Fear is a major element associated with Halloween. Witches, ghosts, spiders, and clowns all come to mind in anticipation of the holiday as things that elicit feelings of fear. Candy also comes to mind when looking forward to October 31st, but it does not need to be feared. Candy is a major component of Halloween tradition. Labeling candy as “bad” and only eating “healthy foods” creates a restrictive mindset which leads to disordered eating patterns and potentially an eating disorder. We will explore ways to enjoy candy during the holiday season and combat diet culture.
Diet Culture Myths: Health at Every Size
Everybody has experienced hearing words coming from diet culture influencing how they act, think, and feel around certain foods, especially around the holidays. Through social media, influencers, our peers, and in everyday life, we are told that weight determines health. Health can be determined by the assimilation of one’s physical, mental, and spiritual wellness.2
Note that weight or “thinness” is not included in this list, highlighting that being thin as a result of eating as little as possible and only “good” foods is not correlated to one’s overall health.
Intuitive eating and the Health at Every Size® (HAES) paradigm challenge this myth, helping individuals develop a healthy relationship with food by listening to our physical and emotional hunger cues to satisfy our body’s needs.
Health at Every Size is a set of principles established by the Association for Size Diversity and Health aimed at shifting the focus away from weight loss and instead focusing on promoting a diet and lifestyle that benefits one’s health. We can implement this concept into our own lives by creating an accepting environment that promotes access to tools benefiting health for all, understanding and acknowledging our biases around weight to combat weight stigma, and eating to meet individual needs and satisfaction while forgoing any rigid rules around food.3
Research shows the HAES® approach is directly associated with “improvement in blood pressure, blood lipids, physical activity, and body image” (Tribole & Resche, 2020). Implementing can help you through this year’s Halloween festivities can be a vital contributor to body respect, leading to improved health.
Taking Candy off a Pedestal – Demoralizing Candy/Food
Candy is often labeled as a “bad food” or “junk food”. These labels fuel diet culture by associating the behavior of eating candy with moral implications, indicating you are a better or worse person for choosing to or not to eat it. This is a harmful mindset as it gives power to the food, allowing it to control your thoughts, decisions, and can lead to feelings of guilt or shame after enjoying a specific food.
Through avoiding the use of food labels, we are taking control back and ensuring that no food is being put on a pedestal. Candy, specifically, is meant to be enjoyed, but the joy is taken away when it consumes our thoughts, leading to disordered eating patterns of restricting and then binging later on. Eating disorders, as discussed in more detail below, are fueled by the idea that we are more virtuous as individuals based on the morality of the food we are eating. The problem with this mindset is that food is not a moral issue, and deciding not to eat candy this Halloween, despite wanting to, will not make you a more virtuous person. In fact, restricting yourself from enjoying the candy could ultimately lead to physical and emotional implications on your health.
Ginny Jones describes moral issues that are relevant and important to personal and emotional development while encouraging social and behavioral growth. This Halloween, it is crucial to shift our focus away from the non-existent morality of candy and pay attention to real moral matters. This includes our treatment towards ourselves, those we love, and those in underrepresented communities, through focusing on self-maturation, continuously and intentionally learning, and practicing acceptance and support for others.1
Disordered Eating through a Restrictive Mindset
The morality of food becomes a greater problem than labeling food as “good” or “bad” when it ultimately triggers eating disorders. Particularly on days such as Halloween, where food is a central component to the social event, it can be easy to fall into the trap of placing rigid food rules around one’s candy consumption with the idea that doing so would betray a preset eating plan. Extensive research done on having a restrictive mindset around food indicates there is a correlation between restricting and feelings of guilt around food.
The “Seesaw Syndrome,” as described in ‘Intuitive Eating,’ is the opposing correlation between deprivation and guilt. This analogy depicts the dangerous cycle of a binge eating disorder that most often stems from the restriction of certain foods or food groups.
