This informant told the story of how her mom would successfully manage to get her and her brother to throw away all their candy on Halloween. Each year, they would have a great big pumpkin, and by the end of Halloween night, they would give all their candy from their trick-or-treating to it. In return, the pumpkin would give back some sort of gift. The informant and her brother would be allowed to only keep only a few pieces of candy. The informant’s memories are most vivid from when she was a child; she remembers, for instance, her brother and her getting an orange razer scooter when they were around six and seven. In order to get the gift, you would have to dump all your candy in the pumpkin and the more candy you give, the bigger the gift would be.  All the candy gets left there overnight, it’s kind of like the same premise of Santa Clause, because the next morning there would be a gift ready for them when they woke up. The informant spoke about how she and her brother loved doing this every year, and weren’t even big fans of candy so it made it easy to let go of the treats. The informant doesn’t know how her mom got the idea or if it was something her grandparents would do with her, and, up until a few years ago, the informant thought other people had participated in the same sort of event until a friend of hers had no idea what she was talking about when she brought it up. The informant looked back fondly on these memories. I think this is an interesting take on how to decrease childhood obesity and diabetes… that may sound extreme but I am a firm believer that these things start young and on holidays such as Halloween. I think I’ll use this same tactic when I have my own kids to avoid any rotten teeth. It’s definitely a smart idea.