Critics claim Nutella’s proposed labeling would be deceptive

By Caitlin Dewey

The Washington Post

It’s a lot of fuss over a little thing: a tablespoon, to be exact.

When the Food and Drug Administration asked for public input on an obscure regulatory change that would cut Nutella’s labeled serving size by half, it was flooded with more than 650 comments.

At issue is something called the RACC, or the “reference amount customarily consumed,” a federal guideline used when labeling the serving sizes for packaged foods.

Nutella is currently classified as a dessert topping, with a RACC of two tablespoons. Its manufacturer, Ferrero, wants it reclassified as a jam or into a category all its own, which would cut the serving size (and the accompanying sugar and calorie counts) displayed on Nutella labels.

That bothers health groups and the Peanut Butter lobby, who see Nutella as an encroaching threat. To them, the proposal is an example of how the junk food industry misleads consumers about nutrition.

“It’s deceptive,” said Lindsay Moyer, a nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which submitted a comment opposing the serving size reduction. “Shrinking the serving size of Nutella is a marketing ploy to trick people into thinking that it has less calories than peanut butter.”

In a statement to the Post, Ferrero said it was simply seeking clarity as it and other companies prepare their new Nutrition Facts labels, slated for release in 2018. “The key point is that the amount that is customarily consumed — 1 tablespoon — should determine the RACC,” the firm said, referencing own consumption data it has commissioned through a third party.

Ferrero’s most recent quest to cut Nutella’s serving size dates back to 2014, when the company first petitioned the FDA to either reclassify Nutella as a jam or place it in a new RACC category. In that initial petition, Ferrero’s lawyers argued that Nutella is now used mostly as a spread on bread or toast, and should thus have a jam or jelly’s one-tablespoon serving.

The FDA standardizes serving sizes by groups of foods: all jellies have the same serving size; all butters have another. Contrary to popular belief, the serving size describes how much Americans typically consume in one sitting — not how much they actually should. It’s designed to help consumers easily compare foods.

But critics of Nutella’s FDA petition say the company is trying to make that more difficult — that, in fact, they’re hoping to obscure the nutritional differences between Nutella and its more nutritious competitors. The Peanut Institute, an industry lobbying group, requested that the FDA classify Nutella as a nut butter, with its serving size of two tablespoons.

Meanwhile, the Specialty Food Association — which represents several almond and peanut butter producers, as well as the makers of Nutella-like coffee, cookie and chocolate spreads — requested that Nutella keep the dessert topping designation. According to Euromonitor, a market research firm, U.S. sales of Nutella are up 39 percent percent — from $161.4 million to $224.3 million — in the past five years. While far more nut butters are sold in the U.S. overall, their sales only grew five percent in that same period.

Research has found that product sales increase when manufacturers introduce smaller serving sizes, at least for some food categories.

“[If] the two products were on the same shelf but with different serving sizes, the nutrition information would give an unfair advantage to [Nutella],” wrote Philip Kafarakis, the president of the Specialty Food Association, in his comments to the FDA. “It is imperative that consumers be able to easily make comparisons of the macronutrient amounts in foods they use in similar ways.”

Nutella is indeed frequently stocked with nut butters in stores, which share the two tablespoon serving size and narrowly undercut Nutella on calorie count. If Nutella’s serving size changed to one tablespoon, it could advertise a mere 100 calories per serving — versus roughly 188 calories for two tablespoons of peanut butter, or 196 calories for almond.

Unlike most peanut or almond butters, Nutella is composed largely of sugar and palm oil; hazelnuts are its distant third ingredient. Two tablespoons of Nutella have 21 grams of sugar, which is 88 percent of the American Heart Association’s daily sugar recommendation for women, and 58 percent that for men.

— Washington Post