http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/bu...t-89.html?_r=0

A favorite food treat for Europeans has been Nutella - that chocolate and hazel nut concoction that is a staple at breakfast tables in many hotels in Europe - interesting story about its creation.

But before indulging too much - a recent report on tellie said that there were about 3 hazel nuts in each jar and a lot of fat. But I always savor Nutella when I'm in Europe though I eschew it at home!

It's recently been advertising a lot in the US - never saw it until about a year ago. I'm not sure it's any more healthy than peanut butter.

maybe less healthy - peanut oil is not so bad as what the TV show said they made Nutella with - not a health food for sure.

I craved it when I spent summers in Berlin as a child, but now I'll take a Milka bar with whole hazelnuts (yes, lots of big round whole nuts) any day of the week instead.

Sugar, vegetable (palm) oil, hazelnuts (13%), cocoa powder (7.4%), non-fat milk solids, emulsifier (soy lecithin), flavour (vanillin)

Well, at least 20% of it is delectable!

Hey I like peanut butter.!

I've never liked it, nor peanut butter either.

I find it rather like pudding, i.e. slippery, a nice change but not a staple.

It wasn't just Nutella

Michele Ferrero - unlike his oppos at Nestles and Cadbury's - dreamt up practically all his confectionery products himself. In Italy he had no truck with the flash admen in swish metropolitan offices his competitors relied on: all his ads - like his product ideas - came out of a studio he ran in whatever Piedmont backwood he lived in.

Pocket Coffee, Kinder Eggs (with those novelties), Rocher (not to mention the awful ads), Tic Tac, Mon Cheri... True kitsch can emerge only from a genius.

I can't go to Italy without stuffing the car with Pocket Coffee. Others stock up on Acqua di Parma at FCO duty-free: for us it's always Mon Cheri.

At one point his flunkeys tried headhunting Mrs F and me as a banded pack.

Whisper it not in Gath. But the reason I say he invented "practically all his brands" is that he didn't really invent Nutella. He merely put a twist onto Gianduja, first recorded about a century earlier - allegedly because we were stopping sugar and chocolate from getting into mainland Europe because that buffoon Napoleon was trying to starve us by blockading us. So we blockaded him, did it far better, and the poor sods he'd enslaved came close to starving. All they had was hazelnuts and a few bars of chocolate, so some bright Piemontese combined them.

Anyway, move forward and Michele had the insight that with fewer hazelnuts, more sugar and less cocoa it'd be cheaper AND kids would love it. Gianduja's the kind of gastro treat most kids spit out.

Lower prices, more kid-friendly: you'd a thought a Hershey or Mars would get there first. Never believe anyone telling you the Italians go for quality. Nutella took off because it was cheap, crap, and tooth-rotting.

Never really caught on in Britain, though. Far too much competition in that market segment. Which is why Mrs F and I turned the offer down.

What I bring back in quantity from Italy is Duplo (it's made by Ferrero too). In Germany, there is a Duplo candy bar, but it's just a bit of wafer with a strip of caramel and an inferior chocolate coating. They tried to market the Italian version in Germany once, but I think it confused people.

In Italy, each bar of Duplo has three humps - - each hump is a whole hazelnut (appropriate to the theme of this thread) surrounded by a delicious nougat creme, covered in chocolate, with a thin bit of wafer too. The Italian Duplo is impossible to stop eating once you start - - luscious.

Here is a video comparing the two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvVQef7bJnU

Eataly is making a fortune pushing "Nutella bars" in its superstores.

As for the healthiness of Nutella, Mr. Ferrero lived to be 89.

Just saw a program two nights ago that said Nutella had the same amount of sugar in one serving as 6.5 Oreo cookies.

While in Alba, I was told that the Nutella available in the US is made in Canada.