A hollow egg or the whole basket? How much chocolate should my kid eat this Easter?

By Clare Dix, Helen Truby, Stella Boyd-Ford, The University of Queensland

Easter is the time for chocolate. The shops are full of fantastically packaged and shiny chocolates in all shapes and sizes, making trips to the supermarket with children more challenging than ever.

Meanwhile kids are receiving chocolate eggs at every turn from friends, relatives and the Easter Bunny (or bilby).

But this can also make it very tricky for parents to manage their kids’ chocolate intake.

What’s in chocolate?

There are potential health benefits of chocolate. Cocoa beans are rich in fat, vitamins, minerals and phenolic compounds (or phytochemicals) which have been shown to reduce blood pressure.

But these phenolic compounds taste so bitter they make raw cocoa almost inedible. And this is where food processing steps in.

Sugar, milk fat and other ingredients are added to make milk chocolate – the amount of cocoa used is small. By the time you get to “white chocolate” there is no cocoa at all.

Overall, studies on the health benefits of chocolate show very weak evidence that chocolate is good for our health.

If there is a benefit, it comes from very dark, bitter chocolate with a high proportion of cocoa (and phytochemicals), which children tend not to like. Dark chocolate sometimes gives adults a “mood boost” as it contains caffeine.

How much chocolate should kids eat?

All types of chocolate are classed as “discretionary” foods, the same as biscuits, cake and sugary drinks. This means they should be considered as treats.

As a rough guide, kids aged two to three years should not have more than one serve per day of discretionary foods  and for older kids up to three serves per day. Translating this into “chocolate”, a serve of chocolate would be 25–30g. An average hollow chocolate Easter egg weighs in at around 100g.

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