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If you don't know Nutella is bad for you and your kids, then you are a total idiot and a bad parent.
Meal Ticket usually doesn't tackle these types of stories, but this particular one is so infuriating and indicative of our asshole- and moron-filled litigious circle jerk of a society that I can't help but say my piece. Via NPR I caught wind of this lawsuit (PDF), filed on Feb. 1, by a California woman who is suing the manufacturer of Nutella, claiming Ferrero U.S.A., Inc. misled her by suggesting the fattening chocolate/hazelnut spread is part of a "tasty yet balanced breakfast." According to the suit, plaintiff Athena Hohenberg, the mother of a 4-year-old child, "was searching for healthy foods to serve her family for breakfast or as a snack because she is aware that healthy nutrition is important for maintaining the overall health of her family." (You'll soon realize just how just how preposterous that statement is.) Hohenberg claims that Nutella's label, which depicts the product "in association with a picture showing fresh fruits, whole wheat bread, and orange juice," as well as website imagery and TV commercials, led her to falsely believe that Nutella "is a part of a healthy meal." "Ms. Hohenberg believed, based on these representations both individually and especially when taken together as a whole, that Nutella consumption is beneficial to children," the suit goes on to state. This may come as a shock to the plaintiff, but advertising, by virtue, is misleading â" and that in NO WAY relieves you of your responsibilities as a consumer and as a parent. Sure, it's easy to blame Nutella for being sickly-sweet junk food â" a mere two-tablespoon serving size contains 11 grams of fat, 18 percent of one's daily allowance of saturated fat and 21 grams of sugar â" but in my opinion, Hohenberg's decision to file this lawsuit is infinitely more deleterious to our nation's expectation of personal accountability than some dumb hazelnut spread is to our stupid fucking love handles. Does the fact that Nutella is bad for your health excuse you from your role as an adult capable of making her OWN choices, Mrs. Hohenberg? Are you so incredibly susceptible to marketing that you were made unable to flip the jar over, note that the top two ingredients are SUGAR and PALM OIL, and realize that perhaps Nutella is not the superfood you idiotically assumed it was based on a phony-ass picture of three tow-headed children eating the shit spread on toast? Apparently this is PRECISELY what she is saying, based on the following passages from her infuriatingly elaborate flaming-pile-of-shit lawsuit! In or around December 2010, Ms. Hohenberg learned through friends what ingredient were in the Nutella that she was feeding her family. She was shocked to learn that Nutella was in fact not a "healthy" "nutritious" food but instead was the next best thing to a candy bar, and that Nutella contains dangerous levels of saturated fat. She had to have friends explain to her that CHOCOLATE HAZELNUT SPREAD COMPOSED OF MORE THAN HALF PROCESSED SUGAR was not nutritious. I feel so sorry for your friends. Plaintiff is not a nutritionist food expert or food scientist; she is a lay consumers [sic] who did not possess the specialized knowledge Ferrero had which otherwise would have enabled her to associate high levels of saturated fat and refined sugar with disease. I don't consider myself a food expert or food scientist either, Mrs. Hohenberg, but I am well-aware that EATING FAT MAKES YOU FAT.* You've got to be fucking kidding me. I cannot believe this is real.
If you don't know Nutella is bad for you and your kids, then you are a total idiot and a bad parent.
Filed Under: Food News | Drew Lazor's Ill-Advised Rant Factory
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In or around December 2010, Ms. Hohenberg learned through friends what ingredient were in the Nutella that she was feeding her family. She was shocked to learn that Nutella was in fact not a "healthy" "nutritious" food but instead was the next best thing to a candy bar, and that Nutella contains dangerous levels of saturated fat.She had to have friends explain to her that CHOCOLATE HAZELNUT SPREAD COMPOSED OF MORE THAN HALF PROCESSED SUGAR was not nutritious. I feel so sorry for your friends.
Plaintiff is not a nutritionist food expert or food scientist; she is a lay consumers [sic] who did not possess the specialized knowledge Ferrero had which otherwise would have enabled her to associate high levels of saturated fat and refined sugar with disease.I don't consider myself a food expert or food scientist either, Mrs. Hohenberg, but I am well-aware that EATING FAT MAKES YOU FAT.* You've got to be fucking kidding me. I cannot believe this is real.
* UPDATE [11feb11]: To those who have pointed out that caloric intake (in the case, coming mainly from sugar), and not literal fat intake, is what leads to one putting on weight, you are absolutely right. It was a figure of speech â "fat" meaning fattening foods in general â and admittedly not a clear one.
