Chocs away!

Wonder how the tradition of Easter eggs started? Here's how we became a nation of chocolate lovers

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Chocolate may be a year-round treat, but at Easter we certainly up the ante – over 80 million Easter eggs are sold each year. British chocolate lovers spend over £16 billion on chocolate treats annually, with Cadbury Dairy Milk being the firm favourite, ahead of Galaxy and Maltesers. Four in every five of us indulge at least once a week. But how did our need for chocolate start?

A rich history

Wiltshire-born Joseph Fry was a pioneer. Originally trained as a doctor and apothecary, he saw ships laden with cocoa from the New World coming into Bristol port, where he had his shop. As Victorian Quakers disapproved of alcohol and saw cocoa as a more acceptable vice, Joseph began selling cocoa in 1756.

He developed a water-powered machine that turned the cocoa flakes into a powder, creating a mix for drinking chocolate. A century later, his grandsons developed the UK's first solid chocolate bar, and in 1873 Fry's created the UK's first hollow chocolate Easter egg.