Eat Out Eat Well

Food for Fun and Thought

Really, How Many Calories Are In That Piece Of Candy?

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It might help a bit with Halloween candy mooching if you have some information about the calories in those seemingly innocent little mini bars of candy.  A lot of adults care — some don’t — and most kids could care less about calories.

One night of candy overload isn’t going to break the bank.  You won’t gain ten pounds and neither will your child(ren).  You and they might feel lousy after so much sugar, your concentration may not be the greatest, and you might be sluggish and irritable.  But, your pants will still fit and your sunny personality will see the light of day – if the candy indulgences don’t become a frequent occurrence.

A treat is only a treat if it happens once in a while.  If it’s a common occurrence it far too frequently becomes an expectation or a habit.

Calories in Halloween candy (Source: fitsugar)

1 treat size (fun size)

Calories

Fat (g)

Sugar (g)

Snickers

71

3.6

7.6

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup

88

5.2

8

Reese’s Caramel Cup

100

5

11

Reese’s Nutrageous

95

5.5

7.5

Milky Way

77

2.9

10.2

Butterfinger

85

3.5

8.5

Almond Joy

91

5.1

9.2

Milk Duds

40

2

6.3

M&Ms

90

4

11.5

Peanut M&Ms

93

4.7

9.1

Nestle’s Crunch

51.3

2.7

5.6

Peppermint Pattie

47

1

8.6

Kit Kat

73

3.7

.67

Dots

70

0

11

Skittles

80

.8

15

Jelly Belly Jellybeans

35

0

7

3 Musketeers

63.3

2

10

Milky Way

75

3

10

Hershey’s Bar

66.7

4

7.7

Take 5

105

5.5

9

100 Grand

95

4

11

Nerds

50

0

12

Whoppers

100

4

13

Mike & Ike

50

0

9

SweeTarts

10

0

2.4

Guess How Many Calories Are In A Trick Or Treat Bag

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What do you think:  3500, 5000, 7500???  Keep in mind that it takes 3500 calories (above your daily caloric needs to gain a pound.

A public heath expert estimated that, on average, a child in the US collects between 3,500 and 7,000 candy calories on Halloween night.

To burn off 7000 calories, a one hundred pound child would have to walk for almost 44 hours or play full-court basketball for 14.5 hours.

What’s In The Trick or Treat Bag?

A NYC mom wrote down what was in her daughter’s trick or treat bag after she returned home on Halloween. Then the curious mom calculated the calories.

Here’s what was in her daughter’s Trick or Treat bag:

8 Hershey’s Kisses (Peanut butter, regular, almond and caramel)

3 Hershey’s Bars

1 Starburst

1 Jolly Rancher

1 Jolly Rancher Stix

12 Peanut Butter Cups

1 Reese’s Fast Break Bar

3 Fun Size Snickers

1 M & Ms

3 Caramels

6 Jawbreakers

3 Skittles

2 Baby Ruths, Fun Size

3 Butter Fingers, Fun Size

5 Kit Kat, Fun Size

2 Peppermints

2 3 Musketeers

1 Hot Tamales

8 Hard Candies

2 SweetTarts

1 Cookie

1 Mini Dove Chocolate

14 Lollipops

2 Now and Laters

2 Super Bubbles

1 Milky Way, Mini

2 Mary Janes

Total calorie count of candy In the bag:   6653

What her daughter estimated she had already eaten from the bag:

1 Nestle Crunch

4 SweetTarts

1 Peppermint

2 Hard Candies

1 Ring Pop

2 Mini Boxes of Nerds

1 Snickers, Fun Size

1 Caramel

2 Twizzlers

Total calorie count of what had already been eaten:    585

Grand Total of calories from the Halloween candy haul:   7238

 

For more holiday eating tips, strategies, and information check out my book,  The Sensible Holiday Eating Guide:  How To Enjoy Your Favorite Foods Without Gaining Weight, available from Amazon for your kindle or kindle reader.

 

7 Things You Never Knew About Candy Corn

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It’s candy corn time!  Those little tri-colored triangles have celebrated over 130 birthdays and are still going strong.  Here are 7 things you probably never knew about candy corn:

1.  Candy corn was created in the 1880s by George Renninger of the Wunderlee Candy Company. It was quite popular among farmers who loved the corn kernel shaped candy that looked different than a lot of other candy. The Goelitz Candy Company, famous for their candy corn, began selling their brand around 1900.  They still make candy corn today, but their company name has changed to the Jelly Belly Candy Company (guess what else they make).

