Twelve things you never knew about Easter eggs

Foil eggs as part of an Easter Egg hunt Credit: PA

Want to know more about Easter eggs? Here's 12 facts to ponder as you battle through today's chocolate treats.

  • The first chocolate eggs were made in Europe in the early 19th Century.

  • John Cadbury made the first "Cadbury" Easter eggs in 1875.

  • Creme filled eggs were invented later that traditional chocolate eggs in 1923.

  • The first Cadbury's Creme Egg was put on sale in 1971 and now 500 million are made each year in Bournville.

  • Every year more than 80 million boxed eggs are sold.

  • In a typical year, £150million is spent on shell eggs.

  • £70 million is spent on creme filled eggs in a year.

  • Enough Cadbury's Creme eggs are made in Birmingham every year to make a pile ten times higher than Mount Everest if you put them on top of each other.

  • One in every three shell eggs sold in the UK at Easter is made in the Cadbury's chocolate factory in Bournville, Birmingham.

  • On average a child in the UK will receive 8.8 easter eggs this Easter.

  • The tradition of eating eggs at Easter comes from the fasting during Lent where eggs were traditionally avoided.

  • There was a motion passed through parliament in the 1920s to get Easter Sunday to fall on the second sunday of April every year, but this has yet to be implemented.

All the facts above have come from the British Lion Eggs Website and the Cadbury website.

For more facts about Easter Eggs click on the links above..