Give out vegan-friendly sweets this Halloween

"Vegans have no need to be scared on Halloween. Even though some candies have hidden animal products, there's still a variety of tasty treats to please even the pickiest of trick-or-treaters.

You could be trying to raise a vegan child or just want to hand out treats that don't betray your beliefs.

There is a surprising amount of vegan candy available produced by vegan and mainstream companies.

Some vegan food companies, such as Sun Flour Baking Company (www.sunflourbaking.com), offer vegan-friendly Halloween gift baskets of goodies.

Parents who want to keep their children vegan on this candy-filled holiday should be prepared.

Look for a vegan-vegetarian-friendly Halloween event to attend or make a game of sorting candy post-trick-or-treating. If your children are old enough to read, tell them to look for animal products such as gelatin, casein, honey, lard and pepsin in the ingredients list of the candies they collected.

Put all the candy with animal products in a special trade-in pile and have a variety of vegan candy to swap for the nonvegan candy.

Peta Kids (www.petakids.com) offers this list of vegan candy to use as a guide:

Airheads taffy, Atkins peanut butter bars, Blow Pops, Brach's Cinnamon Hard Candy, Charms lollipops, Chick-o-Sticks, Cracker Jack, Cry Babies, Dem Bones, Dots, Dum-Dums, Fireballs, Goldenberg's Peanut Chews, Hubba Bubba bubblegum, Jolly Ranchers (lollipops and hard candy), Jujubees, Jujyfruits, Lemonheads, Mambas, Mary Janes (regular and peanut butter kisses), Now and Later, Pez, Ring Pop lollipops, Smarties (U.S. Brand), Sour Patch Kids, Starburst (jelly beans and hard candy), Super Bubble, Swedish Fish, Sweet Tarts, Tropical Source mini chocolate bags, Twizzlers and Zotz."

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