Nutella – scared nut-less by a new healthy proposal

I am one of the goodness knows how many who believed that Nutella was diet friendly due to it's wholesome contents. It should say exactly what it is – I thought that was EU law or is it a british law or is it law at all ? As usual we are being deliberately mislead.

Oh dear. Anyone who thinks a sweet chocolate spread is anything other than packed full of calories and sugar isn't to be trusted with a shopping trolley.

Would it change your mind if they told you how unhealthy it is. A bit of self discipline if your conserned
regarding your weight

Why would anyone ban a food just because taken in excess it is "unhealthy"? Water qualifies as unhealthy under this regime as too much will cause an imbalance known as "water intoxication". We should accept that some people are not too smart and left on their own will do things that eventually improve the gene pool.

Bad boys Ferrero, go to bed and no Nutella on your breakfast toast tomorrow.

NO!

I love nutella but because I know it’s full of sugar etc and massively high in calories I very rarely buy it because I have rubbish will power (same with peanut butter). It just means I appreciate it more when I do have it. Any one who thought it was even remotely healthy really isn’t paying attention.

I can’t quite bring myself to say that I am shocked that anyone ever believed that Nutella was anything other than extremely bad for you in anything except the tiniest of quantities: sadly over the years I have realised that most people believe most adverts most of the time – which is of course why adverts are successful in their job except with people like me (a tiny minority I suspect) who instantly boycott any product that is heavily advertised on the basis that if it was rally any good, it would not need advertising as word of mouth would be all that was required.

However, that isn’t really the point here: Nutella is one of a vast number of food products that would be far less popular if the law required explicit details in easy-to-see and easy-to-understand terms of what was in them. In this respect the debate here is very similar to several other Which? conversations such as the ones about Green claims on products that are not green at all, lack of clarity on energy bills and being able to understand if replacing an old appliance with a new one marked “energy saving” will actually save you any energy at all or in fact mean that you use more energy.

In all of these cases what is required is a simple law making it mandatory for all products to have an explicit list of ingredients (edibles and cleaning products) and an explicit declaration of actual energy use (not “more than” or “less than” or “energy saving”, etc.) for gas and electrical appliances.

My own view is that no government will ever willingly pass such a law because they rely too heavily on the various incomes (VAT, business rates, taxes, etc.) generated by the sales of these items and if the truth was known sales would fall, reducing those income streams.