Trick or Treat…Which one is it?

I have to be brutally honest. As a young mother I dreaded Halloween. I had three children under the age of 5. I felt the pressure of making costumes and carving pumpkins (my daughter still has a scar from the "safe" pumpkin carving knife), followed by the aftermath of dealing with the "treats".

Back then; parents who attempted to be health conscious gave out apples, only to find the news that someone had hidden a razor blade inside one of them. Overnight, we could not offer nature's bounty unless we were willing to trek to the hospital to have our bags x-rayed.

The worst part was the aftermath; the unbelievable sugar rush and inevitably crash, exhaustion from so much excitement and crabbiness for the next several days.

I was fortunate in that two of my three children could carry the ADHD label (had I wanted to bestow that upon them.)  I learned about the Feingold Diet and witnessed first hand the difference in mood, attention and temperament on a diet of fresh whole food versus artificial colors, sweeteners and of course sugar. Do you know that rats will choose sugar 8-10 times over cocaine? Yes, we are all addicted to sugar.

When sugar was first brought to Europe in the 1600’s it was kept under lock and key because it made people crazy.  Yet we feed it to our children in baby food with GMO & HFCS, in formulas, to this holiday of excess sugar. Given that sugar feeds cancer, diabetes and heart disease as well as negative gut microbes that lead to attention deficit, anxiety, depression Alzheimer's, and are a source of inflammation and all dis-ease, I really have to ask, 

"Is this trick or a treat?"

Am I saying no to sugar; no, to sweetness? Become a monk and move to Tibet? No. Seriously though, how do we really want to treat ourselves?  What can we do that is more loving and nourishing to our bodies? What happened to apple bobbing and making apple butter and real pumpkin pies with natural unprocessed ingredients in the right combination that nature intended?

Here is a simple yet delicious pumpkin pie that was made from a regular large pumpkin that my husband carved.  Ingredients? Pumpkin, pecans, dates, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom and ginger. It's full of spices that are anti-carcinogens and warming and healing to the gastrointestinal tract.

Now that is a treat!           Happy Halloween!