Nutella Attack

Do you ever eat Nutella spread? I like it, and it is one of the world's most popular spreads for bread and pastry. Leave it to the Italians to invent Nutella. They are number one in my eyes when it comes to food.  But Nutella is under attack from the European food police. Ferrero, the maker of Nutella is fighting back against claims that palm oil, a key ingredient in the hazelnut and chocolate spread called Nutella,  may cause cancer.  Ferrero recently launched an advertising campaign in Italy that assures consumers that palm oil used in Nutella is safe to eat. "Making Nutella without palm oil would produce an inferior substitute for the real product, it would be a step backward," Ferrero's spokesperson said. They also pointed to the lack of evidence from research on the matter that it causes any health problem.

So far the U.S. PC food police has remained quiet about this. But I better buy an extra jar of Nutella before they ban palm oil and change the product to a mush. Palm oil has long been used in food and has been considered to be perfectly safe. It makes the Nutella smooth and gives it a long shelf life. But the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has told Ferrero that they think the way it is processed makes it contaminated and unsafe for humans. There is question about that allegation, but the food police never has needed proof that their claims one food is "bad' and another is not.

Ferrero is fighting back with it's campaign in support of palm oil amid growing pressure from European officials to list the palm oil as potentially carcinogenic. Maybe the authority wants Europeans to subsist on water. The EFSA panel found that the major cancer concern is over glycidyl fatty acid esters or GE, which form during food processing, or when palm oil is refined at temperatures over 393 Fahrenheit. Nutella uses palm oil refined that way. So far a number of retailers in Italy, including the Wal mart of Italy, Coop Supermarket, have succumbed to pressure to ban Nutella. They no longer sell Nutella.

Ferrero doesn't want to get rid of palm oil because of the unique smoothness it gives to Nutella and because it's the cheapest vegetable oil on the market. Strangely, the EFSA’s  report on palm oil did not advise consumers to stop eating products with palm oil, and concluded more research was needed to assess the risk. Yet they want it banned? Sigh, who ever said the food police made sense. So what we have in Europe is what we have in the U.S.  It's the food as god or bad based on agenda. Once someone on the left decides it is unsafe or "unhealthy", either with or without any definitive proof, the left wing PC crowd remonstrates and cries until politicians bend and give into their food hysteria.

The war against Nutella in Europe is a microcosm of the war against non PC foods here. If the Nutella is banned on speculation about health, what might be next. I dare them to ban my donuts and burgers! If so I would reciprocate and mobilize my fellow unhealthy eaters to demand a total ban on tofu.