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Happy Halloween! At last, a completely justified excuse to gorge on candy — whether you have kids in your life or you bought several extra bags for trick-or-treaters, “just in case.” I love any holiday that involves sweets, so I have a trough of peanut M&M packs ready to hand out. (And if you think you know everything about your favorite candies, try taking my colleague Alice Callahan’s delightful “Test Your Candy I.Q.” quiz.) But I know that Halloween can prompt fretting about eating too much. I asked Alice, one of Well’s nutrition reporters, if she’s worried about how much candy her kids have on Halloween. She isn’t, but says that her strategy is to “put it out of sight in the cabinet above the fridge and treat it like any other dessert” after the holiday is over. Her kids might have a piece or two after dinner, she explained, “but it’s not a free-for-all.” After a few weeks, she added, “They usually eat their favorites and get bored of, or forget about, the rest.” I decided to dig into our archive to put this spooky, sugary season into perspective — starting with Alice’s animated article about exactly what happens to your body when you eat sugar. She confirmed that excess sugar, consumed over time, can increase the risk of health problems like high blood pressure, insulin resistance and liver disease. Sugar also causes dopamine to surge in your brain — an evolutionary signal that you should eat more of this ready source of calories and part of why we get hooked. Some research, Alice writes, suggests that frequent doses of sugar can alter the brain’s reward system, increasing our cravings for sweetness. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
