In the absence of cocoa, Nutella: understand the origin of the sweet and why it is celebrated today

The hazelnut, sugar and chocolate paste now known as Nutella was created in 1946, at the end of the Second World War, by Piedmontese confectioner Pietro Ferrero and his son Michele, as a way of overcoming the lack of cocoa, which the conflict had made rare. and, as a result, prohibitively expensive.

Ferrero then launched Giandujot, with a minimal amount of cocoa, but enough to impart flavor to the candy, which was then denser, rectangular and with a shape and packaging similar to that of a chocolate bar.

Five years later, the confectioner transformed his Giandujot from paste into cream, now sold in jars under the name of Supercrema.

The name Nutella appeared in 1964, after an improvement of the previous recipe, according to the manufacturer. It was the beginning of international expansion, in 1966 to France and then to several European countries. The first factory outside Europe opened in 1978 in Australia.

The company arrived in Brazil in 1994, with the importation of Kinder Egg, and in 1997 the factory in Poços de Caldas (MG) was opened, which produces Nutella (among other brands) and sells to the domestic market and to countries such as Germany, Argentina, Russia, USA and Italy itself.

The current product is made from seven ingredients, according to Ferrero: cocoa, milk, hazelnuts, vanilla, sugar, palm oil and soy lecithin.

World Nutella Day, celebrated this Sunday (5), was created by an American blogger with experience in technology and marketing.

Sara Rosso, now director of product marketing at HubSpot, lived in Italy from 2003 to 2016 and, four years after arriving in the European country, she launched the world day and organized it until 2015, when the management of the event passed to Ferrero itself. .

In a video testimonial, Rosso says that the first time he tried the chocolate and hazelnut spread was in 1994, on a student trip to Italy. “On my first morning in the country, I went down for breakfast and there were several small jars of something unknown. I decided to try it instead of the jam, which I already knew what it was, and I thought it was delicious.”

The blogger even looked for Nutella when she returned to California, where she lived, but at that time the candy was not usually sold in the United States.

Years later, talking to a friend about how unknown the sweet was among Americans, the idea came up to launch World Nutella Day on her blog about food and travel in Italy, written in English and named Ms. Adventures (‘owner’ adventure).

The date, February 5th, has no special significance. “We chose February 5 because we thought the beginning of the year would be a good time to start learning more about her,” says Rosso.

The movement gained momentum, she says, and blogs began to receive participation from Nutella fans around the world — “Japan, India, England, Brazil, hundreds of thousands of comments on Twitter, 42,000 comments on Facebook.”

From then on, fans of the brand used to use the world day tag (#WorldNutellaDay) on February 5th to post pictures of their favorite dishes with Nutella, send songs about the sweet, make declarations of love for chocolate with hazelnuts and share recipes (in the list of recipes on Rosso’s website there are several dessert recipes that use pasta as an ingredient, such as Minitiramisu and Nutella Pie with Mascarpone).

A website was created especially for the commemorative date. In 2015, the brand reached 30 million fans on Facebook.