Having been browsing the news this weekend, I stumbled upon an article in the Daily Mail about children and Easter. The article seemed to imply that not only do children eat about four times their daily calorie intake (if not more) when they receive their Easter eggs, but that parents are also mistreating them further by spoiling them rotten.

The Daily Mail states that eight eggs per child, a spend of £56 on average from parents, and consumption of up to 8000 calories (excluding other meals!) are the norm here. To me, this sounds like nothing but pure hysteria!

When I was growing up as a child I used to receive an egg and perhaps a half dozen crème eggs in one of the old style packets. I was told that this glut of food was not to be consumed at once (to be fair it usually was!) and that was it.

I might be naïve and I might be misremembering but I truly don’t think I would have even wanted to eat eight full-sized eggs, let alone in one 8000 calorie binge and then on top of that eat breakfast, lunch and dinner as well!

On top of this scaremongering, the Daily Mail also seems to massively over value the price of one egg. If we are spending £56 on eight eggs, then we are ending up with eggs that cost £7 each! I know some parents are better off than others and some will do anything to get their children the egg of their dreams, but I truly cannot imagine many British parents going out of their way to spend this much when you can get all the main brands such as Mini Eggs and Cadbury for £1 a pop in most supermarkets.

Even if you go for the slightly bigger eggs, most parents are surely savvy enough to get the deals that then reduce the cost as well!

Even the title of the article is in a way misleading as it talks about this abundance of eggs being eaten over a weekend, but of course it actually means over four days (the ‘Easter weekend’). Clearly, facts and misrepresentation are not things to worry about when creating an article that is designed purely to patronise and paint a negative image on parents.

Finally, this ‘poll’ that is so revealing with regards to our Easter spoiling of children does not even give a single real example. Even the photo accompanying the article is a picture of a child beaming away with beautiful white teeth(!) in front of an enormous pile of chocolate that seems not to be related to Easter!

If you are going to lecture parents, then the Daily Mail really needs to at least provide some believable elements to its reporting or a few Mums and Dads might, just might, see through its scaremongering headlines!