Hunting down the seasonal calories: an Easter eggs-ercise

Posted by Avril Rhodes

Will you be looking forward to an Easter egg hunt soon? Well, beware, those Easter treats are really loaded with calories, fat, and bizarrely, a little fibre. I’d love to say I’ve spent hours researching this, but I haven’t - just one trip to this weight loss website and I was overwhelmed with results. So, I picked a few favourites.

No Easter eggs were harmed in the writing of this blog (although some may have been consumed)

 Let’s go for some at the top end, weighing in at 1,250.2 calories, 67.7g fat and 4.0g fibre was the Kit Kat Chunky Easter egg from Nestle. Chunky indeed. Another in the heavyweight division for possibly more sophisticated palates, is the After 8 Giant (clue here) Chocolate egg also from Nestle which has 1,072 calories, per shell (possibly the calorie measuring people couldn’t bring themselves to estimate the whole egg). It has 64.6g fat and 16g fibre, which is a consolation but not as good as, say, porridge. How about the dark chocolate Easter egg from Green & Black’s, sneaking in at under 1,000 calories with 960, but 69.5g fat (ouch!) and strangely, 16.6g fibre? I know that Garfield, the cartoon cat, once said he’s never met a calorie he didn’t like, but there are limits to how you might increase your fibre intake. However, with Green & Black’s you are buying Fairtrade chocolate, which can’t be bad, and this also applies to Divine Chocolate.

Ding-ding! Round one goes to this heavyweight contender

And what about the children I hear you cry. The Buttons Easter egg by Cadburys is 858.6 calories per medium egg, (who said medium?) with 48.6g fat and 1.1g fibre. The Cadbury Caramel egg, per 38g egg (so a snack really), is 195 calories; with a mere 10.2g fat and 0.2g fibre. Parents might be tempted by the pack of two (to keep each other company, presumably) Cadbury Caramel bunnies, which come in at 200 calories, 10.8g fat and 0.2g fibre. And I couldn’t write this blog without paying homage to the Cadbury’s Crème egg which is 180 calories per egg with a fat rating of 6.3g. Although, I have overheard gossip about the Crème egg being downsized, bearing in mind that you seem to be able to buy these from December 26th onwards.

And what about the office snacking? More bad news. A single Lindt chocolate mini-egg, a mere 5g, is 30calories, a Malteaster bunny (ahhh) by Maltesers is 157 calories; and each Cadbury’s mini egg is 16 calories.

However, you can earn your calories. The same website that calorie counted the eggs, makes some suggestions that seem blatantly sexist…for example a 40 year old female weighing 12st 7lb who is moderately sedentary, can use 100 calories spending 30 minutes hovering/dusting/mopping floors, or, if you prefer, 20 minutes weeding the garden. What a way to earn about half of a Crème egg! I have no idea what you do with the other half.

Well, have a Happy Easter anyway from all at Fuse. That's all yolks!