My daughter loves peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches. The key is that the Nutella replaces what would generally be jelly or jam, in a very thin layer, and the peanut butter is decent peanut butter. Also amazing - peanut butter/Nutella/banana sandwiches. With an insulin chaser. 
If you ever find a good deal on a Vita-Mix, snap that sucker up. It makes great nut butter, and you’ll have total control of the ingredients.
Yeah, joy, MORE work in the kitchen :rolleyes:
Due to my food allergies I already spend an inordinate amount of time looking for ingredients and prepping food on my own. Sure, wonderful, I have the last laugh in the end what with the healthy eating. But when I have those occasional 50 hours weeks at my official job plus spending 15-20 trying to help my spouse get his venutre to profitability and doing the laundry/shopping/etc…
The LAST thing I want or have time or energy for is yet more work in the kitchen!
Yes, yes, I know you couldn’t possibly know all that but I would really like to have the option to have convenience food on occasion. Something I can just go out, buy, and pop in the microwave or peel back the lid and just eat the damn thing without spending time in the kitchen. Just like I wish when my co-workers offer to grab my lunch, too, when they go out for a food run I wish I could trust them to do that but I can’t. It’s not malice, it’s that I can’t trust them to get it right due to my multiple allergies and their lack of practice at accommodating them.
Heck, 90% of what’s in the candy aisle is completely off limits to me. Folks without food allergies just do not appreciate the freedom to simply grab something when you’re 10 hours into a long day and haven’t eaten anything since breakfast and you’re hungry and cranky. I can’t do that.
Nutella’s sole advantage in my viewpoint is that I can actually eat it without getting ill. Pretty low bar, yeah.
This is true of almost everything, including syrup, if you buy the big bottle of Aunt Jemima’s and butter if what you actually buy is margarine, which is what a lot of people are actually eating when they have ‘butter and syrup’ on their pancakes. I still don’t buy this Nutella is somehow evil and pretending to be something it’s not. Everything pretends to be something it’s not. When I was 9 Capri Sun always showed kids drinking a Capri Sun after a hard bout of skateboarding, rollerblading, or playing basketball, yet none of us nor our parents ever decided that must mean that Capri Sun was somehow formulated to be anything other than a fun juice box. Read the labels. We’ve spent a shit-ton of tine and effort over the years to create a system that holds food manufacturers accountable. If you can’t be bothered to be proactive when it comes to what you eat, then I have no sympathy for you.
Exactly. It’s like people are watching commercials for the first time or something.
Here’s how I view such things:
Totally healthy stuff often tastes either somewhat like cardboard/sawdust on its own, or rapidly gets boring. The flavoring bit that goes on top helps keep you interested in eating it. So a moderate amount of jelly/jam/Nutella/whatever on top of your whole grain bread/toast/waffle/cracker/whatever helps make the rest of it more palatable.
It’s all about net gains.
Will you eat more green beans if they have butter or some other dressing on them vs. steamed plain? Do the health benefits of more green beans outweigh any downside to the topping?
Likewise, if spreading Nutella on whole-grain extra-fiber toast means your kids eats the whole-grain extra-fiber toast instead of a Krispy Kreme donut then on the whole Nutella embellished toast is probably the lesser evil. To bring up another example raised in this thread, back when I worked in the Chicago Loop I actually switched from banana-nut muffins to Pop-Tarts at one point. Why? Because I read the labels and the Pop-Tarts were actually healthier than the muffins. Fewer calories, sodium, and fats per serving. That didn’t mean Pop-Tarts were good, just that they were better than what I had been eating. The move was a net gain for me.
The key word is moderation. Something our modern consumerist society does not encourage. Not only do we not eat the healthy stuff as the default, but when we do reach for a box of presumably healthy stuff most of the time it is drowned in topping/sauce. Not to mention all the other crap in there to compensate for the fact that preserved food is never as good as fresh (well, things like pickles excepted).
Of course, the food industry is not your friend. They’re interested in profits, not nutrition. The New York Times recently ran an article on The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food. It’s all about getting you to eat more. If high fiber and low calories would do it that’s what they’d do, but fact is we’re biologically programmed to lust after sugar, salt and fat.
