For most children, Halloween is a night to collect buckets full of candy from neighbors.
But for kids with food allergies, the holiday can pose a serious risk.
The teal pumpkins on the doorstep of the Kenyon family of Vacaville promise a solution: treats that aren’t food.
Veronica Kenyon, her husband Mike and their two daughters, Ava, 4, and Kya, 3, have been painting the pumpkins — and adorning them with stickers and rhinestones — since the beginning of the month.
In their matching teal-and-black dresses and cowgirl boots, the sisters showed off pumpkins large and small that they have decorated.
“(You) give out toys instead of giving out candy,” Ava said. “Because (of) food allergies.”
Ava knows what that feels like.
Last weekend, she had a lollipop she received at an event.
“She ate maybe half of it and she just flared up red,” Veronica said.
The rashes that Ava gets after eating specific foods began around the same time she started eating whole foods.
“We noticed when she was one year old and being introduced to food, that she started breaking out,” Kenyon said.
Eventually, it was determined that red dye 40, commonly known as “Red 40,” was the cause of the rashes that spread over her daughter’s stomach and lower back.
Red 40 is put in many candies, baked goods and drinks to mimic the color of red fruits, but it’s also in other processed foods, as well as cough medicine and other products.
It is commonly listed on the products in which it is used.
But ingredients aren’t listed on individually wrapped candies, Kenyon pointed out, and it is in foods that aren’t red in color.
She prepares meals for her daughters that exclude any processed foods, and also makes her own creams that soothe irritated skin.
When Ava went trick-or-treating last year, she had to leave her bucket of treats, filled mostly with candies that contain Red 40, at her aunt’s house.
She got to have a few treats, but the Kenyons passed out apples, oranges and bananas to trick-or-treaters who came to their house last Halloween.
This year, they found out about the Teal Pumpkin Project and jumped on board with it.
They plan to hand out stickers from the movie “Frozen,” fun pens and pencils, bubbles, little toys, bracelets and temporary tattoos on Halloween.
There will still be a bucket of candy ready, but the non-food treats give all children a chance to take something fun home.
“We’re not excluding anyone,” Kenyon said. “We’re just trying to make it for everyone.”
Solicitors who have come to her house have asked about the teal pumpkins, she said, and they left knowing their friends and family members with food allergies have an option.
The Teal Pumpkin Project was inspired by a local awareness activity put on by the Food Allergy Community of East Tennessee (FACET).
Last year, Food Allergy Research and Education (FARE), in partnership with FACET, turned it into a national campaign. Households in all 50 states and in seven other countries participated in handing out non-food treats on Halloween, according to FARE.
The goal is to have children with food allergies, and children who can’t eat candy for other reasons, still take part in the holiday.
While Ava’s sensitivity to Red 40 tends to be mild, Kenyon knows other children have life-threatening food allergies.
A friend’s four-year-old son has a severe allergy to peanuts and even peanut dust, she explained.
“It’s giving kids another option, so they can go out on Halloween,” she said.
To participate in the Teal Pumpkin Project, you can register online at http://www.foodallergy.org/teal-pumpkin-project
If you are offering non-food treats, you can either paint a pumpkin or print a poster off the website, and then add yourself to the map of those handing out the treats.
If you are looking for houses giving out non-food treats, simply click on the “Map” section of the website.
