Guest post: By Heather Mitchell
Finally the time has come! The supermarkets have been preparing for Easter for months, with chocolate eggs and chocolate bunnies tempting us as we shop.  
If you’re trying to reduce your sugar in-take like 43% of Australians, but are too overcome with temptation with all of that chocolate around, here are some tips to keep you focused throughout the Easter period.
- Make your own
Home prepared food is always going to be best, as you know exactly what goes into it – and it excludes the chemicals and preservatives that food companies need to add to lengthen shelf life or to improve the texture.
If you have some spare time, it’s pretty easy to create your own ‘healthified’ chocolate goodies.
What you’ll need
A couple of bars of raw chocolate . Boil up a saucepan of water, put a Pyrex bowl on top and gently melt the chocolate from the steam, mixing lightly with a wooden spoon to help the chocolate to melt.
Then you can either get pre-bought moulds, or simply use ice cube trays.
Swill the chocolate around the edges, pour away the excess, cool in the fridge, then add in something tasty in the middle. How about a delicious avocado ganache?
You’ll need:
– 2 ripe avocados
– 50g raw cacao powder
– 50g coconut oil
– 50g coconut palm sugar
– 1tbsp live kefir (optional)
– 1 tsp vanilla essence
Blitz everything in a blender, add to the chocolate moulds, put in the freezer for 1 hour, then pause and enjoy! They taste so good, the children probably won’t even realise they’re healthy!
2. Seek out the best quality ingredients you can afford
Check the labels. Buy the ones with the lowest sugar levels and try to go for smaller ones (in this case, less is more). Teach your children to eat them slowly and mindfully, savouring every mouthful. That way, the treats will last longer and you’ll teach your children good life habits at the same time!
Be particularly careful about the labelling of sugar as it has many different names and manufacturers like to hide it in their long list of ingredients. If you’d like to know more about the various names of sugar, why it’s best to avoid it and ways to go about it, check out Lawrence’s book ‘Sugar: Sickly or Sweet’ – available from Amazon in both paperback and kindle format.
3. Have an Easter Egg hunt and hide any ‘treats’ around the house.
If you do find yourself with more chocolate than you’d like and want to avoid severe, sugar-crazed episodes, suggest an Easter egg hunt around the house!
Then, after the hunt, put all of the chocolate on the highest shelf, or in opaque jars, or anywhere where you can’t see it. This is Google’s strategy. The lucky ‘Googlers’, as Google employees are called are given free food and drink for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But the healthy food and drink is on clear display, whilst the less healthy fizzy drinks, for instance, are behind opaque class. 
Have an amazing Easter!
