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Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra Tammy’s views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his pastor, Tammy’s neighbors, Wayne Mayo, Betsy Johnson, Joe Corsiglia, President Trump, Henry Heimuller, VP Pence, Pat Robertson, Debi Corsiglia’s dog, or Claudia Eagle’s Cats. This Tammy’s Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or even reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she refuses to be bullied by anyone. See Standard Disclaimer.
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Trick by Candy Corporations Or Treat
Halloween popularity has increased this year in the U.S. for most households. Americans will spend about $8.4 billion on candy and costumes this Halloween. 171 million American’s will spend about $82.93 each on this year’s holiday, for a total of $3.1 billion on costumes, $2.5 billion on candy, $2.4 billion on decorations and $390 million on greeting cards. Americans love Halloween. Americans plan for Halloween starting in September and Halloween is the first real holiday that is fun after a long summer without any fun holidays. Halloween is the starting of a long season of holidays which include candy, sweets and lots of sugar all which Americans love. The amount of candy available to Americans is totally abundant and is a normal expectation of our lives. In 2017, the candy industry expects Halloween will bring in a record number of $2.75 billion in retail sales. Halloween week accounts for about 8 percent of yearly candy sales and 34 percent of seasonal candy sales including Christmas and Valentine’s Day. Only Easter, the next-largest candy holiday, comes close to Halloween, with $2.35 billion in candy sales. lf you took all the candy that is sold the week before Halloween and rolled it into a huge ball it would be as large as six Titanic’s and weigh 300,000 tons or two pounds for every person in America. Americans are aware of the bad health problems sugar causes and have slowed down on sugary sodas but have failed to limit their love for regular ole candy products. Candy did not start of being a part of Halloween, until the 1950’s when candy companies decided to try a way to boost their failing sales. Candy bars were a convenient way to hand out for the kids and reasonably affordable. The cost for candy bars such as Snickers, Milky ways were 59cents a pound in 1964 while today the bars cost $4.53 a pound. Candy companies design their products to be desirable and habit-forming, and these companies like Mars, Hershey, and Nestles spend billions inundating us with ads to entice us to eat more and more candy. 60% of all ad’s on T.V. magazines, and internet all focus on sugary treats while only 11% promote healthy snacks. These companies have spent $1.28 billion on such ads. Candy has become a health concern for Americans, while Americans have become fat, and lazy. Eating way too much candy and sugary products the rate for health problems have become a huge concern and heart disease, diabetes, tooth decay and obesity are all contributed to too much sugar. Sugar use to be a treat, not an everyday food item, Americans need to cut back on sugar in their everyday life. Americans need to do this for their health and their children’s health. American kids and adults do not get enough exercise and have become couch potatoes hardly going outside. With the combination of eating too much sugar and little exercise American kids are developing terrible life- long health problems and early deaths. The reason kids do not go outside as much as their parents did is because of two parents having to work to provide for the family, competitiveness between adults, wanting their kids to have structured activities, trying to portray their kids as super stars against other kids, which is wrong because most kids are not super stars and when they figure it out that they are not it will be a hard adjustment for the kids. People are afraid to let their kids run free in neighbor hoods these days because of all the weird o’s that are living among us, now a days even close neighbors do not know each other because everyone works different schedules. Back in the day when I was growing up we were allowed to take off and go out in the woods to play all day we took the dog and were gone, mom never worried about us because society was not nuts. Times have changed and I am sad to say it is only getting worse. Parents today should mandate an hour of exercise for their kids every day, purchase a stationary bike and make them ride it after school for an hour, you can pick up used exercise equipment cheap. Got more than one kid even 30 minutes a day each is good. If the kid wants to use the computer or watch T>V> make them ride the bike while they watch it, or trade exercise time for T.V. computer time. America go ahead and celebrate Halloween as only Americans can. I love Halloween just like other Americans, not for the candy but because it is fun! Halloween allows adults to dress up and act like kids again for one day. And the kids look cute in their costumes. I do not buy candy any other time of the year, I never really cared for candy that much anyway. We never got candy much as kids we got smoked oyster’s yum yum. Go have fun this Halloween.
Tammy
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