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: Who else thinks the Nutella ad on the mumsnet homepage is RIDICULOUS and OUTRAGEOUS?
(178 messages)
me, but if the clamis made on the ad are true, then it could be worse! however we dont even have it in the house (i could eat it without the toast - straight out of the jar!)- theres no way i would let me kids eat it for breakfast - i dont even allow coco pops!
DH loves nutella and keeps quoting the advert to me, something about 42 hazlenuts, 1/2 glass of milk and a teeny weeny bit of sugar in it.(and how nutritious it is) Yeah right
Yes, it's daft to say the least. Here in Italy they spout it as a healthy breakfast food, together with bread and fruit juice. What they really mean to say is the bread and fruit juice are healthy. Apparently it's healthy because of all the nuts, but they omit to mention the vast amounts of fat and sugar.
Mind you, I have no faith in Italian advertising standards, Kinder is frequently pushed as being nourishing because it contains milk. Shame about all the other crap that's in it.
sorry about the rant, a bugbear of mine.
Can you not complain to advertising standards in the UK? Surely they're quite strict and this is misleading info imo.
Brangelina that advert is definately not misleading, they are not making any false claims. There are strict advertising codes here and don't see why nutella wouldn't be in line with these
Oh fgs, it is only a food, to be eaten ocasionally. On wholemeal toast, thinly spread, with a glass of fresh juice, yes, that is an acceptable breakfast in my opinion. Not everyday, but certainly once a week.
But then I would not give it as an after-school snack. Afterschool snacks in this house are fruit and yoghurts. (and sometimes the odd biscuits if we are out and about and pushed for time)
spread on toast, it isn't actually vast amounts of fat and sugar, no more than butter and honey or peanut butter and jam, and children do need fat in their diets and will burn of the sugar at school. It's not like feeding your kid a snickers bar and that's it for breakfast is it?
"Balanced"!!!???!! No. I don't think it should be on Mumsnet's homepage. People are free to make their own decisions, but MN is meant to give people good advice. How can a chocolate spread be seen as good advice?
I used to eat Nutella, they did it in small little tubs, at school we used to have competitions to see who could make it last the longest
dd1 has a nut allergy (or has she? who knows, certainly not our arsehole doctor who has not seenn her for months) so we can't have Nuttella in this house
Actually, it's not so much the sugar (jam on toast is a weekend breakfast treat for us, definitely not every day) as the concept that chocolate is a breakfast food. It may be a 'healthier' form of chocolate but it is telling the LOs that chocolate=breakfast=real food. Which I disagree with completely.
But I do love the stuff. I love it so much that I won't have it in the house!
I agree with you candles, in that I wouldn't serve it for breakfast coz I don't want DS thinking chocolate is acceptable breakfast food, but I'm just saying the advert isn't misleading and there is nothing objectionably imo about mumsnet running the ad on the home-page. We are adults, we can take it or leave it.
this advert IS ridiculous and outrageous because I am trying to lose my post-christmas LARD and I am practically faint with starvation and all I see is DELICIOUS NUTELLA on MN
No one is pinning you down and forcing you to buy it or give it to your children at breakfast. It is an advert, for a product which you then have a choice about buying.
Mine have honey on toast and jam on toast for breakfast and I often put honey or even mollassas on their porridge.
I might even try it (I am a nutella virgin - yes I'm 36 and have NEVER EVER eaten it!!)now I've read this thread and some of the posters enthusiasm for it I quite fancy licking some off a spoon
do try it turkey - I only came to it a few months ago and am on my 4th jar (which you can keep as a neat little drinking glass afterwards) - brilliant on brioches or sandwiched between two rice cakes - yum
I want it noted that I actually checked the homepage and was expecting a re-run of the gruffalo advert but instead I was faced with a 5p sized jar of nutella
TurkeyLurkey- word of warning, it is highly addictive!!! I loose all self control when I know a jar is sitting in the cupboard calling to me (it doesn't last long!)
My DH has Nutella on toast every morning for breakfast. Bleurgh. I can't eat chocolate before coffee time, but used to demolish whole jars of Nutella with a spoon. I don't have a hge problem with the ad, to be honest.
the rice cakes make the nutella more yum as they're so bland ! ds won't touch it but I wouldn't let him have it for breakfast even if he did like it...I only have it for breakfast at weekends
In France it's normal to have chocolate for breakfast - hot chocolate, chocolate pastries, chocolate cereals, chocolate cakes. It's only not a "normal" breakfast food for us because culturally/traditionally it's not. Each to their own. I like ham sandwiches for breakfast, but that's just me.
