A few months back my other half returned from a shopping trip with a couple of packets of Mister Choc Chocolate Covered Peanuts. Apparently she had been wurst and cheese shopping trip with her mother to Lidls and she saw these and bought them on a whim since they were only 69p.

In my experience Lidl has some real crap, I used to shop there when I was a student, and some really good stuff but it does take time to sort the proverbial wheat from the chaff and I could never be bothered to do it.

****Packaging****

The packet is bright yellow in colour and includes a picture of a heap of the chocolate covered peanuts. It is very close to that of M&Ms which being the premium brand and setting the 'bench mark' is its biggest competitor.

As well as English all the information is written in Greek, German, Italian, Flemish and Swedish. This leads me to believe that this product is only manufactured in its native Germany and exported throughout Europe.

****Ingredients****

According to the back of the packet the main ingredients are:

i) Peanuts (23%)
ii) Milk chocolate (45%)
iii) Sugar coating

In addition to the above other ingredients are sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk powder, cocoa mass, lactose, rice starch, emulsifiers, soya lecithin, polyglycerol, polyricinoleate, glucose syrup, colours, curcumin, carmine, copper complexes of chlorophyll, carbon , beetroot red, thickener, acacia gum, glazing agents, beeswax, maltodextrin..... and a lot of other substances that a) I can't pronounce and b) don't sound as if they are going to do you much good.

The list of ingredients is extensive and I am unsure what most of them are, which I guess is not such a bad thing. I guess that if I knew exactly what went in to these then I would probably not eat them again.

The packet does state that there are no artificial colours and there is no mention of E numbers so it is not all bad news.

For comparison purposes M&Ms main ingredients are;

i) Peanuts (23%)
ii) Milk chocolate (48%)
iii) Sugar coating

Based on the above M&Ms have a slightly higher chocolate content, but other than this the two products appear to be pretty much the same.

****Nutritional information****

The nutritional information on the back of the packet is limited and only includes the following:

i) Energy - 492Kcal
ii) Protein - 7.8g
iii) Carbohydrate - 59g
iv) Fat - 25g
For comparison purposes M&Ms nutritional information is as follows:

i) Energy - 516Kcal
ii) Protein - 9.8g
iii) Carbohydrate - 59g
iv) Fat - 26.8g

Both Mister Choc and M&Ms are bad for you, although if we are splitting hairs then it appears that the Mister Choc are better since they contain less calories and less fat. This is probably due to the lower concentration of chocolate therefore there is a bit of a trade off here. Do you go for higher more chocolate and more fat/calories or less chocolate and less fat/calories?

****Price****

A 250g bag of these cost 69p (just under 28p per 100g) which is far less than a bag of M&Ms that cost £1.75 per 250g bag ( 70p per 100g).

The Mister Choc version is a lot better value for money, and since they taste really good they have now become my chocolate covered peanut of choice.

****Conclusion****

Mister Choc chocolate covered peanuts are really good. They are larger than M&Ms, they are sweeter than M&Ms, they are slightly better for you than M&Ms (providing you don't mind a reduced chocolate concentration to achieve this) and they are a lot cheaper than M&Ms (but then I suppose M&Ms have to recover the cost of their huge advertising and marketing campaign in some way)

To me, it is a no brainer and I would go for this product every time, it's just a shame that these are only available from Lidls and I have to make a special trip out to get some. This product has demonstrated that some of the 'value' brands are just as good, or in this case better, than the premium brands. It is just a case of finding out which one actually are.