Ferrero has changed the Nutella recipe without informing its customers
You don't change the recipe for a flagship product so easily. Ferrero, the world's third-largest chocolate and confectionery group, experienced this this week. The company acknowledged having made “minor adjustments to the Nutella recipe”. If "the quantity of hazelnuts, cocoa, sugar, and palm oil remains unchanged", Ferrero has increased the share of skimmed milk powder. This increases from 6.6% to 8.7% for the whole product.
It was a German consumer association, Verbraucherzentrale Hamburg, which noticed on November 2 that the spread seemed lighter than usual. To understand if a change in the composition had occurred, the association studied in detail the label of Nutella. Result: the share of skimmed milk powder has increased significantly.
This development could be explained by the Italian company's desire to reduce production costs by lowering the dose of cocoa contained in the paste. Produced in West Africa, cocoa is indeed an expensive commodity. Its price is currently trading on the markets around 2200 dollars per ton. “Cocoa has dropped in the list of ingredients but Ferrero refuses to give its exact content despite our requests. Obviously, the company does not want to be transparent vis-à-vis its customers, ”says the Verbraucherzentrale, quoted by Les Echos.
Internet users are annoyed on social networks
Nutella is not a food product like any other. Consumers are almost sentimentally attached to it. At the announcement of the slight modification of the recipe by Ferrero, Internet users did not fail to react. The hashtag #Nutellagate even appeared on Twitter.
Ferrero provides details on the new recipe
To defuse this beginning of controversy, the Ferrero group reacted yesterday with a press release. “For the past few days, we have been particularly attentive to the concerns of consumers. It seems important to us to provide all the details concerning the minor adjustments made to the Nutella recipe. Thus, the company clarified: “Concretely in France, the quantity of hazelnuts, cocoa, sugar and palm oil remains unchanged. The adjustments made are as follows: substitution of whey powder by an equivalent quantity (2.1g/100g of total product) of skimmed milk powder (thus going from 6.6% to 8.7% of total product). This allows us to further improve the overall quality of the milk contained in Nutella and also to ensure better stability over time of its taste. Nothing else has been changed»»
Nutella, a product sometimes singled out
Nutella is produced mainly in the French factory in Villers-Ecalles, in Normandy. A factory which is the subject of an investment plan of 38.5 million euros, announced by the company at the beginning of the year. However, if the spread is produced in an ultramodern factory, it is its composition that is often decried. Indeed, Nutella contains, in particular, palm oil, a material accused by the European Food Safety Agency of being potentially carcinogenic.
Also readWorld Nutella Day: 7 unusual facts about this spread
In addition, palm oil is also in the crosshairs of environmental defense associations because it would cause ecological disasters. In Indonesia and Malaysia, palm cultivation is gradually replacing older forests. A criticism that Ferrero knew how to hear. The company has been committed to sustainable palm oil production since 2005.
