The Obesity Crisis
Shame On Nutella
January 20, 2010 @ 02:30 pm
Advertisers have a field day with the TV show, The Biggest Loser. Everybody wants to be healthy, everybody wants to be sexier, so any product that remotely inspires health and wellness wants to be attached to this show somehow. The product placements are one thing - we'll assume that the trainers aren't going to risk their reputations shilling something they think is crap. But what of the advertisements - the old fashioned commercials. Those are a completely different ball game, and during those two hours on Tuesday, I'm amazed at the bald-faced spin some products are able to manage. For most of them, it's just being smart.For at least one of them, it's not spin - it's downright misleading if you ask me, and it's products like this, being falsely advertised like this, that has contributed to the obesity epidemic we're facing. Here's the ad.
This will show their website in a popup since I can't post their video here.
As a mom, I'm a great believer in Nutella, a delicious hazelnut spread that I use to get my kids to eat healthy foods. I spread a little on all kinds of healthy things like multigrain toast. Every jar has wholesome, quality ingredients, like hazelnuts, skim milk, and a hint of delicious cocoa. And Nutella has no artificial colors or preservatives. It's quick, it's easy, and at breakfast I can use all the help I can get. Nutella. Breakfast never tasted this good.Here's the thing. Nutella is delicious. It is in no way healthy, and they don't even claim that it is. Here's the nutritional info pop-up. In only two tablespoons you're getting almost 200 calories and a fifth of the fat you should have in a day. And you know that on any given piece of bread a person is likely to slather more than just two tablespoons (I sure did!). What's more ... there are 21 grams of sugars in that two tablespoons. Any guess how much 21 grams of sugar is equal to? About two tablespoons. The stuff is 100% sugar (more or less).
Look at the ingredients, expertly broken down at obesitypanacea.com. The first ingredient is sugar. The second ingredient is palm oil, which is high in palmitic acid and linked to cardiovascular disease. Half the calories are from sugar, most of the other half are from fat, and only 4% are from protein.
And they want you to think it's a healthy part of a balanced breakfast.
It's ads like this one, strategically placed in the middle of a show about health, that lead people to think clearly unhealthy gunk like Nutella is actually good for them. And so they buy it. And then they do what the commercials says - spread it on healthy things like toast (or sandwiches or vegetables), completely neutralizing any healthfulness of that "healthy thing." It's like scene from The Simpsons when Homer goes on a diet, so Marge gives him rice cakes. Complaining there's no taste, she tells him, "you can put a little something on top for flavor." So he does:
There's probably some Nutella in there somewhere.
I find some of the crap the Food Industry has laden the American public with is pretty abhorrent. They have little interest in actually promoting healthy eating behaviors. They want you to eat their products. So they capitalize on whatever the current movement it. The Low-Fat crazes that filled us with High Fructose Corn Syrup and poor nutritional quality. The High-Protein crazes that lead to all manner of products. And in shows like Biggest Loser they spin their unhealthy products in ways that are downright misleading.
They've been doing it for decades, and in my opinion it's a major factor in what's gotten our country to where it is.
Nutella ads have been taken off the air elsewhere in the world for this very reason - uproar at their misleading nature. They should be here, too, especially in the middle of a show that is supposed to be inspiring people to better themselves, not dig themselves an early, hazlenut-cocoa slathered grave.