When my mother reflects on Easter in her childhood, she recalls her father bringing her out to a farmhouse that made chocolate eggs. He would buy her this one egg that was beautifully decorated, wrapped in cellophane and ribbons. She always says it was a solid egg, although we debate this, and the chocolate was melt-in-your-mouth.

Fast forward two generations and her grandchildren each have four eggs already lined up, and I suspect there are more gifts on the way. I’ll be honest, this is the first Easter where I’m really thinking about how I’m going to manage this amount of chocolate in the house. Up until now I’ve been able to drip feed it, hiding most of it away and allowing them a little bit to celebrate the season.

Last summer, I even found myself throwing out eggs that had been hidden at the back of the wardrobe. Now however, Molly is five and acutely aware of how many eggs she has banked.

Don’t get me wrong, we’ll all be enjoying some chocolate this Easter Sunday, it’s part of the season. However, if one line struck me in this week’s issue, it’s this quote by Orna O’Brien, dietician with the Irish Heart Foundation on page 12. She says: “Just one medium-sized Easter egg contains 23 teaspoons of sugar, almost four times a child’s recommended daily limit.”

That’s huge and apart from the long-term effects that high levels of sugar can have on our diets, including obesity, the increased risk of diabetes and damage to our teeth, I’m also aware of the very immediate effect it can have on a child’s small body.

We might all be riding the wave of the sugar high but not long after, comes the sugar crash. Say hello to bad moods, temper tantrums and a child that can’t go to sleep on Easter Sunday.

So it’s a balancing act really, isn’t it? Easter is a beautiful time of year and I want us all to enjoy it, to have the chocolate and savour it. These memories can last a lifetime, as Mam would say. And yet, there is a responsibility on us as parents to help our children manage all the temptations of this weekend.

Although Easter eggs have been lining the shop shelves for weeks now, the next few days is when there is a real rush on the chocolate treats. If you missed Janine Kennedy’s article last week entitled ‘Will you be buying fake chocolate eggs this Easter?’, it is worth reading on farmersjournal.ie.

When people say that Easter eggs just don’t taste the same as they used to, they’re not lying. In Ireland, milk chocolate products need to have a minimum cocoa mass of 20%. But as the cost of cocoa continues to rise, more companies are reducing cocoa in their products and replacing it with ingredients like palm oil and shea butter. In fact, many of the generic eggs that you’ll come across this weekend don’t make up the 20% to be considered chocolate.

So if you’re in search of that real chocolate kick, make sure to read the label and support Irish chocolatiers. You might end up paying a little bit more but you’ll enjoy the experience.

I’d like to wish our readers a very Happy Easter.