| Easter Egg, Easter, chocolate, children | 1 Apr 2008 |
| Too much of a good thing at Easter by agkennedy |
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Angus Kennedy asks whether our children could be having too much of a good thing at Easter?
I am writing this at a timely moment - I am just about to go and buy Easter Eggs for my kids at lunchtime. It makes me feel almost the same as when I buy my wife cigarettes. They all love chocolate, but like Labrador dogs, they don't know when to stop and will keep eating until they are violently sick!
We have always tried very hard to make Easter into less of a 'let's just sit and eat alarming amounts of chocolate' type of day. After all, Easter is a festival of fertility (originally anyway). My wife says that this Easter she is locking herself away, as four kids is quite enough and no more fertility festivals thank you! My Druid spells and charms seem to have worked in the past, perhaps one last time? Do I need more chocolate? Easter, unfortunately, really is no joke. Did Jesus really say "Hey, when I die I want you all to eat loads of chocolate." Just like him saying, "Who said you should all buy presents for each other, on my birthday?"
In the UK alone we emptied out our purses and wallets to the tune of £520 million to spend on Easter eggs in 2006 - that's 80 million eggs. My Editor is convinced that most of them end up in her house, and both of us have decided convincingly this morning that a good majority of them get whisked away from the kids and end up on top of the kitchen cupboard while little 'Johnny' is busy making himself ill after munching his first kilo.
According to datamonitor, the Easter Egg market in the UK is set to grow by 6% in the period from 2005 - 2010. Clearly five Easter eggs per kid, not forgetting all the bars and extra goodies that get thrown in the package. A far cry from the day when the Easter Egg was invented (claimed to be in 1873 by Fry's). But ask any confectioner and they will tell you that they invented it. It shouldn't come as a surprise that people in the UK are claimed to be the biggest chocoholics in Europe, munching through an average 10 kilos per year - or 25% of all the chocolate eaten across Europe.
This means we spend the equivalent of 20 new hospitals a year indulging in chocolate - a total of £4.3 billion. The Cadbury's Cream Egg, by the way, is still the best selling egg worldwide - approximately 300 million a year - bravo! So, where am I heading with this story? Well, it does seem astonishing that with health concerns, we are set to buy even more eggs. Who are these people that don't have enough? The recommended daily intake is around 2,000 calories a day for an average 11-year-old boy and 1,500 for a girl, but many kids could be eating up to 10,000 calories over the Easter period.
I have devised a treasure hunt for the kids over Easter. I leave cryptic clues and all the kids have to run from clue to clue to find an egg. With all the running that adds up to about 500 calories per kid. I leave lots of clues and then leave them in a nearby field, at the top of the house, and then in the cellar, so at least they have to work for their prize. When we ask them which bit did they most enjoyed about Easter it is always the egg hunt!
A recent survey by the The Times newspaper asked children in the UK the following question: 'What do Christians celebrate on Easter Sunday?' The answer from the majority was 'Chocolate!' It's something we are all going to have to eggcept!
