— Patrick Britton

Yeah. Okay. So every year I've been the the Halloween Grinch and I've tried all sorts of things. I really do get a little you know stressed out about this because I don't want to I don't want to be the you know, the house that nobody wants to come to I don't want to you know, you know, my kids get really frustrated with me, but I also don't want to perpetuate this whole problem. I mean, it's a big problem. I see people every day that are not well because of eating all of these these Foods If like when I was a child Halloween was a special it was special. I'd go out and get on my candy and it was a special occasion. I never had candy throughout the year, you know that was just in my generation. We just didn't it wasn't it was a special treat and the problem today is that it's no longer a special treat and children are eating sugars and candies on a daily basis expecting dessert every single day. And that was just never the case and that kind of defeats a whole idea of it being a treat because it's when it's a daily occurrence, it becomes something that has adverse health effects. So what do I do? I've tried everything. I've tried the really cool pencils and erasers, you know in the little toys. I've tried healthier treats. I'll do like like pretzels or you know that are in Halloween bags, or I've done the You know like the fruit sweetened little candies there, but they were sweetened with fruit still junk food masquerading is a healthier food and they're organic. So masquering even more so it's a health food, but it's not of course and I've tried, you know, just not being home. I've tried what else have I tried? That's pretty much what I've tried this year. So now I moved out of I'm not in a house this year for the first time in years. I'm in a little apartment. I'm just gonna take my kids elsewhere just I'm just gonna boycott Halloween but I'll take them trick or treating and then what I normally do is I have them give their kids pick out three candies and then give the rest to their father to take to work or something like that, but You know. It's just no longer a special treat. This is just something that I struggle with as a mom. They really bothers me as a mom because you know, we're all accountable for ourselves and our we make our own choices and we could choose to eat a certain way and that's gonna you know, it's gonna have an influence on us, but you know, honestly if it was once a year or people are hot enjoying kids are enjoying the candy then it's not a big deal. It's really not a big deal. It's not a big deal if you have candy on Halloween birthday cake on your birthday and you know, In a pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving or whatever whatever it is for you if it was really like that. It wouldn't be a problem. It's the frequency and it's the the dose that's the problem and it's become this consistent daily thing. I'm telling I have always had these beefs with my kids schools where there were even yesterday. My daughter was telling me Oh if we get a certain amount of points and we get to have candy they're gonna teachers can give us candy and I just keep hearing of these. Teachers giving children candy are all we're gonna have a pizza party and ice cream party. It's like, oh it's like this non-stop incessant thing with candy and ice cream and junk food. And we've got a problem. We are in the middle of the worst Healthcare crisis of all time in the first time in history. In 2011, we were able to now there are more overnourished people around the world than there are undernourished for the first time ever. So it's like we used to survive we used to need food for survival. And now we're over nurse and we're eating so much of the wrong Foods. Okay, so I'll get off my soapbox. It just it's it's really frustrating for me because I'm seeing people suffering and people I'm seeing people with all sorts of, you know, serious health issues that you wish you can go backwards and change them and you can't once you have them you could make things better, but certain things you can't reverse and that's why I would love for people to just focus on eating Whole Foods and make diet because you know diet is The number one cause of death and disability in the United States. Number one surpassing smoking think about how powerful that is. And I was I always like to talk about, you know, Brian wants things to research. He's the guy that wrote mindless eating. He's he's published so many great studies on Mindless eating. So like, you know, when you're eating a box of popcorn also you get to the bottom of it. You don't realize how you did it. So I love talking about mindful eating but he also he says that we make 200 food choices a day. So whether that's grabbing some Eminem's from the bowl or you know, should I what am I gonna have for dinner or you know, oh that smells good when you're walking by the office and see or the kitchen and see some donuts whatever all 200 food choices a day if that's amazing. Right? And if you think about it, you know are I always say this too that our GI tract our gastrointestinal tract the inside of our body. It's the one thing that's consistently on a daily basis whether you eat two three four times a day. It's the one thing where we take that out. And overall it goes right into our bodies and we say that we digest it. We break it down. We absorb it and we are literally what we eat. We're also what our microbes eat. So we're both what we and what we feed our microbes are because 10 times our cells we have we have 10 times the amount of human cells. We have as bacterial cells in our body. So we're literally what we eat. We are literally what we eat and we've all these opportunities to make that choice. So it's literally the most powerful control we have over our health is what we put in our mouth every day.