Plaintiff, in the exercise of reasonable diligence, could not have discovered Ferrero's deceptive practice earlier because, like nearly all consumers, she does not read scholarly publications or other materials describing the negative impact of consuming foods high in saturated fat and refined sugars.I would LOVE to peruse the "scholarly publication" that contains the bombshell that saturated fat and refined sugars are â GASP! â bad for you! I'm guessing the pub is titled Food Facts Every Person With Their Spinal Cord Attached to Their Fucking Brain Is Aware Of, Except This Lady, Who Would Rather File a Frivolous Fucking Lawsuit Than Put in the .5 Seconds of Rational Thought It Requires to Make Sure Her Child Doesn't End Up On a "Fat Babies" Segment of Maury. For the record, I think Nutella is delicious in moderation, but I don't think I'll be eating it for awhile after hearing about this. All it'll do is remind me of Mrs. Hohenberg, who has decided to blame a supermarket product for her disturbing inability to think for herself.
The problem is that you have to have damages for a lawsuit. You can't say 'I'm too smart to fall for your blatant lying tricks, but more stupid people might be harmed.' If you do that, you'll get nothing. You have to actually show harm in order to even have a case, let alone get them to stop. . I'm not saying that that is the case here, but it seems like it.
I have to say this makes me mad when even my 4 year old daughter knows that Nutella isn't for everyday breakfast. My daughter gets it for her fun Saturday breakfast every other Saturday but she gets to choose a handful of healthy foods to eat with it. Aside from that she doesn't eat it because it is not healthy as an everyday breakfast, lunch and midnight snack. It is still a processed food and like all processed foods it is okay to have in moderation but it is still not healthy. If my 4 year old daughter knows its not healthy for everyday then any mother out there should know. Read the labels, they were put there for a reason!
Drew, I agree that it's "up to us to make educated decisions," if only by necessity. But I part ways with you in that I think that using the law to keep companies honest is an appropriate action for a consumer. Yes, we all have "personal responsibility," and that includes the individuals who profit from Nutella and who create its advertising; it seems to me that they initiated this controversy by shirking their personal responsibility first. I'd happily be the Nutella spokesperson. I'd get in front of the camera and say "I eat a healthy diet, I exercise regularly, and when I want to splurge, Nutella is the most deliciously decadent treat in the grocery store. It's fattening, but it's SOOO GOOOOOD!" If they took that angle, instead of having a mom say it's healthy for her kids, we wouldn't have this problem now.
I think a lot of the way I feel about it comes from the fact that my parents were grossly uneducated about nutrition and literally let my sister and I select all the family's groceries from the time we were in preschool. And how do you think we decided what we wanted? You can't expect small children to have the kind of critical thinking skills to sort out advertising. I mean, we don't allow advertisements for cigarettes on TV for this very reason. You can't count on all parents to be like yours and as a society I feel like it's reasonable to at least try to protect vulnerable kids.
Wow. First off, who would be dumb enough to actually believe Nutella is health food? Pretty much anything that has one healthy ingredient, and a sh!tload of unhealthy ingredients will make this claim. It's nothing new. Use some common sense, and maybe, just maybe you should actually read nutrition facts before you feed it to your kids by the handful. That said, Nutella isn't going to kill you. It's not any worse than eating most brands of peanut butter. Just don't eat more than you should and you'll be fine.
hahaha nice comment, people are so succinct.
This is a perfect example of the abdication of responsibility that modern fox-news watching, god-fearing, money-grubbing american parents have. According to them, it's up to teachers to discipline and raise their children, the media/clergy to tell them what to think and food producers and advertisers to tell them what to eat. And if those people don't live up to their fairytale standards? Why, sue them of course! This is Ameri-kuh, and money and fame are the be all and end all of everything! Has anyone here seen "Idiocracy"? This special breed of brain-dead moron is precisely what is wrong with the US of A, and they won't be going anywhere unless their less-brain-dead counterparts stand up and get counted.
BEST. RANT. EVER. My sis posted this to facebook..and I'm going to share it with everyone I know. Stupid people and the willfully ignorant piss me off in ways that I can't even describe without developing a stutter. And zombies aren't real. pah.
Is it really that bad for you? It's basically exactly the same as peanut butter, which isn't exactly a junk food. About the same amount of fat and calories, but not as much protein.
Does the fact that this chocolate product is manufactured by a CANDY COMPANY not also piss anyone off?
