I’m not going to beat around the bush on this one. If your goal is to eat a healthy breakfast, stay away from Nutella! I think deep down most of us know that spreading chocolate on our toast can’t be healthy. Unfortunately, this hasn’t stopped Nutella from focusing their marketing efforts towards convincing us (especially mothers) that their product is nutritious and an important part of a balanced breakfast. To me, positioning a chocolate spread in this way is misleading to consumers.
Let’s take a closer look at what Nutella says about their product and then strip off the claims to uncover the truth.
Evidently, I’m not alone in my frustration. In the UK for example, a large number of people complained about the recent Nutella advertisement, claiming that it contained misleading information about nutritional content. The British Advertising Standards Authority agreed and told Nutella to remove the commercial. Unfortunately, if consumers hadn’t complain, the commercial may still be playing. One would hope that companies like Nutella would have our health interests in mind. Sadly, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
I thought it would be helpful to compare Nutella to natural peanut butter to show you the difference and also provide a healthy alternative.
If we only looked at the fat content, we would have thought that Nutella is the healthier choice. This is a helpful comparison because it shows us the importance of reading all the components of the label before determining the products true health value. In this case when we look at the whole picture, natural peanut butter looks great naked and is the clear winner. Enjoy your breakfast!