The idea is that “‘What goes up must come down’”. On one side of the seesaw is deprivation, and on the other is guilt. As an individual restricts a certain food, the deprivation side is raised higher, and feelings of guilt subside.3
The problem is, the seesaw can only go so high, and when it reaches its maximum, those guilty feelings, being at a low as a result of thinking they were “good” around feared food, begin to resurface as the individual allows themselves to eat the foods they had avoided from their diet.3 This is when the mental battle is at its peak, and out of exhaustion and feeling as though they have failed from their restrictive eating plan, the individual will begin to develop an all-or-nothing mindset.
The deprivation side lowers as the guilt heightens due to binging on the food that had been restricted before. The result is a dangerous cycle of continuous binging and restricting that can only be stopped if deprivation hops off of the seesaw, allowing for a lack of guilt around the incorporation of foods into one’s diet.3
Having an all-foods-fit mindset this Halloween can help prevent this cycle from presenting itself. Through the incorporation of candy into your meals this Halloween and allowing yourself to eat it without restricting, treating the food as a reward, or giving it a moral label, you can stop the seesaw and enjoy candy without feelings of guilt.
Credit: https://www.sarahgoldrd.com/binge-restrict-cycle/
Parent Specific
From a parent’s perspective, it can be hard to refrain from controlling your child’s candy intake this Halloween, but the less you restrict, the better. When candy is restricted, it can send a message to a child that the candy is unattainable, only making them crave it and want it more. This can lead to them bingeing on the candy later on when they do have access to it, with the understanding that they must have as much as possible before they cannot have it again. Additionally, it creates a label for candy, implying that it is “bad” to eat it, but as previously discussed, food is not a moral issue, and it is pertinent that we don’t make the impression on our children that it is one.
Incorporating Candy: How to Guide this Halloween
After having discussed multiple implications of restricting candy and reasons as to why doing so can be harmful for yourself and your children, let’s tie it all together with a list of ways we can mindfully incorporate eating candy into our Halloween festivities.
1. Give children and yourself the power to trust their/your bodies
- As humans, we were designed to be in tune with our bodies through hunger cues that indicate our nutritional needs. It is important that we listen to our bodies and provide them with their nutritional needs, but also satisfy our cravings so they do not control us in the long run through restriction.
2. Don’t associate candy with a reward or punishment
- Similar to labeling food as “good” or “bad”, we want to avoid treating candy as a reward (for ourselves and our kids) because it places the food on a pedestal. Doing so could lead to feeling guilt for eating candy outside of it having been “earned”. We should never have to feel the need to “earn” any food!
3. Incorporate candy into your meals
- Include a piece of candy on your plate along with your main meal! Set a plan to enjoy a piece or two of candy with your meal to satisfy your cravings while being intentional.
4. Highlight traditional things that make Halloween fun, other than candy or food
- Acknowledge the components of Halloween that make it special. Place importance on the people you spend it with, dressing up, watching a spooky movie, playing festive games, pumpkin carving, and doing arts and crafts, rather than making it a holiday centered around candy.
5. Practice modeling to create a safe environment for your children, friends, and family
- Enjoying candy on Halloween, along with other nutritious foods, can help demonstrate to your children that no food is “bad” when enjoyed intuitively. Modeling for your children that candy can be eaten for hunger, satisfaction, and nourishment will help to create a safe environment around food this Halloween. 3
6. Take candy off a pedestal by demoralizing it
- As discussed earlier, food is not a moral issue! Eating candy or not eating candy this Halloween will not make you a “good” or “bad” person.
References
1. Jones, G. (2025, June 8). Why moralizing food can fuel eating disorders and how to stop. More-love. https://more-love.org/2017/12/13/food-is-not-a-moral issue/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=ema
2. Stoewen, D. L. (2017, August). Dimensions of Wellness: Change Your Habits, change your life. Dimensions of wellness: Change your habits, change your life. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5508938/#:~:text=Wellness%20is%20a%20holistic%20integration,nurturing%20the%20spirit%20%281%29
3. Tribole, E., & Resch, E. (2020). Intuitive eating (4th ed.). St. Martin’s Griffin.
