How to choose Easter eggs: the nutritionist's advice

It's time for Easter eggs, loved by children and more! Let's find out how to choose quality ones at the supermarket thanks to the advice of the nutritionist Flavio Pettirossi

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Easter is now very close and, as usual, even this year despite the difficulties we will not give up buying an Easter egg for us and our children.

The proposals at the supermarket, as always, are many and orienting oneself in the choice, beyond the price, is not always easy.

In a previous article we have reported some Easter eggs well known and appreciated, reporting ingredients and nutritional tables, to help you in your choice.

Read also: Easter eggs, from Kinder to Lyon Gamer: what you absolutely need to know about labels

This time, however, we asked for help from a nutritionist, Flavio Pettirossi, who gave us some tips on buying Easter eggs.

Here's what he told us:

“My advice is to choose based on the quality of the chocolate. A valid help in this sense comes from reading the labels. In food labels, ingredients are always indicated in decreasing order of quantity, so the ingredient in the first place on the list will be the ingredient present in the greatest quantity; always pay attention to the list of ingredients which must not be too long! "

At the top of the ingredients list, what do we need to find?

"The first ingredient we have to find is cocoa mass, which for dark chocolate by law must not be less than 45% and in milk chocolate it must not be less than 25%, while in white chocolate the cocoa mass is totally absent. When choosing chocolate it is important to remember that what makes it a precious food is its cocoa content, as it is a rich source of flavonoids, a class of antioxidant molecules, which perform important beneficial actions on the health of our organism, and in particular on the cardiovascular health. Obviously the higher the percentage of cocoa mass, the lower the sugar content, so the chocolate will be more 'bitter'. A very good chocolate has a percentage higher than 50%".

Which ones are they the other ingredients we need to pay attention to?

“The second ingredient present must be the cocoa butter (at least 28% so beware!). Therefore, if vegetable oils or fats other than cocoa butter appear this must make us understand immediately that we are dealing with a low quality chocolate. Often in fact, being very expensive cocoa butter is mixed with other vegetable oils, to be able to lower the price and make it more competitive and obviously in this case the price of eggs can mislead us. We remind you that by law vegetable oils can be added up to a maximum of 5%. The most used are the famous palm oil and rapeseed oil. The other ingredients are: sugar which by law must be at least 1% (industrial sweeteners are often used) and flavorings, usually vanilla. Attention here too because artificial flavors are often used !. I always recommend choosing eggs without flavor also for a choice of taste. "

Aromas but also more?

Another ingredient we can find is milk powder, obviously if we are choosing eggs with milk chocolate. Additionally, some manufacturers add the lecithin (which can be made from sunflower soy or extracted from egg yolk) which facilitates the emulsion of the other ingredients as well as the preservation of cocoa. Again, the absence of lecithin would require a higher percentage of cocoa butter with a relative increase in price.

Last, but not least, is the calorie count. Doctor Pettirossi reminds us that:

"On average, a dark chocolate has 500 Kcal / 100g and the calories increase considerably if you choose a white or milk chocolate, therefore even more bitter we always prefer dark chocolate eggs, both for a calorie choice and for a choice of taste and quality ".

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