These are 34 of the best healthy Halloween ideas, treats, and recipes, that are candy-free.
They are perfect if you want to stop or cut back on the sugar overload.
YES, you can have a healthy Halloween this year ... all of the healthy ideas below are quick to make and your children will love them.
All of them are healthy alternatives to candy and chocolate while keeping the Halloween spirit alive.
Halloween can be fun, without the sugar-overload (or the tantrums).
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Halloween season
Halloween is always an exciting time for children. They get to play dress up, attend parties, and go door to door playing trick or treat.
But did you know the average child in the US trick over Halloween consumes 3 cups of sugar? That's the equivalent of 144 teaspoons of sugar. (1)
You probably realise already how dangerous high blood sugars are, which is why so many of you have asked me for healthy Halloween ideas and healthy Halloween treats.
Don't worry, you DON'T have to skip Halloween season. These simple ideas and recipes are fun AND healthy.
9 Halloween treats
Let's look at how you can help support other parents who are trying to stop or reduce sugar. Consider these candy-free options instead.
1: Mini Playdoh - decorate them with spooky Halloween stickers or wrap them in jack o lantern wrapping paper? You can even buy glow-in-the-dark play-doh.
2: Halloween Themed Toys - scary toys, spiders, Halloween lego ... the list is endless. The shops are full of Halloween toys and party bag stuffers for the whole family.
3: Glowsticks - everyone loves glow sticks. Even adults love getting these, especially the wristbands. I've even seen them wrapped around a dog collar so families don't lose their precious pooch on the Halloween trail around the neighborhood.
4: Coloured pencils - handing out fun stationery and rubber stamps are great ideas. It could be pens, pencils, crayons, or even fun post-it notes. And these will keep them entertained for days and weeks.
5: Bubbles - they come in assorted sizes and some are even zombie finger bubbles! Fun bubble blowers last a lot longer than candy corn and will help your kiddos to avoid that sugar rush!
6: Lego Mini Figures - kids absolutely adore opening Lego mini-figures to see which one they have received. Organize the parents in the neighborhood to buy a variety for a few friends so your children can collect the entire range.
7: Bouncy Balls - big ones, little ones, and how about glow-in-the-dark eyeball ones? I love the stress-relieving squeezy pumpkins. Maybe the parents need these after having a home full of neighborhood kids who are climbing the walls with that sugar candy high?
8: Cookie Cutters - these are so cute to fill Halloween party bags. Why not make some cute low-carb gingerbread cookies for the big night? They're great for a healthy school snack too.
9: Mini-Flashlights - imagine the fun your kids can have with these when they come home. They can project spooky fun Halloween scenes on the bedroom walls and take them camping for extra spooky campfire stories.
3 Halloween tricks
For your own kids, the biggest hazard when they go out trick or treating, is when they bring home a massive sack full of candy that you didn't want.
No matter what your plan is when you head out with your kids, keep a few of the candy-free healthier options that your house is handing out in your pocket and sneak them into your child’s bag as you go house to house.
This way no matter how much candy they end up bringing home, if you use one of these Halloween trading schemes, they’ll have something fun they can keep.
1: Trade candy for cash.
Allow your children to go out trick or treating as they normally would, then when they get home why not offer to trade 10-25 cents for every piece of candy?
The next day, take your children to the toy store where they can buy a toy with their "candy cash".
So what do you do with all that candy you bought off your kids?
If you aren't happy to throw the sugary stuff in the trash, then why not take them to your workplace and invite your co-workers to help themselves?
2: Send candy to the troops
There are a number of charities in the United States and around the world that will take Halloween candy and send it to troops who are based overseas.
Before you go out trick or treating, explain to your kids that the troops overseas don’t get to have Halloween as they do but that having treats from home can make them feel a little bit better about being so far away.
Ask them if they’d like to give their candy to the troops. It’s a wonderful teachable moment. But have your own sugar-free sweet snacks that you approve of on hand, so they don’t feel like they didn’t get anything.
3: Ask neighbours for help
If you’re going to be trick or treating in your neighborhood, why not prepare a few special candy-free treats for your child and go door to door asking your neighbors if they will hand out the specific item to your child instead of the usual candy?
If you explain that you want them to have a healthy alternative or they have a food allergy, most neighbors are very accommodating with your request, especially as you are supplying them with the candy-free Halloween treat.
Be sure to tell them what your child will be dressed up as and make sure you’re also visible from the doorway just in case.
22 Healthy Halloween recipes
Healthy Halloween snacks are fun to make and your children will love to be involved. Ask them to slice vegetables and make a veggie skeleton. Draw fun faces on fruit and turn them into jack o lanterns.
These healthy Halloween treats are delicious and the whole family will love them at your party.
The trick to making yummy healthy Halloween recipes is to make them FUN! Cut vegetables into spooky shapes, add teeth, fake blood (ketchup) and adapt the recipes you already know and love.
All the recipes below are candy free, LOWER sugar (not all are low-carb or keto, but many are).
1: Make spooky mummies by using the mozzarella dough sausage rolls recipe and serve with a sugar-free BBQ sauce.
2: Use cookie cutters to create witches hats, ghosts, bats, and carved pumpkins using the sugar-free gingerbread cookie dough.
3: Scoop out an avocado, make some guacamole and serve it in the avocado skin to make a scary witch or monster.
4: Kids love cheese mummy toast. Make these from toasted gluten-free almond flour bread or pizza crust.
5: You don't even need a recipe for this one. Carve a jack o lantern face from a slice of watermelon. Perfect for sweet party food.
6: How about a fruit tray or a vegetable tray? No child will eat salad at Halloween, but they'll enjoy these adorable Halloween party snacks.
