Chocolate Easter Eggs for Valentine's Day?

While perusing my local grocery store yesterday, I came across a huge bin of colourful chocolate treats.  Thinking it was a display of Valentine's Day treats, I went over to see if there were any new products this year. What a surprise when I realised that the display contained Easter chocolate! 

To be honest, my first thought was: are commercial chocolate manufacturers trying to convince us that we should give chocolate eggs for Valentine's Day?! Yup, it was a silly thought. But what do you expect when Valentine's Day is three weeks away and yet Easter chocolate is the main display at the grocery store? It turns out that the Valentine's chocolate was displayed on the end of an aisle at the back of the store, and there was less than in the Easter chocolate bin.

Once my confusion passed, I decided to get a head start on Easter this year. I started reading some chocolate egg labels to decide which to buy. What I discovered was: not all commercially-sold milk chocolate Easter eggs are unnatural and filled with hydrogenated oils, modified starches and artificial flavours (as I had suspected they were). And in fact, they are not all imports to Canada either.

One Better is a brand of solid milk chocolate Easter eggs with only seven straight-forward ingredients, including natural flavours and NO hydrogenated oils. Although I prefer milk chocolate to have high cocoa percentages and to be made from high quality beans, I think this is not a bad choice when you need to save money on Easter chocolate, but still want to make the day special for your kids.

I also purchased another bag of eggs by One Better called Original EggSquisites, which are pure milk chocolate eggs with Peanut Butter. I love peanut butter and these did not disappoint me. The eggs are sweet overall, but the peanut butter is not overly sweet from icing sugar like many peanut butter treats are. Palm Oil is used in the peanut butter filling, which is not listed as hydrogenated like most commercially sold peanut butter is. And although artificial flavour is included, the ingredients overall are not as bad as some milk chocolate available on the market. But most importantly, they were tasty.

The only down side is the lack of information on the manufacturer. The package claims to be "Made in Canada" from domestic and imported ingredients and is distributed by One Better Inc, a company located in Oakville, Ontario. Interestingly, I cannot find a website for that company or for the One Better brand. Nor can I locate the company on Canada411.ca. For me as the consumer, I find this confusing; these days anything can be found online and most companies are enthusiastic to promote their products on the Internet. So when no information can be found online, it makes the information on the product package seem unreliable.

Regardless of a lack of online information, the products do exist and can be found in stores now until Easter. I purchased mine at Valumart, which is owned by Loblaws.

Here are the package details from the chocolate that I wrote about today:

One Better Milk Chocolate Easter Eggs, 800 g
Distributed by ONE BETTER (Oakville, ON)
Ingredients: Milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, unsweetened chocolate, milk ingredients, soya lecithin, salt, natural flavour).
Allergen information: May contain peanuts, tree nuts, eggs and/or wheat. Made in Canada.

Original EggSquisites, Pure Milk Chocolate Eggs, Peanut Butter, 335 g
Distributed by ONE BETTER (Oakville, ON)
Ingredients: Sugar, milk ingredients, cocoa butter, unsweetened chocolate, peanuts, palm oil, soyabean lecithin, artificial flavor, salt). Allergen Information: May contain tree nuts, eggs or wheat (and peanuts of course!). Made in Canada (from domestic and imported ingredients).