It's healthy if eaten straight out of the jar with a spoon. Because then it doesn't count ;)
Of course the key is right there.... "be a up to us to make educated decisions". Educated decisions require education, which, is sorely lacking in so many areas. I had a health class in school. That health class was 90% sex ed. Not complaining, it definitely had real advantages to have a strong sex ed class and not just hearsay from the street or my parents non-existent treatment of the topic, but.... the class was not really a full every day sort of class, and it was only part of the year, the rest being "home ec" where we were basically introduced to sewing. In more traditional cuisine, as was what people generally ate up until a few of generations ago, you didn't need to worry as much about nutrition so much, as people ate a variety of things, which varied with seasonal availability. Now, processed food and particularly processed sugar, it simply makes up a HUGE percentage of what food is even available. Never mind sugar, salt too. Now, luckily, I learned to actually cook in a kitchen, and I make good money, so i can buy and cook raw food myself. Not everyone even gets that, never mind nutrition education, that I had to learn on my own, and is still only rudimentary. This stuff is hard, it really is disonest for companies to use peoples ignorance to sell sugary product as "healthy".
[...] with Hammond's Pretzels• PREVIEW: Kitchen at Penn• The pizza situation at Kennett• If you don't know Nutella is bad for you and your kids, then you are a total idiot and a bad...• WEEKLY CANDY: Coconut M&Ms• IN PRINT: City Paper Food and Restaurants, Feb. [...]
that's a load of bunk ma'am. it is just another example of letting people to shirk their personal responsibility in order to "protect the children" Implying there need to be stricter laws in place about ANYTHING to let parents avoid parenting is completely ridiculous.
Thanks Pete. All good things in moderation.
Classic American, blame everyone but yourself for your own ignorance! Something for nothing always right? Hey Frank, in a perfect world the Nutella advertisements would be exactly as you said, but lets be realistic. companies are big stinkin liars because they want to make the most money possible. Nothing is ever going to change this. Not saying I agree with it, it's actually total bullshit, but that doensn't mean this lady is not accountable for knowing what she is eating In conclusion Nutella is DELICIOUS.
Jif peanut butter: Serving Size 2 Tbsp (32g) Calories 190 Calories from Fat 130 Nutella: Serving size 2 Tbsp (37g) Calories 200 Calories from Fat 100 What is the big commotion about? Nutella is hazelnut butter with a bit of cocoa. I don't see anyone suing Jif because of PB&J sandwiches.
"This may come as a shock to the plaintiff, but advertising, by virtue, is misleading â and that in NO WAY relieves you of your responsibilities as a consumer and as a parent." I agree that this particular case is misguided and the plaintiff should lose, but your statement implies that truth in advertising is irrelevant. It's a very, very gradual slope from complete truth to outright lies, especially when it comes to advertising. The whole *purpose* of advertising, as you point out, is to mislead people -- to convince them to buy things they don't need, to sell them on the idea that all their problems can be solved with simple, easy actions. Basically, we have a multi-billion dollar industry spending *all of its time* distorting the truth to everyone, with big, loud, mostly unavoidable messages that, even if you consciously reject every one, still have an effect on you. And not everybody has that luxury.
The problem is that you have to have damages for a lawsuit. You can't say âI'm too smart to fall for your blatant lying tricks, but more stupid people might be harmed.' If you do that, you'll get nothing. You have to actually show harm in order to even have a case, let alone get them to stop. . I'm not saying that that is the case here, but it seems like it.
So does this mean stirring Nutella into my whole-grain oatmeal isn't healthy? Man...
I am appalled. Why so much hate for the ignorant? Let's assume that person X is in fact a "total idiot" and therefore has trouble differentiating between reasonable and ridiculous advertisements. I understand your anger that such a person's actions may be harmful to their children, but the way in which you express it, is likely to stop people from asking questions and become better parents (who wants to be attacked for ignorance?). Advertisement campaigns are rarely continued when they are not effective. Are you suggesting that those people that struggle to tell truth from fiction are fair game to be preyed on?