He never asks for pudding, doesn't raid the chocolate we keep in a tin well within his reach, doesn't generally have sweets or dessert.
Within an overall intake during the day, why on earth does it matter of a small amount of chocolate, nuts, sugar and oil gets eaten at one hour of the day rather than another?
Anyway, I have MN to keep my general standards of decision-making around nutrition within responsible parameters, so am not worried that the ad will turn me into a crack addict or worse. (Fruit Shoots etc)
I have work with kids who hgave gone to school havinh eaten crisps and mars bars fro breakfast, much better for them to have had nutella on toast.
I used to have it a couple of times a week when I was kid, and I donhp;t view chocolate as a "breakfast food" nor has it given mne poor eating habits as an adult.
This sort of "Oh god my children willL WITHER if they so much look at a grain of sugar, and if they eat it, how will I face the Boden mummies at the school gates" shite that is regularly spouyted on MN really pisses me off
Spot on Blu. While I certainly don't want my children to grow up to be unhealthy lard-arses, I also don't want them to see chocolate and sweets as such a holy grail that they a) binge on it when they get chance or b) mug other children for their sweets at parties which I have seen happen.
My friend's little girl doesn't eat her meals and snacks on Nutella sandwiches (white bread) instead. And they wonder why she's permanently constipated.
It is ridiculous IMVHO. But I do hold a certain amount of contempt for most adverts. No reason why I should feel differently about a company advertising the 'benefits' of having a spread with additives as a "balanced" breakfast food.
BTW it is NOT chocolate, it only forms a minimal part of the product. See below the ingredients which vary from country to country.
"Nutella is a modified form of gianduja. The exact recipe is a secret closely guarded by Ferrero. According to the product label, the main ingredients of Nutella are sugar and modified vegetable oils, followed far behind by hazelnut, cocoa and skimmed milk, comprising together at most 28% of the ingredients. The recipe for Nutella varies in different countries. In the case of Italy the formulation uses less sugar than the product sold in France. Nutella is marketed as "hazelnut cream" in many countries; it cannot be labeled as a chocolate cream under Italian law, as it does not meet minimum cocoa concentration criteria.
Despite being advertised as a healthy breakfast choice for children, about half of the calories in Nutella come from fat (11g in a 37g serving, or 99 kcal out of 200 kcal) and about 40% of the calories come from sugar (20g, 80 kcal). [1]
Good grief - no I don't agree. But then I was feeding my baby a very small bit of chocolate cookie last week.....dd1 (who is 9) was horrified that I was feeding the baby sugar. Perhaps she would fit in well round here
But maramalde is advertised as a breakfast food - and marmalade and a slather of butter can't be better than nutella without butter, surely? In terms of sugar / fat intake?
And now that Special K and other cereals are advertised as lunch and late night snack foods, well, where will it all end?
(fully aware that many advertising campaigns focus on trying to get a product used in new ways, at new times of day etc)
I can't imagine eating it at any other time of day, frankly.
It was one of the very few things that super-skinny DS1 ate when he was a toddler - spread on pancakes it was a very good way to get some calories into him. He wouldn't touch it with a bargepole now as he is Mr Healthy Eating, but it was very handy stuff at the time.
See, I do view Nutella as a breakfast food. So we only eat a small amount on toast once a week or so. (rest of the week is cereals, porridge, toast with jam, or heaven forbid croissants and pain au chocolat at the weekends) But we would never ever have it the rest of the day. It is for breakfast only.
I absolutely fail to see why it is considered worse to give the dc nutella for breakfast, and then healthy snacks the rest of the day (as we do), than giving them unsweetened weetabix for breakfast but putting a Penguin biscuit in their lunchbox. Each to their own as far as I am concerned. There is only a problem in someone has nutella on white bread for breakfast, chocolate biscuit in the middle of the morning, nutella on bread for lunch, nutella or another form of chocolate after school, and then again as an evening snack. But a little bit, once in a while is normal, completely normal.
whoever doesnt think its ridiculous and outrageous, just check out all the people on the trying to loose weight threads here. i agree that food is food, all of it is ok in moderation, and nothing should be restricted. that is what we practice at home and there are good results. but i come from the world of marketing baby products, and thats where i speak from when i say that i think its outrageous to market to mums and dads on mumsnet that nutella is 'part of a healthy breakfast'. it may be a 'fun snack when your in the mood' but it is completely misleading to write 'part of a healthy breakfast' and that is a HUGE nono when it comes to marketing.
