You know what’s yum? Pancakes spread with 'tell and sliced banana. Mmmmmm…
…sorry, where were we? Oh yeah, advertising. The advertising claims in the ads over here are even more fun.
“Half the fat of peanut butter, and less sugar than many jams!”
Otherwise known as “a zillion times more fat than jam, and a crapload more sugar than peanut butter”. They’ve got lying with statistics down to a fine art.
Nonetheless - very yummy. These days I prefer the Oxfam Fair Trade version, which is lighter on the palm oil and quite honestly markets itself as “hazelnut CHOCOLATE spread”
Always though the European ads (not sure if they are the same as the US ones) were slightly deceptive in that they did present it as sometimes “good” to give to your kids whilst going on about the quality of the ingredient. At no point do they actually say it is healthy, but it is sort of implied if you want to believe it.
Having said that, I live in Italy and they love the stuff here. Really, you can’t imagine how much passion it inspires. They eat lots and lots of it, but still people aren’t generally overweight and certainly not compare to the US. Just because something is bad for you, doesn’t mean you can’t ever eat it.
I remember the first time I tried Nutella I thought, “Dear God!!! This is sweet and chocolatey!!! What is IN this stuff?” (this was actually just a few months ago)
And then I read the label and laughed at how much sugar I was eating, and quite a bit of fat to boot. All was right with the world once I realized I was eating a desert-as-breakfast food (like so many American breakfasts actually are – all empty carbs and tons of sugar).
And then I wondered why I ever thought of it as a “healthier” food… which wasn’t much thought at all but that was the impression I had from SOMEWHERE. Glad to learn others had the same impression.
Surely there are many products more deceptive on the shelf than Nutella. Granola bars, maybe. Granola got mentioned as a stereotypical healthy food in this thread.
I picked out a bunch of low-grade granola products from foodfacts.com but really don’t think I agree with why they got graded so low. Controversial ingredients aren’t a big concern for me, not like high sodium, sugar or fat. The Fiber One Oats & Strawberries with Almonds Granola Bars got an F for having “moderate amount of added sugar(s)” and “multiple controversial ingredients” despite being low in calories, sodium, saturated fat, cholesterol, and having some vitamins and minerals. I’m guessing having a lot of potential allergens didn’t help.
That foodfacts site looks like it grades products automatically. Seems silly to downgrade items like instant soup, which I wouldn’t expect to have fiber, for not having any fiber. For an example, there’s Kikkoman Instant Tofu-Spinach Miso Soup, which does look pretty bad, but no worse than most packet soups. Way too much sodium and, on the good side, a tiny bit of iron and calcium. I’d say that product could be considered deceptive because, hey, hey, tofu and spinach are be good for you, so it’s practically health food, right?
My personal favorite deceptive labeling practice is taking a package that’s pretty obviously single-serve and labeling it as if it was more than one serving, or making the serving size on a larger package small, like how a pint of Haagen Daz is supposed to serve four. I’d probably get two, maybe three, servings out of a pint of ice cream if I bought it for myself. A lot of people would eat the whole thing in one go.
I love nutella, but I’ve never considered it anything but a spreadable candy bar. So it’s a rare treat indeed. As has been mentioned, it’s OK in moderation.
You do realize palm oil is over 50% saturated fat? It’s on a par with butter and thus one of the two highest saturated-fat oils after the world champ, coconut. Fully hydrogenated soybean oil is 21% (although higher in trans-fats).
I guess it could be worse. In the EU, they’re still allowed to call palm oil “vegetable oil” (for a few more years, at least), and it could be coconut oil (90% saturated).
Where do you think Nutella (for the US) is made? Ontario. HFCS would be a perfectly acceptable ingredient; I just think it would result in compounding problems. They’d have to put some other crap in there to stabilize it, and we can’t have artificial preservatives in there…
I noticed last night that my supermarket still stacks Nutella with the ice-cream cones and toppings, so perhaps their battle for America’s breakfast table is not being won.
I personally take no issue to that, as serving containers have certainly gotten larger as I’ve gotten older. For example, it’s almost impossible to buy a single serving of chips anymore, except maybe in a vending machine. When I was a kid, you could buy a small packet of chips that would be equal to a single serving. So when I see those bags that are 2.5 or 4 servings or whatnot, it’s pretty clear to me that’s not one serving and, besides, if you’re concerned about your health and reading labels, why aren’t you reading the “serving size” and “servings” part at the top of the label?
And four servings out of a pint of ice cream sounds exactly right to me. I know a lot of people will eat the whole thing in one go, but that’s not a proper single “serving” to me.
That said, I’m fine with there being two columns on nutritional labels, one with single serving amounts, and another with full package amounts, for those people who can’t multiply.
I don’t mind the multi-serving little bags so much - though having the option for single-serving bags is always appreciated - but the half-servings bug me. WTF.
I guess a lot of this issue depends on where you stand on what you see as the right of companies to use deceptive practices to market their goods. If the information is on there (almost certainly because some law requires it), even in the fine print and obscured by odd serving counts and stretching every term as far as FDA regulations allow… is it then “caveat emptor”?
Or is it unethical for a company to go to every length to misrepresent their product in the name of greater sales?
You can preen at your own wisdom and snark at people too stupid or careless to run a calculator check on the nutrition panel, but should buying products - especially food products - be a more transparent and less obfuscated process? Is a young mother who’s been influenced by the ads and the way the Nutella jar is labeled and presented in the store at fault for not “knowing” it’s basically spreadable candy?
Yes, I think it’s inexcusable how much we allow manufacturers to play shell games, deceive us and hide anything they are letter-of-the-law allowed to. And I think (from much experience) that most people who think they are apex-predator shoppers are overall no more bright and aware than that young mother.
Those come in half-ounce and one-ounce variations. I think it’s a good choice to offer. I don’t mind sending one junky thing in a school lunch, but I’d like to make it a small one.
Those look like what I consider “single servings” and, according to the nutritional information when I click on them, they are. ETA: I mean, are those smaller than what you’d get at the vending machine to go along with your sandwich? You know, like when I was a kid, we’d get brown bagged lunches, usually a sandwich, a banana, and a pack of chips. The chips would contain, I don’t know 20 chips in them? That’s what I consider a single serving. If you’re making a meal out of a bag of chips, then you want something like 3 or 4 servings.