What to do with leftover Halloween candy (hint: don’t eat it)

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Hey, moms, dads and everyone else — looking for an innovative way to get all that Halloween candy out of the house before it causes tooth decay and unwanted pounds?

Look no further than the office of Dr. Peter Sinclair, a Torrance orthodontist. He realized there’s a better place for all that candy than in our stomachs, and is offering to buy it from you for $2 a pound through next week. You’ll get $1 of that, and the other $1 will go to the Torrance Memorial Medical Center. And where will the candy go? Not in the trash, but to the troops in Iraq. He’ll even ship it there.

‘This helps in several ways,’ says Sinclair, who gives credit to Kimberly Bustos, his treatment coordinator, for finding out about the idea and convincing him to implement it. ‘We don’t have kids eating lots of candy and getting cavities and breaking their braces. But beyond that, we’re also putting it to good use.’

(Broken braces are not uncommon at this time of year, Sinclair says, with candy sometimes the culprit.)

We asked if any parents had brought in candy, trailed by wailing youngsters not yet willing to give up their prized loot.

‘No, the parents said this was a great idea, and I haven’t heard the kids complain,’ he says. Judging from what our friends say about their kids not even missing the candy after a few days, we’re not that surprised. OK, maybe a little surprised.

We also wondered if Sinclair worried about the troops getting cavities from the sweet stuff, but he didn’t seem too concerned. ‘In a stressful situation, it’s nice to have candy,’ he says. And hopefully our troops are practicing good dental hygiene when they can.

The candy buyback program, which the American Assn. of Orthodontists says has been around since the late 1990s, has inspired more than 50 orthodontists around the country to adopt the idea, with each office tailoring the donations as they choose. Sinclair hopes to inspire even more. ‘If they all would do it, it would probably be a good thing. ... It’s a win-win for everybody.’

-- Jeannine Stein