It’s Easter weekend. As part of the celebrations, many homes, offices, and shops will be putting out baskets of treats with a heavy emphasis on those traditional chocolate eggs. There are far too many of them hidden around my house as a treasure hunt for our five-year-old son.
It’s always tempting to grab one as you pass by and pop it in your mouth. But should you? Is it worth it?
It turns out that burning off the calories you take in from that one egg can take hours of dedicated exercise. The Cadbury crème egg, An Easter favourite, contains 922 calories. It would take the average person 1.6 hours of running or a full hour of swimming to burn those.
Calorie counts – and how to burn them – in classic Easter eggs
| Egg | Calories | Walking | Running | Swimming | Sit ups |
| Cadbury Caramel | 1,683 | 5.6 hours | 2.9 hours | 1.9 hours | 4.9 hours |
| Snickers | 1,429 | 4.8 hours | 2.5 hours | 1.6 hours | 4.2 hours |
| M&M’s | 1,385 | 4.6 hours | 2.4 hours | 1.6 hours | 4.1 hours |
| Mini Eggs | 980 | 3.3 hours | 1.7 hours | 1.1 hours | 2.9 hours |
| Creme Egg | 922 | 3.1 hours | 1.6 hours | 1 hour | 2.7 hours |
| Smarties | 680 | 2.3 hours | 1.2 hours | 46 mins | 2 hours |
The Easter egg with the least calories of all those tested turned out to be the Smarties Egg. You can burn off one of those in only an hour and 12 minutes of running. However, if you have access to a pool, you could do it in just under an hour.
Now, as I have been setting up the house for tomorrow, stashing treats and eggs ‘for the kids’, I need to go for a very, very long run. Happy Easter!
Source: Easter egg calories revealed
