World Nutella Day celebrates what happens when hazelnuts and chocolate collide. For example, millions of people celebrating all on February 5th each year!
- In the 1800s, in the northern Italian city of Piedmont, they made a paste of chocolate and hazelnuts at a time when the nuts were abundant, but the cocoa was not.
- At the end of World War II, cocoa was once again difficult to come by. Pastry Maker, Pietro Ferrero, made loaves of this sweet paste and called it Giandujot. Soon after, the Ferrero Company was founded on May 14, 1946.
- It wasn’t until 1951 that Ferrero made the paste into a spreadable form. We wouldn’t even recognize the spread by name until 1964 when Ferrero’s son Michele gave the jar of creamy hazelnut and cocoa the name Nutella.
- Nutella, a chocolate & hazelnut spread, outsells ALL brands of peanut butter worldwide.
- Hazelnuts were originally used as an inexpensive filler. Sales increased and soon became it’s trademark flavor.
- In the aftermath of World War 2 Italian stores offered a service called “smearing”, which allowed local children to bring in a slice of bread on which they could have some Nutella spread.
- There is a website (nutelladay.com) to keep current on all of the plans for the holiday. You can even sign up for a chance to become the Chief Nutella Ambassador!
- One jar of Nutella is sold every 2.5 seconds worldwide.
- You could cover the Great Wall of China 8 times with the number of jars of Nutella® sold worldwide in a year.
- There are so many jars of Nutella® made each year, that they would line the banks of the Danube 26 times over. That’s a river so long, it flows through 10 different countries!
- You could circle the world 1.8 times with the amount of Nutella® produced in one year.
- The amount of Nutella® produced in one year weighs the same as the Empire State Building.
- Approximately 1.35 million pounds of Nutella are produced every day
- There are more than five million Instagram posts with a #Nutella hashtag. However, the split between photos of real Nutella-relevant content and boobs seems to be about 50/50. The brand’s own account @nutellausa is pretty on point, though.
- Nutella is totally gluten-free and Kosher
- The chocolate layer that surrounds the hazelnut in the middle of each Ferrero Rocher is Nutella.
- Ferrero uses 25% of the global hazelnut supply
- Ferrero originally made his chocolate-hazelnut paste into a loaf designed to be sliced and placed on bread, kind of like a chocolatey version of American cheese slices.
- Not only is it available for purchase and consumption in 160 countries, all of the Nutella sold in a year could be spread over more than 1000 soccer fields.
- There are 52 hazelnuts in every 14-ounce jar of Nutella, according to its advertisements. Hazelnuts make up about 13 percent of the product.
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