GP's stark Easter Egg message

Ration the number of chocolate eggs you give to your children and help bar obesity and tooth decay from becoming even bigger problems.

That’s the message from Oldham GP and national health campaigner Dr Zahid Chauhan, after figures showed that chocoholic UK children are consuming the equivalent of a WEEK’s worth of calories over Easter.

Eating 80 million Easter eggs each year, Britain is ranked fourth in the world for munching chocolate and Dr Chauhan is concerned at the impact this is having on worrying heart disease and diabetes rates in Oldham.

With the recent announcement of a £1.5 million injection to crack down on tooth decay in kids in Oldham, Rochdale, Salford and Bolton, he also believes that Easter egg over-indulgence could increase the serious oral health problems in our borough.   

“Many of us love chocolate, but it is full of fat and soaked in sugar, so moderation is a must” said Dr Chauhan.

“I have enormous sympathy for people with eating disorders and would urge them to utilise the NHS counselling and nutritional advice available.

"But as for the rest of us, consuming over 10,000 calories over the Easter period is a recipe for serious illness and rotting, damaged teeth.”

Dr Chauhan is using the seemingly chocolate obsessed period of Easter to de-bunk myths around chocolate, which has been highlighted as a cure for everything from high blood pressure to depression.

“These kinds of surveys on chocolate are spurious at best and often carried out by vested interests” he continued.

"They focus on studies on cocoa rather than sugar-laden chocolate, use small samples of people and come up with very imaginative interpretations of data.”

What is indisputable is that chocolate is calorie-heavy and over-consumption leads to weight gain which in turn can prompt a range of health problems such as heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.

Its high sugar content can lead to cavities and gum disease and for diabetics, chocolate can cause blood sugar to rise.

As the councillor for the Alexandra ward, Dr Chauhan is also fully committed to protecting the local and global environmental, and he is calling on chocolate manufacturers to further cut their packaging.

Recent research showed that a third of the weight of an Easter egg comes from the cardboard and plastic around it.

“Whilst troubled by the sheer amount of Easter eggs we eat, I think it is possible to enjoy chocolate without excess and as part of a balanced diet,” concluded Dr Chauhan.

“This is, I guess, another example of that old adage, 'a little bit of what you fancy does you good'.

"Eat but do not over-indulge in chocolate, and then you can enjoy good health as well as a happy Easter.”