(Speaking of deceptive advertising - the New York Times offers full access to their site for just 99 cents! For the first three months… then the price goes up… but 99 cents is large and prominent and the bump in price is small text and tucked in the corner, so to speak. Same practice, different product)
So yeah, Nutella can taste good - all that fat, sugar, chocolate and nuts (both foods that are associated with yummy fats)… It’s designed to taste good, although to those of us still used to less processed foods it’s about as subtle as a fist to the nose. Like sugar or honey in the oatmeal it makes the bland stuff taste better. Like sugar in tea or coffee it can mask bitter notes. (For that matter, like sugar in chocolate, which is also bitter in its unsweetened state but I’m not say chocolate is a health food.)
If we were all eating as we should the extra sugars and fats in something like Nutella would not matter. The problem is that we’re encouraged to eat too much of sugars and fat and not enough of the rest. That’s not a problem solved merely by legislating more label rules.
Absolutely agree. (And one of the things I remarked about the Nutella ad is the very restrained manner in which it is applied on toast in the commercial. It’s a thin smear, so they’re at least showing moderation.) Also, good point on the muffins.
It’s actually really surprising when you look into it how “bad” for you “healthy” things can be and how “not-as-bad-as-you-thought” some supposedly “unhealthy” foods are. When I was dieting, when I wanted a cheap quick lunch, I’d hit McDonald’s and get myself a McDouble for a buck. Yeah, more salt than I need, but at 390 calories and a ratio of carbs:protein:fat that I like, it would keep me sated until dinner, prevented me from snacking, and had fewer calories, fewer carbs, and less sodium than a Starbucks chicken salad sandwich on whole wheat bread (which seems like it should be “healthier” if not “healthy” being associated with whole wheat bread–damn that Starbucks for tricking me by putting their sandwich on whole wheat and giving the impression of health;) ), and was about $4 cheaper to boot.
Not that I would recommend anyone going on a diet of McDoubles, but you really can’t go on perception of what is “healthy” and what is “unhealthy.”
Huwaw?
Peanut Allergies are almost entirely something small kids get and many grow out of them. I have never heard of an adult developing a peanut allergy.
Now you have.
I also get told a lot that “it’s very rare for adults to be allergic to more than one thing”. Really? Must have won the lottery on that one.
Truth is, one can develop an allergy at any time of life. It may be more common in kids, but it’s not unknown in adults.
Autoimmune problems all over my family tree. I have a niece that makes my allergy problems look mild. Could be worse those - look like one of my sister’s has an auto-immune disorder that is slowly destroying her heart. If her next round of therapies doesn’t halt it she’ll be on the transplant list in a year or so.
I’m glad to know that Nutella tastes like chocolate frosting. I’ve always seen the description of “hazelnut butter with a hint of cocoa” and thought “why would anyone want that? I want chocolate spread!”
Now that I know it’s super chocolately, maybe I will try it sometime. On graham crackers mmmm…
Yeah, the comparison upthread with Ferrero Rocher chocolates is pretty much right on. If you’ve ever had those, Nutella is basically the spreadable form of that.
^ word.
Also without the unnecessarily elaborate packaging and gold foil wrappers, but if it’s the taste you’re after it’s probably cheaper to eat Nutella.
OJ is a good candidate, but mine would probably be DaVinci’s Pride® Nanotech Penis Enlargement Pretzels, whose questionable ad slogans have included "Costs Nothing, Worth a Fortune!"
, "Designed by Leonardo Himself!", and "This is Not a Joke - Eating These Pretzels Will Cause You To Travel Backward in Time!"
Relevant recent news story regarding the nutritional value:
Also interesting is that Nutella and the taste-alike Ferrero Rocher chocolates are both owned by sane company.
You may find it impossibly sweet, so if you try it, get the smallest size you can find. I can’t tolerate how sweet it is. What they need is a grown-up version with darker chocolate and less sugar.
I’ve never had it, as far as I know, but I thought it was pretty obviously not a health food, given that it’s made of nuts and chocolate.
Is there a lot of attention on junk food now? I saw the NYT article, and Pop Sci has a few articles too.
If the system allows manufacturers to get away with calling something a “juice drink”, it’s not good enough.
Good to know Ferrero SpA isn’t crazy I guess.
So Nutella comes out of the same vats as the Ferrero Roche innards.
Squeeze your own then.
What the hell should they call a drink made with juice then? It always says right on the label what percentage is actual juice. And as has been pointed out, it’s not like the juice is really much healthier than the “drink.”