Looking for a Halloween treat that’s easy on your teeth?

Today’s recipes for Black-Cherry Bats and Citrus-Orange Pumpkins won’t screw up braces, fillings or crowns. The key ingredients are natural flavored gelatin (right) and fresh fruit juice.

Each recipe makes 2 dozen treats, and all of the ingredients should be available at a well-stocked natural and organic food store.

These recipes have been adapted from The Braces Cookbook by Pamela Waterman.

Braces are no longer just a teen thing. In fact, roughly half of today’s orthodontic patients are adults.

Having lived through 4 years of mouth metal back in the day, I know how Halloween treats like caramel apples and popcorn balls can wreak havoc with just a few bites. Is it any coincidence that October is National Orthodontic Health Month?

The good news: The American Association of Orthodontists has provided the following list of best and worst Halloween treats.

The average American will spend $66.28 on Halloween this year, $20.29 of which will go toward candy purchases, according to the National Retail Federation. (Costumes are the No. 1 expense.)

But when trick-or-treating first became popular in the 1920s, children received whatever neighbors had on hand: apples, pastries, breads and even money. Flash-forward to the 21st century: We now spend $1.8 billion on Halloween candy each year—so, what has changed?

As noted yesterday in When Costs Rise, Sales of Unhealthful Foods Drop, so-called sin taxes on unhealthful foods may help stem America’s obesity and diabetes epidemics.

Facing critical budget deficits, some city and state legislators are embracing the idea. Earlier this month, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter proposed a tax on soda purchases, while Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter last month signed a bill to tax candy and soda.

“State-level taxes exist on soda sold in grocery stores and vending machines in 34 and 39 states, respectively, and the mean taxes, currently applied for revenue generation, range from 3% to 4%,” write San Francisco Department of Public Health officials Mitchell H. Katz, MD, and Rajiv Bhatia, MD, in an editorial published in Monday’s edition of Archives of Internal Medicine.

But there’s not much evidence to support a link between such modest surcharges and changes in consumer behavior, they note.

“More substantial surcharges may decrease the consumption of sweetened beverages and, equally important, increase the consumption of more healthful alternatives,” write Drs. Katz and Bhatia.

The revenues cities and states collect “could be used to increase awareness about the harm of sugar-sweetened beverages and fund structural interventions, such as creating water stations in schools,” they add. “Copying a successful tactic of anti-tobacco crusaders, the funds also could be used to counter the lavish advertising of soda and junk food or for ‘marketing’ ordinary tap water.

“In the end,” they conclude, “putting our money where our mouth is means aligning our economic incentives so that we always serve up the healthful choice.”  

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