Shes suing for false advertisement, I know people know that hazelnut and choco are bad, but these guys are plainly saying "this stuff is good for you and is in no way bad for you"
I agree pretty much 100% with your article, *except* that eating FAT does not actually make you FAT. What's fattening about Nutella is the sugar, and that sugar served in concert with a bunch of other starches (probably white bread toast). Fat is problematic in the diet because it, along with salt, focuses the appetite and helps a person concentrate on packing away the simple sugars and low-fiber carbohydrate bulk. *That* stuff is what bodies make fat from. Anyway, suing the Nutella people is obviously retarded, but they left themselves wide open to this eventuality by talking about nutrition *at all*. It's candy, and they should just be honest and sell it as such.
point taken Alejandro but the way im reading it this girl is saying she had absolutely NO CLUE that sugar and fat were bad for you, and took the company's "suggestion" to eat it as part of a "Balanced" breakfast as 100% true gospel. im sorry but that is sad and pathetic. if we were all like this woman and automatically believed everything every company said and did and didnt learn anything on our own, it would be the movie Idiocracy. not that far off now that i think about it... Again... Nutella is delicious
hahaha nice rant, people are so dumb.
I agree that a lawsuit is not a good way to address this problem, but the fact is that the Nutella TV spots in particular are extremely deceptive, more so even than a lot of other ads. The solution, in my opinion, is strict regulation on marketing processed food of any kind, especially to or for children. This women doesn't seem to be that bright and is obviously dropping the ball on the nutrition part of parenting, but when I read about it, I hoped it would draw attention to the problems of junk food deceptively marketed for kids. Food manufacturers should have to be more straightforward on the labels and in their ads.
You don't have to be a food scientist to read a nutrition label. I hate people.
Im going to go home, eat Nutella and not feel guilty because like any rational persons who consumes fat and sugar - I exercise. What a dumbass trying to get a free lunch.
FrankDNA: Thank you for your comment. I'm not defending the backhanded dealings of the company that produces Nutella as much as I'm demanding that people like this woman take personal responsibility for her health and the health of her family. Stricter regulation re: truth in labeling/marketing is an ambitious and honorable goal, but I think we can both agree it ain't happening overnight. Perhaps I'm a cynic, but companies have been lying to consumers for centuries and I don't think that's ever going to change. That's why, in the now, I think it'll always be up to us to make educated decisions, instead of pushing the brunt of the blame outward.
I get your point, but I don't think that big corporations should be let off the hook for lying just because the lie seems obvious to most of us. Here's what's on Nutella's website, in a section called âNutella & Nutritionâ: âCreate a meal of whole wheat toast or a whole-grain toaster waffle with Nutella® hazelnut spread, a small bowl of sliced strawberries and a glass of 1% milk for a good mix of morning nutrients. When used in moderation with complementary foods, Nutella® can form a part of a balanced meal. It is a quick and easy way to encourage kids to eat whole grains, such as whole wheat toast, English muffins, toaster waffles and bagels. With the unique taste of Nutella®, kids may think they are eating a treat for breakfast while moms are helping nourish their children with whole grains.â And that follows 4 paragraphs about the importance of a nutritious breakfast, complete with academic citations & quotes from a registered dietitian!
TV advertising and marketing is generally about the art of deception. Nutella isn't made of veggies; if you've ever called or dealt with an employee of comcast - you know its not comcastic; douching isn't a streamside stroll with your moms; and Taco Bell doesn't make you smile, it gives you the squirts.
As an American parent raising his child to eat like a French kid (french mother), Nutella is common in our food. The question is when does the child eat it and by how much. We eat at most a table spoon a day spread over whole wheat toast (just like the commercial!). Other terrible French breakfast habits include cookies for breakfast and entire bowls worth of hot chocolate. Then again I have a three year old who is not a fiend for sugar and candy because it is not part of an award system but part of his reasonable diet. That parent is out of her mind.
Joy: Thanks so much for sharing your opinion. I agree that a large portion of food marketing in this country is misleading by its very nature, particularly to kids â we invented the Happy Meal, after all! But my hang-up is, where does the importance of individual nutritional education/ decision-making end and the need for macro-regulation begin? I've always felt strongly that it HAS to begin at the kitchen table. I was extremely lucky to grow up in a family that cared about eating right, but I am well-aware that not every kid out there is going to have the same situation. Do you think stricter regulation from the government would in turn influence folks on the ground level to make the proper nutritional decisions for their families? I'd like to think so, but the cynic in me fears that even a strict, wide-spanning crackdown wouldn't nip the issue in the bud (see the forever-duplicitous marketing in the tobacco industry).
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by E.F., Meal Ticket. Meal Ticket said: ILL-ADVISED RANT FACTORY: If you don't know Nutella is bad for you/your kids, you are a total idiot and a bad parent. http://ow.ly/3Ub84 [...]
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