"but I do think it is crap to advertise it as a healthy start to the day, yes"
have you clicked to read the rest of the ad???
"What is a balanced breakfast?
A balanced breakfast is one that contains elements from the major food groups. A good example is a 15g serving of Nutella on wholegrain toast together with a bowl of low or no sugar cereal with milk and a glass of pure fruit juice, which can help provide kids with slow release energy."
So it's not like they're saying you ONLY need Nutella........are they???
ok, so would you give your child 15g of nutella each morning? and would your child eat ALL his breakfast if 15g of nutella were also there?
if you dont think its misleading that is a good thing for the world of marketers, but as an on-the-face statement it is really ridiculous.
what about the preservatives and other unnatural ingredients in it? are those part of the healthy breakfast? their tag sentence and the info inside are not complete and are designed to give parents a justification why its ok to feed their child nutella in the morning.
Nutella is yummy! DS quite often has it for breakfast. On white bread. Doesn't seem to have done him any harm. He might have a Babybel afterwards or a satsuma. He may not. I try to then balance things out later in the day so his after school snack would be something like a ham sandwich or something similar.
So yes iftherewasn'ttheriskthatIwouldeatitall I would let my DC have a slice of toast with Nutella on it with alongside their porridge/wheetabix - no more filling/worse than giving them toast and jam/marmalade after their cereal IMO.
Unless you're going to have homemade organic porridge with lashings of freshly grown blueberries, I bet someone will always claim it's unhealthy in someway. actually I bet you'd claim that had too much dairy in.
my children have the dairy free choc spread on pancakes for breakfast many mornings, and other mornings they will have a banana, dairy free youghurt and jam on toast, other mornings honey loops and cereal with soya milk.
I think all those are good breakfasts in my humble opinion.......and they have evolved to this despite my best intentions for a cooked breakfast etc pre-kiddies, because they and I have many allergies.....leading to limited diets and now limited tastes!
BUT this isn't an arguement over who does the best breakfast = who is therefore the best mummy, is it?
this is all about the statement of whether the advert is OUTRAGEOUS on mumsnet.
it isn't in my opinion, as we are all educated parents who can make up our own minds....
if it were aimed at children on childrens TV and websites telling them that it is THE best breakfast of choice over all others........THATWOULDBEOUTRAGEOUS!
and as far as I now know, advertising for these foods are banned from those types of places, and so it leaves parents sites as the types for them to place such adverts.
Where did I say they don't eat fruit or cheese? They do - but they eat chocolate, jam, biscuits, crisps, sausage rolls and many, many other things too. This house is not a sugar free zone! Nor is it exclusively painted in Nutella
Eating a bit of chocolate is part of childhood. Agreed, we as parents should provide them with balanced nutrition, but an occasional lollipop or a bit of nutella on toast makes them happy, so what?
It's rather neurotic of some parents to completely villify all sugars/chocolate and prevent their dcs from having any. (I am talking about people I know in RL, not OP) These kids show up at birthday parties, eat everything in sight until they make themselves sick.
The glass of fruit juice recommended in the balanced breakfast suggestion would be laden with sugar - personally I wouldn't call thier breakfast as a whole particularly balanced.
It's hard not to feed your child sugar on a regular basis if you include dried fruit, fruit juice (even freshly squeezed orange), even milk has quite a high sugar content.
All you that are outraged and are banning "bad" foods, just wait til they are teenagers! Breakfast can be packet of crisp, a mars bar and a can of coke!
No matter how healthy they start, you can bet on the way to school, the sweet shop is THE place to go. Then on the way home same again, occasionally a nice greasy kebab (esp the older ones on the way back from the pub)
I find mine all prefer a macdonalds breakfast now while waiting for a bus, keeps them warm in the winter
A little of everything for childre I say and nutella IS lovely on toast, why can't kids have lovely things???
fruit or cheese? Would that be high sugar fresh pineapple (which DS often has) or very high fat cheese?
DS does eat fruit and cheese, he also eats Nutella a couple of times a week - maybe 3.
I know vitamin and proteins come in other foods and may noit be present in Nutella - but if a child has a sufficient amount of nutrients in other foods (aka a balanced diet) Nutella on wholemeal toast wouldn't worry me at all. Children need high energy food, they need fats - and judging by the list of ingredients, Nutella is relatively free from horrible chemical additives.
KKM.....milk would kill me! (well, not as yet, but I am now getting swollen lips and tingly tongue and asthma attacks so docs say that I am leading to anaphylaxis(sp?) with it)
.......someone said the macdonalds word.....
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