I love newspaper food pages, what with their Bolognese sauce recipes and reviews of locavore bistros. They tell us how to eat well, and that’s something of real value. Putting thought into what we put in our bodies is never a bad thing.
That said, sometimes I just wanna grab some garbage food and shove greedy handfuls of it into my dumb face. There’s not much coverage of junk food in the food pages, and this feature seeks to remedy that.
In every biweekly edition of Pat Eats Garbage Food, I’ll review a different fast food item or convenience store snack and let you know what works and what doesn’t. (You’ll note I didn’t say what’s good and what’s bad; it’s all bad. That’s the point.)
The food
This week we turn our collective sweet tooth toward the Cadbury Creme Egg, the seasonal delicacy that has spent the past five days on clearance at your local grocery store. You know the ones: the hollow chocolate eggs stuffed with goopy fondant dyed to resemble the albumen and yolk of an actual chicken’s egg. Because kids (and kids at heart) love nothing more than a candy with the appearance and consistency of uncooked egg. It offers all the fun of consuming a raw animal product with none of the salmonella risk.
Before we get further into our examination of this peculiar foodstuff, I have to point out that while researching this piece I learned that in 1962 one of the Cadbury company’s top executives retired. This man, a World War I hero, became managing director of Cadbury upon his return from the fighting and served the company for more than four decades. He retired one year — ONE YEAR! — before Cadbury subsidiary Fry’s Chocolates introduced what would within a decade become known as the Cadbury Creme Egg, a product that would become synonymous with “Easter candy” worldwide.
This man’s name? Ladies and gentlemen, I kid you not: Egbert Cadbury. EGBERT! I will never stop being delighted.
The damage
Roughly a buck per egg, with small variations by retailer. And you can get a five-pack for around $4. If you’re a real weirdo, you can get a 48-count box for $32.99 on Amazon.
The other damage
150 calories, 6 grams fat, 4 grams saturated fat, 15 mg sodium, 20 grams sugar in each 1.2 ounce egg. Those numbers aren’t great. But, like, no duh; it’s a candy egg filled with sugar sauce.
Official description
From www.cadburyusa.com: “It’s just not Easter until you’ve savored the unique milk chocolate shell and soft fondant center of a Cadbury Creme Egg. Treat yourself and everyone you love with a classic Easter treat that will leave everyone hopping for joy.”
The Cadbury Creme Egg is a hollow chocolate egg stuffed with goopy fondant dyed to resemble the albumen and yolk of an actual chicken’s egg. It’ll set you back about a dollar.
My description
You’ll note the official description opens with a nod to tradition — “It’s just not Easter …” — and that makes sense, because that’s all the Cadbury Creme Egg has going for it. You eat it because it’s associated with a specific time of year, and going through the ritual of opening and eating one makes you feel like the world isn’t such a cruel, uncaring place. But, as is the case with candy canes or candy corn, once a year is really enough. There’s better candy out there. MOST candy is better.
How does it feel
It feels fine. Of the roughly 25,000 calories I consumed over Easter weekend, the 150 in the Cadbury Creme Egg weren’t the ones that really made me feel bad. You know what would feel bad, though? Shooting down not one, but two zeppelins to help the Crown beat back the Kaiser during the Great War; then working 40 years for your family’s chocolate company, helping it grow into an international giant, one of the foremost names in the confection industry; then retiring and leaving it all to a new generation that almost immediately makes the company even more famous on the strength of a new product: the Cadbury egg. And your name is Egbert Cadbury, which never mattered much before, one way or another, but suddenly everyone thinks it’s hilarious. It’s like a burger executive named Quarterpounderton McDonald. I hope ol’ Egbert saw the humor in it.
Will I eat it again?
Not if there are any Reese’s eggs around.
Overall rating
4 out of 10, not inedible, gets points for being a globally popular and historically important candy.
Pat Muir is former Yakima Herald-Republic staff writer whose Pat Eats Garbage Food Column ran from 2018 to 2020. It appears in Explore every two weeks.