2. Candy corn, a type of candy that’s over 130 years old, is a “mellow cream,” or candy that’s made from corn syrup and sugar with a marshmallow kind of flavor. It tastes rich, but it’s actually fat-free.

3. The original three colors of candy corn: orange, yellow, and white, mimic a corn kernel although each piece of candy is about three times the size of an actual kernel. The wide side of the triangular candy is yellow, it’s orange in the middle, and the pointy end is white.

4.  Although 75% of the annual candy corn production is for Halloween, you can find it year round in varying holiday colors. There’s:

  •  Brown (chocolate flavored), orange, and white Indian corn for Thanksgiving
  • Red, green, and white Reindeer corn for Christmas
  • Red, pink, and white Cupid corn for Valentine’s Day, and
  • Pastel-colored Bunny corn for Easter

5. A serving of Brach’s Candy Corn – which can be found just about everywhere —  is nineteen pieces and has140 calories (approximately 7.4 calories per kernel)., zero grams of fat, 70 mg of sodium, 36 grams of carbs, and no protein. Candy corn has 3.57 calories per kernel. A large bag of Brach’s candy corn is 22 ounces and has about 300 pieces.  Ingredients in Brach’s candy corn:  sugar, corn syrup, confectioner’s sugar glaze, salt, honey, dextrose, artificial flavor, gelatin, titanium dioxide color, yellow 6, yellow 5, red 3, blue 1, sesame oil.

6. According to the National Confectioners Association, candy makers will produce nearly 35 million pounds of candy corn this year; about 9 billion individual kernels of corn.  It’s so popular that it has its own day; October 30 is National Candy Corn Day.

7.  Originally candy corn was made by hand. Sugar, water, and corn syrup were cooked into a slurry (a thin mud consistency) in large kettles. Fondant (a sweet, creamy paste made from corn syrup, sugar, and water) and marshmallow were whipped in to give it a smooth texture and make it soft to bite.

The hot mixture was poured into “runners,” or hand-held buckets that held 45 pounds of candy mixture.

Next, men called “stringers” would walk backward as they poured the steaming mixture into trays coated with cornstarch and imprinted with kernel-shaped molds. They made three passes; one each for the orange, white and yellow colors.

Today, the candy recipe is still pretty much the same but the production is mechanized. A machine fills trays of kernel-shaped holes with cornstarch to hold the candy in corn triangle shape. The holes are partially filled with white syrup, then orange syrup, followed by yellow syrup. The mold is allowed to cool and the mixture hardens for about 24 hours. Then a machine empties the trays allowing the kernels to fall into chutes. A big sifter shakes loose any excess cornstarch and finally the candy corn is glazed to make it shine.

Candy Corn Flavors

Candy corn and candy corn flavors are big – apparently, according to Time, appearing in booze, bagels, cookies, and beyond. Nabisco released a limited-edition of candy-corn Oreos, exclusively for Target (but they also can be found on Amazon).  They have yellow-and-orange cream filling sandwiched between vanilla wafers. Wal-Mart has candy corn yellow, orange, and white jumbo M&Ms with white chocolate filling.

For more holiday eating tips, strategies, and information check out my book,  The Sensible Holiday Eating Guide:  How To Enjoy Your Favorite Foods Without Gaining Weight, available from Amazon for your kindle or kindle reader.

 

Do You Swipe Candy From Your Kid’s Trick Or Treat Bag?

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If you do, you can start shedding your guilt because you’re certainly not alone.

Let’s put it another way:  Is it almost a foregone conclusion that there’s Halloween candy in your future?

The candy assault on your senses is pretty hard to escape.   It’s everywhere in glowing Technicolor on shelf after shelf in big box stores, supermarkets, and drug stores.  It’s on desks, in restaurants, and even on the receptionist’s desk in my veterinarian’s office in a nice purple bowl with a dog bone painted on the side.

How Much Candy?

Halloween and the week afterward accounts for about 5% of all candy consumed for the year. The most popular types, in order, are:  chocolate, chewy candies and hard candy.

What’s In Your Kid’s Trick or Treat Bag?

If you’ve ever swiped candy from your kid’s trick or treat bag, you’re certainly not alone. According to the National Confectioners Association, 90% of parents confess they occasionally dip into their kid’s stash. I know I sure did.