7: Scary green monsters made from sliced apples, peanut butter, nut butter, pumpkin seeds for the teeth, and a strawberry slice for the ugly tongue.
8: Easy healthy Halloween snacks for a whole crowd are deviled eggs, made with curry to make the egg yolk extra yellow, avocado and slices of black olives for the eye ball.
9: Orange jack o lanterns made from fresh oranges. Scoop out the center, (save the pulp and the orange juice for an orange cake), and fill the center with berries and whipped cream. It's naturally sweet and perfect for special occasions.
10: String cheese tied to toothpicks or breadsticks are a cute way to tickle the kid's taste buds.
11: Good news! No more pumpkin carving is required. Now you can make a fun pizza jack o lantern from a keto pizza base recipe.
12: More melted mummies. These ones can be made from coconut flour bread recipe (for those who have a nut allergy and cannot tolerate the almond flour bread).
13: Spooky ghost cupcakes can be made using the carrot cake recipe, but baked in Halloween-themed cupcake cases then decorated with whipped cream and sugar-free chocolate chips.
14: Another favorite snack at parties, are sausages with sliced almonds and covered in BBQ sauce to look like a goulish sliced finger.
15: One for the adults at your party. Pumpkin pie spice latte seed in spooky Halloween mason jars then topped with cream and drizzled with pumpkin pie spice.
16: The fastest healthy Halloween treat has to be mandarins with creative scary faces. Use them for packed lunches too if your child loves their fruit.
17: Mini burger buns stuffed with salami, tomato, cheese and decorated with pickle and black olive eyes.
18: Meatloaf wrapped in mozzarella dough recipe served with cauliflower "brains" covered in a sauce is a yummy way to get kids to eat their meat and veggies.
19: Children love to be in healthy kitchens when they can make fun fruit eyeballs, spider webs, and even skeletons. Use sugar-free white chocolate or sugar-free dark chocolate for the eyes and other details.
20: One final idea where no baking or preparation in the kitchen is required. Just slice bananas in half and press some sugar-free chocolate chips into them, peel a mandarin and push a small stick of green veggies inside. Voila! Instant fun food.
21: Chocolate granola served in cups of yogurt or custard, will look like a dirty swamp monster.
22: Sugar free gummy bears and worms are always fun. Watch the video to see how you can make the gummy worms with 2 colors from real fruit tea.
Healthy Halloween FAQ
Anything that can help reduce sugar, chemicals, and processed food will help. Even cutting back will be a great start. Try adding some of this fun party food as lunch box fillers for the weeks heading into Halloween.
The trick is to make fun shapes out of your regular recipes or snack ideas. You already know they like that food or recipe so cut and serve in Halloween-themed plates, cups, and decorations. Anything to help your kids avoid a sugar overload. Give them things they actually want to eat.
In addition to the 34 healthy Halloween treats above, you can also make sugar-free peanut butter fudge, pumpkin pie spice fudge, sugar-free marshmallows, or sugar-free salted peanut butter cups.
Explain gently why you want to reduce sugar in your child's diet and how you would appreciate them supporting you in this. Help them to help you by providing them with some healthy Halloween treats, or non food treats that they can hand to your child.
What are your best healthy ideas? Please leave a comment below.
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Rai
Halloween is fast approaching! I'm so excited to try these recipes! Thanks for sharing!
SD, Sydney
Hi. Great recipes and ideas, thank you! I LOVE Halloween, always have, since before it was cool (in Australia, anyway) 😉 My 5 year old daughter loves it too. But it doesn't have to be about sugar!
We don't do Trick-or-Treating, but we always have a party with her little friends.
At parties, I have savoury food out first (meatballs,. zucchini slice, pizza etc), then maybe a fruit plate, and find kids usually fill up on that sufficiently that by the time I bring out sweet stuff, they're generally kinda full and don't go too silly.
I try to keep the sweets (home made cupcakes, cookies etc, not plates of lollies!) as low sugar as I can, and certainly low fructose. My daughter is fairly accustomed to paleo snacks and lower carb and low sugar stuff, but her friends are not, so you've got to find a balance, it is a party after all! And water only! Kids do not need juice or soft drink! There's sometimes a bit of grumbling from other kids, but too bad! Water = less feral kids, and if there's a spill, no big deal 🙂
Keeping kids adequately entertained helps too, we had a wonderful lady doing face painting last year and signed her up a year in advance for this year too!
When I do up party bags (for Halloween and birthdays), I focus on non-lolly items, stickers, erasers, toys, those little Lego mini figures etc. Glow sticks is a good idea that I will use this year, thank you!
Libby www.ditchthecarbs.com
Brilliant, brilliant suggestions. I love that you are still celebrating Halloween but the kids just won't even notice that you have cut back on the sugar and C.R.A.P and made healthier food. And I'm so with you on the no juice/soda aspect. If water is the only option, most of the time they don't notice (or like you say, too bad, they DO NOT NEED SODA). You made me laugh about the feral kids 😉 You have focused on the fun stuff not the sugar and they will have a fabulous time. Awesome.
My birthday is on Halloween so I can remember exactly how it has changed over the years. My birthday parties when I was a girl was your average party food of sausage rolls, fairy bread and cake, that kind of thing. But I can also remember these foods were only at parties. Trick or treating was unheard of (in NZ anyway) and there was no ghoulish zombie aspect to it. Like with most celebrations these days, it all revolves around sweets because of marketing and advertising - Valentines, Easter, Halloween, Christmas to name a few. Yes kids deserve fun, but they also deserve health (and their own teeth)! Thanks for your wonderful ideas, Libby x
Joanne Mitchell Formisano
Loved this - thank you for sharing so many good ideas for a more healthy Halloween!