{"id":218,"date":"2007-10-11T09:22:13","date_gmt":"2007-10-11T17:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/2007\/10\/the-nutella-thing\/"},"modified":"2007-10-16T11:45:01","modified_gmt":"2007-10-16T19:45:01","slug":"the-nutella-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/2007\/10\/the-nutella-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nutella thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m a western American, a Californian. I don’t do Nutella.\u00c2\u00a0My son’s girlfriend is an eastern American, a Floridian. She does Nutella. And at many of the sidewalk creperies here in Paris there are huge jars of the stuff with spreading knives ready for duty stabbed into the gooey stuff. Parisians definitely\u00c2\u00a0do Nutella.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \"A<\/span><\/p>\n

Nutella looks like chocolate-colored peanut butter,\u00c2\u00a0spreads like frosting, and\u00c2\u00a0has enough sugar to send your A1C (blood sugar average)\u00c2\u00a0to Mars. I watched a man at\u00c2\u00a0a crepe stand\u00c2\u00a0plop a big brown glob of Nutella onto a flat golden pancake, fold it over twice into a fat triangle, insert it into a paper cone, and hand it to a teenage boy.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

On the label, the Nutella people call\u00c2\u00a0their product\u00c2\u00a0“the original creamy, chocolatey, hazelnut spread.” You can put it on bread, waffles, and\u00c2\u00a0croissants, and you can smear it\u00c2\u00a0on pancakes. Just eating it with a spoon right out of the jar also works. What IS the Nutella thing?<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the company’s Web site, Nutella<\/span>\u00c2\u00ae<\/span> was created in the <\/span>1940s by Pietro Ferrero, a pastry maker and <\/span>founder of the Ferrero company. Because of rationing in World War II, cocoa <\/span>was in short supply,<\/span> so chocolate was very limited.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>Mr. Ferrero stretched the chocolate by using hazelnuts,\u00c2\u00a0 plentiful <\/span>in\u00c2\u00a0Ferrero’s\u00c2\u00a0native Piedmont area<\/span>, the northwest region of Italy <\/span>(see map below). He combined chocolate and hazelnuts into a paste. (Hazelnuts were used in quite a few pastries and confections in the Piedmont.) In the modern version, Nutella\u00c2\u00a0is 13% hazelnuts and about 7% chocolate. Ferrero’s paste (pasta<\/em>) was originally called pasta gianduja<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>\"Image:Italy<\/a><\/span>Gianduja was<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0a famous Piedmont carnival character. He could be found in the first Nutella ads, which showed\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Nutella\u00c2\u00a0loaves\u00c2\u00a0wrapped in tinfoil.\u00c2\u00a0This ear<\/span><\/span><\/span>ly version of Nutella was\u00c2\u00a0an inexpensive way for people to enjoy\u00c2\u00a0chocolate which was then six times more expensive than pasta gianduja<\/em>. <\/span><\/span>Italian food stores also offered a “smearing” service. Children could go to their local food store with a slice of bread for a slathering of\u00c2\u00a0 the stuff. The product was renamed Nutella in 1964.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span>Nutella<\/span> was first imported from Italy into the U.S in 1983, mainly in the northeast, and Ferrero then built a plant in<\/span> Somerset, New Jersey.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>Nutella is now<\/span> sold next to peanut butters\u00c2\u00a0and jams\u00c2\u00a0across the United States. Around the world Nutella<\/span>\u00c2\u00a0outsells all brands of peanut butter–combined.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> February 6 is World Nutella Day.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m a western American, a Californian. I don’t do Nutella.\u00c2\u00a0My son’s girlfriend is an eastern American, a Floridian. She does Nutella. And at many of the sidewalk creperies here in Paris there are huge jars of the stuff with spreading knives ready for duty stabbed into the gooey stuff. Parisians definitely\u00c2\u00a0do Nutella.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Nutella […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}