3 Easy Sugar Swap Tips for Halloween

3 Easy Sugar Swap tips for Halloween

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With Halloween (and the holidays) right around the corner, you might be wondering if you’ll dive head first into that bucket of kids’ candy. Instead of avoiding sweets altogether, here are some healthy candy swaps, recipe ideas, and wine alternatives to give you some sweet without the blood sugar spike and inevitable crash. These sugar swaps will have you sailing into November feeling balanced, not deprived.

3 Sugar Swap Tips For Halloween Healthy Candy

Sugar Swap #1: Healthy Candy Alternatives

You’ve probably seen on your grocery store shelves a ton of new keto, low-sugar candy and chocolate alternatives that use natural sweeteners as a replacement for regular sugar. These natural sweeteners are plant-derived (not to be confused with artificial sugars) and include monk fruit, allulose, stevia, and yacon syrup.

Thankfully, these natural sweeteners do not have the same affect on your blood sugar as traditional sugar due to their natural lack of calories and the way your body digests them.

Here are some of my favorite candy and chocolate swaps using these natural sweeteners:

  • Smart Sweets
  • HU Chocolate
  • Evolved Chocolate
  • Lily’s Baking Chips

For more ideas, check out Kelley’s Healthy Halloween Swaps List on Amazon

Sugar Swap #2: Pumpkin Spice Smoothie

When the weather cools down in San Diego to the mid-60s, we all go running to the nearest coffee shop to order a giant pumpkin spice latte.

Instead you can consider replacing your cup of joe for a protein-filled pumpkin spice smoothie that will squash hunger hormones and satisfy your craving for a fall-themed drink. You will also ditch 63 grams of sugar and a major blood sugar crash to follow (cue a craving to nap at your desk!).

Check out my delicious Pumpkin Spice Smoothie Recipe:

Pumpkin Spice Smoothie Sugar Swap

Recipe courtesy of Kelley Marie Wellness

Sugar Swap #3: Clean Wine

For your upcoming Halloween parties, you can try one of these cleaner wine options that use a full fermentation process and contain no added sugar or sulfites. With many modern winemakers using sulfites to kill the yeast in their wine early on, it leaves residual sugar in the wine (and in our glasses). Many winemakers also add insult to injury by putting sugar back into the wine to create a sweeter flavor.

Natural winemakers, however, allow the yeasts to consume sugar until the yeast naturally dies through a process called full fermentation. These natural wines have essentially no added sugar and are typically 0-0.15 grams of sugar per glass.

Check out these cleaner alternative wine brands:

As we get closer to the holiday season, it’s great to think about ways to balance your blood sugar through easy, simple swaps. This time of year is for embracing traditions, time with friends and family – and of course, good food.

About the Author

Kelley Axelson is a certified functional nutritionist with a Masters in Public Health living in San Diego, California with her husband and two young kids. She created Kelley Marie Wellness to ditch the diet mentality and swap for nourishment and healing through healthy foods and activity.

Kelley works one-on-one with clients and local businesses to create holistic, tailored wellness programs to achieve health goals. Prior to starting Kelley Marie Wellness, she spent more than a decade at UC San Diego School of Medicine implementing public health interventions to increase healthy food and physical activity access for kids in underserved communities and creating employee wellness programs for local companies. She earned her Master in Public Health at San Diego State University and has many functional nutrition and health coaching certifications.

Learn more at her website: kelleymariewellness.com

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