KEY POINTS:
By the time Easter weekend is over, Kiwis will have devoured more than 40 million chocolate eggs - but be warned, all that chocolate could leave a sickly after-taste.
While Easter is traditionally a time of goodwill and celebration, for many parents, dealing with choc-filled hyperactive kids full to the brim with additives and vegetable fat can be a right handful.
But experts say it needn't be that way.
"All children should feel, quite rightly, that they can have one or two eggs this holiday, but it's important they don't go overboard," said Consulting Dieticians director Sarah Ley.
While some Easter eggs contain almost as much packaging as confectionery, others, such as the 1kg Pig Out egg, containing around 300g of fat, have dieticians crying foul.
"Any egg that weighs that much should not be given to a child," said Ley. "It's different if a whole family is sharing it over a period of time, but something like this doesn't fit into a moderate diet. This is not moderation."
Ley said the same advice applied also to those adults who had a habit of overindulging over Easter.
While Easter should be a time of fun and relaxation, she said, it was important to watch the waistline, especially as one in five New Zealanders was now classified as obese.
Choc horror
* About 120 million chocolate bars are sold in New Zealand every year; 60 million of these are made by Cadbury.
* The biggest chocolate eaters in the world per capita are the Swiss, with each person eating on average about 9kg a year. New Zealanders eat about 4kg a year.
* Cadbury Confectionery's Dunedin plant produces about 10,000 Crunchie bars an hour and uses 33,000 litres of milk every day for chocolate production.
* Cadbury sells more than 3.5 million boxes of chocolate each year.
* Chocolate is not an aphrodisiac, but it contains phenylethylamine (PEA), a natural substance believed to stimulate the same reaction in the body as falling in love.
*Chocolate gives you energy - a single chocolate chip provides sufficient energy for an adult to walk 45 metres.
* White chocolate is not chocolate. It is made from whole milk, sugar and cocoa butter and is produced with vegetable oil.
