How much sugar do your children’s Easter chocolates really contain?

How much sugar do your children’s Easter chocolates really contain?

How many Easter Eggs did your children get over the weekend? My boys had three small eggs each, which were gone by Easter Tuesday. I was ever so glad to have the grand-parents sending them money instead. And so you know what, the boys were much happier with the money than the chocolate.

Fun though it can be to treat your children with chocolate at Easter, you could still be concerned about that confectionery’s nutritional content. Recent research by Simply Education, an agency which matches teaching staff to schools around the UK, shares the same concern.

Simply Education looked at six Easter chocolate treats – the Malteser Bunny, Galaxy Golden Eggs, Cadbury Creme Egg, Milky Bar Eggs, Lindt Bunny and Cadbury Mini Eggs – popular with children and recorded the sugar content of each product. The findings could shock you…

How healthy are those chocolate eggs and bunnies?

The NHS has published guidelines for the maximum intake of sugar that should be permitted for children in different age brackets. The highest amount for children aged 4 to 6 is 19g, rising right up to 30g for children aged 11 or older.

However, a single Creme Egg contains 26.5g of sugar. That gives each egg an eye-watering sugar percentage of 66.5%, ouch this is eye watering. Of the treats assessed by Simply Education, Mini Eggs are the worst offenders in respect of sugar percentage, which is 68.5% in this instance.

The two bunnies don’t fair quite so bad, with the Malteser and Lindt offerings having respective sugar concentrations of 53% and 55%. Still, the Lindt Bunny weighs nearly twice as much, and this is largely reflected in the sugar amount of 27.5g, which drops to 15g in the case of the Malteser Bunny.

A choc to the system?

Of course, none of this is to say that you shouldn’t let your children still enjoy chocolate as the last of the Easter celebrations start to fade. However, you might want to be careful exactly which treats you serve them. You could even be inspired to teach other young people how to eat healthily – and Simply Education can assist you along the way.

Nutritional Education

I am really pleased to see lots of education concerning healthy diet, fat, carbohydrate, protein and sugar content at school. I attended a recent assembly where we parents were shown what the children in year three had been learning and there was a great learning table about nutrition. It is also important for us parents to focus in on this message, encouraging our children to eat less sugar. I live a healthy life so I want my children to live in the same way.

This is a collaborative post.