The FDA Wants to Know Your Nutella Eating Habits, Here’s Why
How much Nutella do you eat at once? Are you eating it as a sandwich, on top of ice cream, or some other way?
These are just some of the questions that the FDA wants you to answer as it has opened up public commenting on how this beloved chocolate hazelnut spread should be categorized.
Quartz reported that Ferrero Rocher, the company responsible for Nutella, recently petitioned the FDA to change Nutella’s classification as a “dessert topping,” which is where it and other nut cocoa-based spreads currently fall in the FDA’s new guidelines for serving sizes and nutrition facts labels. The company would rather see Nutella in a new category specific for flavored nut butter spreads, or even moved to “honeys, jams, and jellies” as a spread similar to them.
Under the category of “dessert topping”, the serving size of Nutella is greater and would require Ferrero Rocher to report 2 tablespoons as its serving size on nutrition labels. This classification was made 25 years ago based on data that consumers primarily used Nutella as an ice-cream topping.
Photo: Cooking Shooking
Ferrero Rocher claims it doesn’t belong in that category because Nutella isn’t primarily used as a dessert topping anymore, but is now used a spread and should be classified as such. In this FDA category of “honeys, jams, and jellies”, Ferrero Rocher could cut their reported serving size in half – which would be great for them because half the serving size means half the added sugars that they would have to display based on new labeling guidelines.
To prove their point, Ferrero Rocher surveyed over 700 women and found that three-fourths of them use Nutella as a spread for toast and sandwiches.The FDA agreed with this data and is now considering creating a new category of “flavored nut butter spreads” to established serving size recommendations.
Photo: Renato Brandi
Ferrero Rocher has requested that the serving size in this new category be a tablespoon, but the FDA wants to know more on how much Nutella we are using to make that decision. To help determine the serving size for this new category, the FDA has opened up public commenting on the issue to see how many consumers are eating Nutella as a spread, and how much Nutella they are putting on their bread.
Commenting closes on January 3rd, 2017, so if you want to have an input on this, click here and leave your stat-backed opinion on how the FDA should regulate Nutella!
