Shopping Smart: Set aside Halloween candy budget
The Halloween we’re familiar with today began around the 1800s with costumes, fortune-telling and games like bobbing for apples.
It’s come a long way. The National Retail Federation predicts that this Halloween we will spend a record $6 billion on costumes, cards, candy and decorations, up from just over $5 billion a year ago.
(Sun-Times file)
A typical American plans to spend an average of $65 on Halloween merchandise this year — $20 more than five years ago. And the typical household plans to spend an average of $22 this year just on “treats,” according to the National Confectioners Association.
My recommendation, especially this year, is to set a budget. It is easy to get carried away in the supermarket with all those bags of miniature candies and candy corn. Put aside your own likes and head to the dollar store, Save-A-Lot or Aldi — these stores typically have the best buys on candies.
Halloween is a fun holiday but when it comes to food safety and food allergies, we all need to be serious.
Parents who have children with allergies need to be very careful about monitoring the candy their children eat. Reading labels is extremely important as some candies contain ingredients such as peanuts, tree nuts or milk that you would never assume would be there.
To assist parents, the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network offers these tips to help keep your children safe while having fun on Halloween.
• Create a “candy swap” so that allergen-containing candies can be traded for other treats such as stickers or toys.
• Take the focus off of trick-or-treating by hosting a costume party that emphasizes fun instead of candy. Stickers, pencils, spider rings and stamps are great alternatives for goody bags.
• Provide neighbors with allergy-safe candies for your child or ask neighbors to hand out only candy with individualized labels — so kids with allergies can determine whether the treat is safe to eat or not.
• Teach children to politely refuse offers of cookies and other homemade treats.
• Remember that candy ingredients can vary for different sizes of the same product such as full-size candy bars and their miniature versions, which are not always individually labeled.
2009 has been a tough year for us all. As we wrap it up and look forward to a calmer 2010, we have decided to host our first ever SupermarketGuru.com Halloween costume contest. The only requirement is that your costume has to be food-related!
To enter, send a photo or video of you in your costume to Amanda@supermarketguru.com by Friday, Nov. 6 with the subject line “Happy Halloween.”
For complete rules and information, go to <a xhref="http://SupermarketGuru.com" >supermarketguru.com</a> and click on “Insider Events.”
Food industry analyst Phil Lempert is the editor of <a xhref="http://SupermarketGuru.com" >SupermarketGuru.com</a> and reports on the latest trends on NBC’s “Today” show, ABC’s “The View” and local Chicago news programs.