How much Halloween candy should we buy?

I hate Halloween, but somehow I also love it. Blame it on my sweet tooth.

If you’re like us, you want to be generous and hospitable to the youngsters in your neighborhood, but you don’t really want to stockpile massive quantities of sugar-laden candy treats for months to come.

Here we are, heading into Halloween, the official start of the annual food orgy. Halloween leads to Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and Valentine’s Day. Parties, buffets, cookie swaps, school candy sales and festive fruit baskets abound. Is it any wonder we worry about packing on the pounds in the colder months each year?

OK, so how much Halloween candy is enough?

Grocery stores and big-box discounters have devoted multiple aisles to candy supplies, hoping shoppers will snatch up cartfuls of calories. And we do.

We will probably buy 10-12 bags of Halloween candy, and it won’t be nearly enough. We live in one of those conveniently situated subdivisions, with several neat little cul de sacs of homes lined up in neat rows. On trick-or-treat night, city groups park buses along our streets, and farm families pile out of vans in droves for quick and easy Halloween candy hauls.

When the doorbell rings, we might recognize 10 percent of all the trick-or-treat visitors that show up, with or without masks or face paint. Annually, I wonder whether we may be supplying half the county with Halloween booty and if perhaps trick-or-treat candy ought to be considered a tax-deductible donation.

Somebody stop me before I wax political.

We can never buy enough Halloween candy.

The demand simply exceeds the supply. The beckoning outcries the budget. Still, at $3-$5 a pop, I think 10 bags is enough. Don’t you?

Timing is tops, when it comes to buying Halloween treats.

Of course, if we buy our trick-or-treat goodies too soon in the season, we will undoubtedly have to pick up a few more bags before the goblins start arriving. Candy has a way of mysteriously disappearing in our home. Somehow, our wallets grow lighter, and our waistlines grow larger, if the Halloween candy comes home too soon.

Maybe we ought to try to buy something we don’t even like this year. How about Good & Plenty, Almond Joy, Mounds, Nerds or another perennial family cast-off candy?

One year, a certain family member dashed out to the grocery store midway through the trick-or-treating hours, as we had already run out of goodies. The candy aisle looked as if it had been looted. All he could find were a few boxes of healthy nutty granola bars and some little boxes of raisins.

 How much candy will you buy this year for Halloween?

 NOTE:  This blogger has no affiliation with any product/s or companies mentioned in this post and received no remuneration from the manufacturer/s or product promoter/s for this post.

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