On Friday we warned that “you just might encounter a ghost or goblin who wants to tax your Kit Kat, slap warning labels on your Smarties, establish a minimum age for eating candy corn, or ban Halloween entirely.” A Washington Post reporter came across just such a monster — Michael Tabor, a “longtime social activist and organic farmer.”
Tabor used trick-or-treaters “for an experiment, asking each to make a choice: Would they like an apple or a chocolate treat laced with saturated fat, sodium and corn syrup?” That’s right, “laced.” As Tabor told the Post, candy is virtual “rat poison.”
Tabor “asked the children at his door if they had family members with diabetes. He warned them that chocolate could make them lose their limbs. And then he let them decide.” But his mind games didn’t work: so many children opted for the candy over the apples that there was no point in continuing the count.
Apparently it is lost on some activists that trick-or-treaters ask for treats — sweets that children and adults generally consume in moderation. Tabor’s wife said “he went ballistic” when she came home with candy for Halloween. She subsequently concluded, “I was thinking — wrongly — that once a year, it’s a treat.” What a crazy thing to think!
Of course, Tabor and his wife are just following the grand food cop tradition set by Kelly Brownell, who wants to take the candy out of Halloween, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which likes to preach that if you eat treats like ice cream, “just know that you’re going to kill yourself.”
