If, like me you adore Nutella, that creamy, nutty, chocolaty, gooey stuff that goes atop toast, ice creams, into cakes and other heavenly delights, you have probably been horrified by recent reports about Nutella being awful for us all. Various posts on social media were giving us X reasons to throw away what many of us know as heaven in a jar! So is this fact or fiction? Should we all forthwith banish the brown dollops of delight from our lives?
Why Nutella is supposed to be bad for us
Many posts currently doing the rounds are warning us that Nutella is toxic. It contains MSG, and genetically modified ingredients and other terrible things said many websites including livingtraditionally.com. Just for the record, this website also tells you periodically that Redbull is death in a can, peanut butter is a carcinogen in a bottle, that vaccines cause cancer and that toothbrush use will damage lungs, liver and kidneys. According to the post in question, Vanillin, an artificial flavoring used in making Nutella contains MSG (monosodium glutamate). The post also rails against Nutella for containing “GMO emulsifier soy lecithin and palm oil whose extraction is ravaging forests and wildlife throughout the world”
This story from a couple of years ago was picked up by a Facebook group called March Against Monsanto and now various versions of this ‘info’ about Nutella have been floating around. For those not in the know, Monsanto is globally known for GM products and its enemies are many and extremely voluble.
So is Nutella so very bad for us?
Read the ingredients: its sugar, fat and some nuts mainly. The nuts may be good for us, but we all know that sugar and fat in excess is bad for you. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Nutella is delicious but not terribly good for us; same as the ice creams and many biscuits that we consume every day. The ‘villain of the piece’ vanillin has been used for countless products for decades now.
And when a popular website that covers popular urban legends and internet hoaxes contacted the parent company, it was clarified that Nutella contains no genetically modified ingredients or MSG. So, without the GM ingredients and MSG, Nutella is just as toxic or nontoxic as a thousand other products.
What the scaremongering was all about
Perhaps the March Against Monsanto group was doing nothing but furthering its anti-GM stance and found in Nutella a nice, visible and popular target. It made good fodder for the social networks. It all made a good counter point to the marketing strategies that would have us believe that Nutella is healthy and good for us. So, if you had been blithely downing copious quantities in the mistaken belief of it being good for you, you got a welcome wake up call.
Both extremes are false. So as long as we as consumers make an informed choice and eat Nutella occasionally; under no illusions that this is anything as healthy as the marketing guys tell us or toxic as the scaremongers would have us believe, we should all be fine.
