be able to stuff their face with all the chocolate and sweets that they earned. There is a war on Halloween and it needs to end.