Christ on a pogo stick. I assumed you were joking (never tasted the stuff) and I know how prevalent sugar is in grocery foods, but… the sugar outweighs the nuts? And then - St. Cecil preserve us - so does the palm oil? And despite boldface lines 1 and 2, it ends with an artificial flavor?
I’m *so *glad it has no artificial colors or preservatives, then. Let’s give all the kids a spoon and pass it around.
Since this is promoted alongside peanut butter, which is at least mostly nuts in the better brands, this is another case of sheer, bald-faced marketing of garbage as kid food. It now officially tops “Vitamin Water” on my decepticon list.
This is why I can’t stand the commercial where the mother explains she adds Nutella to toast to make sure her kids eat something healthy for breakfast.
Bread slathered in frosting is not healthy.
ETA: responding to the first post, not Snarky_Kong.
For years Nutella walked a kind of careful line by talking about their quality healthy ingredients without alluding to the fact that it is a giant wad of choco-fat. Last year, however, someone sued and they ended up settling a class-action suit.
I ass/u/med the context was understood, my bad. Besides the above responses, just go look at the Nutella site. It’s pictured and presented as a “hazelnut, skim milk and cocoa” spread. It’s shown as a breakfast food, and the entire presentation would be better suited to orange juice, granola or something off a health food store’s shelf.
And it’s the next thing to absolute garbage it could be. There are candy bars that are healthier combinations of foodlike substances.
And it’s suddenly EVERYWHERE. It’s gone from a niche product to a case-lots staple, or presented that way. I have no doubt at all that 90% of its buyers are buying the “healthy” presentation at face value and have no idea it’s toxic sludge.
Nutella? Really? It’s chocolate spread! Hazelnut flavored, sure, but no one would confuse it with peanut butter. It’s extremely sweet and has the consistency of lard. The advertising may be deceptive, but I’ve never seen any ads. I don’t see anyone actually tasting the stuff, or even seeing it, and thinking it’s healthy.
I have no doubt. The human taste for the nutritively worst things is well-documented, and the reason you can hardly find a single processed food that doesn’t contain sugar and all its variants, sometimes in groups.
According to a couple of dietary information sites, hazelnut seeds weigh about 1.4 grams each. 21 reportedly weight 28.35g. So the “50 hazelnuts in the 13 oz. jar” weigh no more than about 2.4 ounces, or represent only 18 percent of the content.
I would be surprised if that’s actually the amount in there - given the level of misrepresentation here, it could be half that with readily available jiggering of the numbers.
FWIW, a lot of foods people equate with “healthy” aren’t, particularly. To take the examples you listed, there isn’t very much daylight between soda and orange juice, and granola can be kind of hit-or-miss depending on how much sugar is added. Nutella is hardly the first sugary, processed food to market itself as natural and healthful.
My parents are from Italy, so growing up I and my relatives and school friends were exposed to Nutella since the mid-1907’s. Its not logical, but my parents thought that, being Italian, it was superior to other snack foods. Like I said, there’s nothing logical about this – I gradually became aware that it was heavy in sugar, but there are worse snacks – such as, I suppose, a drum of frosting. Only recently did I notice how rich it was in palm oil and other saturated fats. I suppose its OK for rapidly growing kids, but I don;t go looking to eat it. To add another layer of illogic – my mother will only purchase and eat it in a glass jar. That is produced in Italy. The plastic jarred Nutella is produced in Canada. I try to tell her – if you really want chocolate with a hint of hazelnut … the recipe is likely the same, and it hasn’t endured an Atlantic voyage. But my explanation never works.
Really? You don’t think buying shelf space and stocking it between the peanut butter and the cashew butter might (intentionally) confuse people into thinking it’s nut butter? Not to mention, y’know, the word “NUT” in the name?
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to explain to my husband that it’s basically cake frosting. He’s still in denial, even after a side-by-side label comparison where cake frosting even came out a bit ahead in some areas.
Nutella’s okay (but you’d have to be insane to think it’s healthy), but I think Nusco is better.
I’d love to make it at home, and skip the palm oil and such, but apparently it’s hard to grind the hazelnuts finely enough with at-home-use food processors.
You can make some quite delicious Nutella hot chocolate with it, as well. Just heat up milk on stove, and glop in some Nutella, as much you like, stir, and it melts in and… yum.
I didn’t want to waste too much space with the obvious, but you’re right. I’d argue about orange juice being more healthy than you allow - excluding the orangy blended drinks that do include added sugar and other crap - and I meant real granola, not the sugary pretend crap from the commercial mills, and I am far too aware of how much food is mis-represented in both marketing and on the shelf.
I am simply flabbergasted that such utter shit-in-a-jar is so bald-facedly presented as a healthy product. The size of the gap is boggling. It’s up there with ZikZak Burger Paks - where some of the plastic rubs off on the meat and doubles the nutrition.
If it wasn’t sweet nobody would eat it, and it has to have fat in it or it wouldn’t spread or have any sort of shelf life. It differs little from peanut butter in composition, so what’s the big deal?
I’m always amazed at the number of people that claim to be surprised by something that is patently obvious, and even more surprised by the courts that believe them.
Bingo. If it were over on the jelly or candy aisle and marketed as a yummy cocoa-flavored spread, it would be completely un-noteworthy. But it’s shouldered its way in between Skippy and Jif, in substantial volume, and quietly accepts being accepted as a “healthy nut spread.”
