The Best Candy

By Melissa Breyer

The candy and kids dilemma kills me. My kids love candy, but candy’s rotten for my kids. High-fructose corn syrup, artificial coloring, bovine gelatin, oh my. So I think, “Sorry girls, no candy, unh unh.”

But something about total restriction goes against my instinct–and surely enough, a New York Times article, 6 Food Mistakes Parents Make, backs me up on that one with statements such as: “A large body of research shows that if a parent restricts a food, children just want it more,” and, “Other studies show that children whose food is highly restricted at home are far more likely to binge when they have access to forbidden foods.”

So there you go. How to treat my kids to the treats they covet, without exposing them to a rainbow array of sickly sweet, and quite frankly, terrifying ingredients?

Well lucky me, by chance I stumbled upon a source for candy that meets any number of requirements: Vegan, organic, fair trade, gluten free, non-allergenic, kosher and Feingold. Imagine! The source comes from a mom-and-daughters candy team who started a Web site called NaturalCandyStore.com. It’s extra terrific because you can browse by category, and each candy is labeled with an easy-to-identify icon telling you which categories it falls under. The candy they have selected meets strict quality standards, and the good ol’ taste standard of yumminess as well.

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