Parents don’t just sample; they invade their kids’ Trick or Treat bags.  Estimates are that they eat one candy bar out of every two a child brings home.  Their favorite targets are snack-sized chocolate bars (70%), candy-coated chocolate pieces (40%), caramels (37%) and gum (26%).

In Case You Want To Pick The Least Caloric Candy . . .

Here are the calories in some popular Halloween candy – just in case you might want to minimize the caloric damage (no, that’s not a joke, candy has a big calorie and fat gram range)

  • Hershey’s Milk Chocolate: snack size .49-ounce bar; 67 calories; 4g fat
  • Snickers: Fun size; 80 calories; 4g fat
  • Tootsie Rolls: 6 midgee pieces; 140 calories; 3g fat
  •  Skittles Original Bite Size Candies: Fun size bag; 60 calories; 0.7 g fat
  • M&Ms: Fun size bag; 73 calories; 3g fat
  • Butterfinger: Fun size; 85 calories; 3.5g fat
  • Tootsie Roll Pop
: 60 calories; 0g fat
  • Starburst Original Fruit Chews: 2 pieces; 40 calories: 40; 0.8g fat
  • Brach’s Candy Corn: 20 pieces; 150 calories; 0g fat
  •  Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup:  Fun size; 80 calories, 4.5g fat
  • Peppermint Pattie:  Fun size; 47 calories; 1g fat
  •  Kit Kat:  Fun size; 73 calories; 3.7g fat

 

Why Is A Carved Pumpkin A Jack-o’-Lantern?

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Jack-O'-Lantern with carved eye
Jack-O’-Lantern

The Legend of The Jack-O’-Lantern 

As the story goes, there was a miserable old drunk named Stingy Jack.   He liked to play tricks on his family, friends — even the Devil —  and he tricked the Devil into climbing up an apple tree.   Once the Devil was up in the tree, Stingy put crosses around the apple tree’s trunk so the Devil couldn’t get down.  He then told the Devil that if he promised not to take Jack’s soul when he died he would remove the crosses and let the Devil down from the tree.

When Jack died, Saint Peter waiting for him at the pearly gates of Heaven, told him that he couldn’t enter Heaven because he was mean, cruel, and had led a miserable and worthless life. So, Stingy Jack then went down to Hell but the Devil wouldn’t take him in either because of what Jack had done to him.  Jack was scared and with nowhere to go he had no choice but to wander around in the darkness between Heaven and Hell.

Stingy Jack asked the Devil how he could stop wandering around without a light to see.  The Devil threw him an ember from the flames of Hell. One of Jack’s favorite foods, which he always had when he could steal one, had been a turnip.  So he put the ember into a hollowed out turnip and from that day on, Stingy Jack, without a resting place, roamed the earth lighting his way with his “Jack-O’-Lantern.”

And so goes the legend of the Jack-O’-Lantern that dates back hundreds of years in Irish history.

Halloween And The Jack-O’-Lantern

Halloween, or the Hallow E’en as it’s called in Ireland and Scotland, is short for All Hallows Eve, or the night before All Hallows.  On All Hallows Eve the Irish made Jack-O’-Lanterns by hollowing out turnips, rutabagas, gourds, potatoes, and beets and then putting lights in them to keep away both the evil spirits and Stingy Jack.  In the 1800′s when Irish immigrants came to America, they discovered that pumpkins were bigger and easier to carve, and the pumpkin became the Jack-o’-Lantern.

If You Want To Eat Your Pumpkin . . .

Jumping from legend to fact:  pumpkins are Cucurbitaceae, a family of vegetables that includes cucumbers and melons. They are fat free and can be baked, steamed, or canned.

One cup of pumpkin has about 30 calories and is high in vitamin C, potassium, dietary fiber, and has other nutrients such as folate, manganese, and omega 3′s.  Pumpkin is filled with the anti-oxidant beta-carotene, which gives it its rich orange hue. It’s versatile and can be added to baked goods and blended with many different kinds of food. When pureed pumpkin is used to replace some or all of the fat in baked goods, it significantly decreases the calories while keeping the cake, muffin, or other baked good moist.

Pumpkin seeds are delicious and are a good source of iron, copper, and zinc.  Although pumpkin flesh is low in calories, pumpkin seeds are not.   They have 126 calories in an ounce (about 85 seeds) and 285 calories in a cup.