Why TikTok Isn't Happy With How Nutella Is Supposedly Made
The hurt fans of Nutella feel is still fresh as evidenced by TikTok's reception of a behind-the-scenes display of the hazelnut spread's production. Yesterday, the Food Network continued their series on how treats are made with a video featuring Nutella. The entire two-minute video is actually from the Food Network program "Unwrapped."
In the video, we get to see how Ferrero inspects their hazelnuts for moisture, processes their nuts, and examines the final product's moisture content. If the moisture content is too high, the factory shuts down, and no Nutella is shipped because it would not have a shelf life that would meet Ferrero's standards.
At the time of this writing, the video has been viewed 1.7 million times. It has received over 160 thousand likes and a great deal of scorn in the comments. "You forgot to mention 70% of the ingredients," one comment with over 4,000 likes snapped. "You got it all wrong," another corrected, "palm oil 40%, sugar 40%, powder milk 15%, and hazelnut 5%."
An especially sarcastic comment reads, "Just loved how they disguised the palm oil as a 'technique that nobody else in Europe is using.'" The video's comments continued in this pattern. Evidently, viewers think the Food Network failed to thoroughly interrogate Ferrero on the ingredients it uses to make the widely-beloved Nutella.
The TikTok comments may be pointing to a truth
The viewers of Food Network's TikTok video are right to note the other ingredients used to make Nutella. The ingredients that are publicly displayed on the product's website include both palm oil and sugar. Now, the reason why you should think twice before using palm oil has been covered extensively, and sugar is a well-established bogeyman. For example, as explained by the Independent, palm oil is full of saturated fats that are bad for the body, and its production methods are bad for the planet.
But the general critique coming from the comments seems to be more than just an annoyance with the Food Network's inability to point out the shadier side of a product. "They've definitely changed the ingredients," one comment on the video reads. "Too sugary."
Indeed, Nutella did change their ingredients from the ones people might dimly remember. In 2017, CNN covered the outrage people harbored when Ferrero announced they were tweaking their recipe. The announcement was made after the Hamburg Consumer Protection Center pointed out differences in the most recent batches of Nutella: "Cocoa has slipped back in the list of ingredients. As the color of the new Nutella is lighter, we assume that more milk powder was added at the expense of cocoa."
Ferrero ultimately denied this, though the ingredient label seems to point to its truth. Regardless of such denials and insistences that these were minor updates, many have not forgotten that Nutella is still overly sweet to their tastes.