Nutella is essentially a perfect food — delicious, no HFCS, delicious, full of natural ingredients, and fucking delicious. OK, yes, it has palm oil and is packed to the lid with (mostly unsaturated!) fat, but you make some compromises in the name of pure spreadable joy. Unfortunately, if you had any ideas about celebrating this superfood on World Nutella Day, Feb. 5, pack them in — Ferrero, the company that makes the stuff, has insisted that the organizers cease and desist. Oh Nutella, why won’t you let us love you?
Sarah Rosso, the principal organizer of World Nutella Day, says she received a letter from Ferrero demanding that she stop using the Nutella name and logo. Since it’s a little hard to celebrate Nutella without using the word “Nutella,” that essentially spells death for any sort of World Day. Rosso, who described the letter as “a bit of a surprise and a disappointment,” will have to shut down her Facebook page, Twitter, and website — or, I guess, make them into blind items. “World Day to Celebrate An Unnamed Hazelnut Spread” doesn’t have as much of a ring, but at least it’s not actionable.
Anyway, some people are pretty pissed about this, calling Ferrero “crazy,” “idiots,” and “just plain stupid” on the World Nutella Day Facebook page. But what are we gonna do? As Betabeat said, “We’d call for a boycott of Nutella, but we all know it’s not physically possible.”