Zombie Bride and Edible Eyeballs
This set of tips and recipes are designed by child obesity experts MEND (Mind, Exercise, Nutrition…Do it!) to equip families with ideas to help stop Halloween becoming the wrong sort of nightmare
Family Fun Ideas for Healthy Halloween Activities and Games
- It’s fun and active to go out ‘trick or treating’ but what to do when your children come home with armfuls of sweets? A good idea is to let the children select a few of their favourite sweets, the rest of the sweets can be placed in the ‘magic pumpkin’. Overnight the magic pumpkin transforms them into a small toy. The magic pumpkin can donate the sweets to a local charity or food bank. If you can’t afford a toy, what about a token: ‘I owe you 1 hour playing football down the park’ – would help burn off the energy from the sweets they eat too!
- Get the whole family to dress up and do the zombie dance.
- Creepy edible eyeballs – Slice a carrot into small chunks, top each with a blob of half-fat cream cheese and one half of a pitted black olive – wicked.
- Get active by playing ‘zombie bride’. Teams have to run around with loo paper and turn a member of the family into a bride or mummy.
- For something different, why not paint the shell of a boiled egg so it looks like a giant eyeball or dye them bogey green.
- After eating an orange cut the skin into freaky teeth – this will be fun and encourages children to eat more fruit.
- Hang apples from a string and, with your hands behind your back, race to see who can have the first bite.
- Turn an orange into a mini lantern – cut off the top like a lid, scoop out the flesh and cut out a mouth and eyes. Refill with chopped orange and mix in some more fruit. Kids will love these scary treats.
Healthy Halloween Recipes for Children
Healthy Halloween cooking = A bit of imagination + A lot of fun. Here are our ideas for the whole day kids menu. We’d love to know what yours are.
Breakfast – Chilling Smoothie
- 1 cup frozen mungo chunks
- ½ frozen banana
- 1 cup fresh spinach
- ½ cup full fat plain yogurt
- ¼ cup milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ cup honeydew melon balls
Put mango, spinach, banana, yogurt, milk and vanilla in a blender and puree until smooth. That’s it, your smoothie is ready. Pour it into the scariest cauldron that you can find (or cover your usual bowl with some dark paper). Top this green smoothie with green melon balls to create the “bubbles.” Will they dare to drink this potion?
Lunch – Scary Soup
- 1 onion
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 butternut squash, peeled, deseeded and cut into squares or use pumpkin if you have lots left over from making your Halloween lanterns
- 1 tbsp Olive Oil
- 290ml of boiling water and low-sodium stock cube
- 2-3 tbsp of low-fat natural yoghurt
- ½ tsp of ground ginger
- Black pepper to taste
Sauté diced squash, onion and garlic for a few minutes in olive oil. Add water, stock cube and ground ginger. Simmer for 15 minutes. Blend soup and season to taste with black pepper. Serve with a spoonful of yoghurt. It’s quick to make, nice and warm, and orange as Jack-O’-Lantern.
Dinner – Green ghoulish… and so easy to make
- Spinach pasta of any shape – it’s always green, but you can add a bit of food colouring if you’d like
- Any pasta sauce – just make sure it is red
- String Cheese
- Black olives
Cook pasta as usual. While it’s cooking, slice string cheese about 1/4″ thick and cut the olives in half lengthwise. Using the straws cut circles in the cheese discs, using the same straw, cut pieces out of the olives. Place the olive pieces in the cheese slices to make eyeballs. Put red sauce on green pasta and add eyeballs you just made on top. Done!
For ultimate Halloween treat with no guilt added, check our health pumpkin muffin recipe
