Among the most loved Italian products internationally, Nutella is undoubtedly one of the most iconic. It seems that a jar is sold every 2.5 seconds and that if all these jars were put in line they could dub the circumference of our planet. All the Nutella produced in a year weighs as much as the Empire State Building of New York is said, that is, about 365 thousand tons. Popular in the United States are the Nutella Café, with themed furnishings and menus.
The famous spreadable cream based on cocoa and hazelnuts was invented by the Ferrero confectionery industry in Alba, in the province of Cuneo, in 1964 inspired by a previous cream called Giandujot pasta.
During the Second World War, in fact, the same deficiency of cocoa occurred which in the Napoleonic era had led to the invention of the Turin Giandujotti: the pastry chefs had overcome the
Cocoa scarcity, due to the excess of dogal duties, diluting cocoa with hazelnut paste, which was widespread in Piedmont.
The same did, in 1946, Pietro Ferrero who owned a pastry shop in Alba, in the Langhe, an area from which the best Italian hazelnuts still come today. The ingenious pastry chef, finding himself short of cocoa, which at the time was mainly intended for war supplies, decided to "lengthen" the cocoa with hazelnuts and sugar, inventing the first version of the Giandujotti, a confectionery preparation that was wrapped in foil paper, cut into slices and put on bread.
The turning point was, however, in 1964 when Michele Ferrero, son of Pietro, had the intuition of making the father's "supercrema" more creamable, and therefore spreadable. Thinking of also proposing it to the European market, he decided to call it Nutella, with a more catchy sound and deriving from the English, which immediately sent back to the raw material at the base of the product. In the same year he recorded the logo with the Nero and the rest of the writing in red, which we still know today.
It seems that at the origin of this chromatic choice there was the intention of the graphs of the logo to express the idea of simplicity and authenticity of the raw material through the Nero N, which refers directly to the hazelnuts. The red, however, wanted to give the feeling of liveliness, warmth and energy.
From then on, Nutella is in fact the best-selling spread in the world. In the world consumer ranking, the first place wins Germany, followed by France and then Italy, where 83% of families buy Nutella at least once a year, with an average per capita consumption of a kilo.
From the beginning, Ferrero has adopted the 200-gram format of reusable glass containers as glasses as an incentive form for purchase. Soon the idea of decorating these glasses with multicolor images of abstract or nature tied to make them collectibles soon came. Since the 1990s, decoration with images from the world of comics and animation has become popular.
Nutella is undoubtedly an iconic product of Italian culture: it was even mentioned in the right-left song by Giorgio Gaber and in the white film by Nanni Moretti, where the protagonist drowns his anxieties in a huge jar of Nutella, made specifically according to the function set.
In 2007 the American Food-Blogger Sara Rosso established World Nutella Day, which has been celebrated every year on February 5, involving the entire community of fans in initiatives of various kinds.
In 2014 in Italy a stamp was issued to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Nutella's invention, while in 2021, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Foundation of Ferrero, the State Mint dedicated three 5 € coins depicting on one side The classic jar of the spreadable cream and on the other the facade of the company's historical venue.
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