World Nutella Day Fraught With Confusion, Deliciousness

As people of the world gather to peacefully celebrate World Nutella Day, a woman in California is suing the manufacturers of the hazelnut spread, claiming that it falsely purports itself to be a health food.

Athena Hohenberg, the California woman taking Nutella to court was shocked to learn that Nutella is not, in fact, made of lentils and nutrition and magic but that the chocolate, sweet tasting spread was actually kind of like a candy bar. How surprising that something sweet and chocolately would be similar in nutritional content to something else that was sweet and chocolatey! I’m shocked, I say! Shocked!

The company’s website claimed that the condiment could help form part of a nutritious breakfast, implying that Nutella spread on a piece of bread might help entice a child to eat bread. Hohenberg claims that these filthy lies are enough to warrant a class action lawsuit against the brand and that winnings should be available to anyone who purchased Nutella after the year 2000.

While Nutella’s claim that it can be part of a nutritious diet for the body is dubious, it undoubtedly is soul-nourishing.

I’ll never forget my first encounter with Nutella. It was 2003, and I was in Europe for the first time as a member of my alma mater’s liturgical choir. We were on a concert tour in Italy, which is a fancy way of saying we sang in 13th century Italian at various Roman Catholic churches and spent hours on a bus and ate gallons of gelato and met a grand total of zero dashing Italian men who wanted to give me tours of Rome on their Vespas. I think I attended mass 10 times over the course of my week there, but the most religious experience I remember is tasting Nutella for the first time. It was at a hotel in Venice, and it was in a crepe, and I was confused and delighted and in love. I remember more about the first time I ate Nutella than I do about the first time I had sex.

May the God of Hazelnut rain his wrath down upon the woman who wishes to restrict our access to the sweet hazelnut nectar of heaven.