Fun Facts About Nutella in Honor of World Nutella Day
Nutella has its own day—February 5—because at some point the chocolate-hazelnut spread got so big that someone decided it deserved one.
People use it for just about everything. Toast, obviously. Dipping fruit. Baking it into brownies and cookies. Some folks straight-up eat it with a spoon when nobody's looking.
Here's some stuff about Nutella you probably didn't know.
World War II Is Why It Exists
The Nutella on shelves now didn't start out this way. After World War II, cocoa was hard to come by across Europe, so Pietro Ferrero—an Italian confectioner—had to get creative. He made a paste from hazelnuts, sugar, and whatever little bit of cocoa he could scrounge up.
That paste turned into a loaf called Giandujot in 1946 that you could slice and spread on bread. A few years later in 1951, it became a jarred spread called SuperCrema. After more recipe tweaking and yet another name change, Nutella finally launched in 1964. The jar everyone knows showed up in Germany the following year.
Ferrero Uses an Insane Amount of Hazelnuts
Ferrero buys 25% of the world's entire hazelnut supply just to make Nutella. A quarter of all hazelnuts grown on the planet go into those jars. The Guardian reported back in 2014 that the company cranks out about 397 million pounds of the stuff every year.
One regular 14-ounce jar contains about 52 hazelnuts, according to BBC. The rest is sugar, palm oil, and cocoa.
There's No Secret Knife Hidden in the Lid
A TikTok video went viral in 2020 claiming there's a spreading knife tucked underneath the lining of the jar lid. There isn't. Metro debunked it pretty quickly, but people really wanted to believe it.
How to Make Homemade Nutella
If you want to try a version of Nutella closer to its original roots, you can make a simple chocolate-hazelnut spread at home with just a few ingredients.
Ingredients:
2 cups hazelnuts
1/4 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2–3 tablespoons neutral oil (like vegetable or hazelnut oil)
Pinch of salt
Directions:
Roast the hazelnuts at 350°F for about 10 minutes, until fragrant.
While warm, rub them in a clean towel to remove as much skin as possible.
Add hazelnuts to a food processor and blend until they turn into a smooth paste. This can take several minutes.
Add sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla, salt, and oil. Blend again until smooth and spreadable.
Adjust sweetness or oil as needed, then store in an airtight container.
The result won’t be exactly like the store-bought version, but it gives a good sense of how hazelnuts and cocoa came together to create what eventually became Nutella.
A Blogger Made This Holiday Happen
World Nutella Day wasn't dreamed up by Ferrero's marketing team. Sara Rosso, a blogger who really loved Nutella, started it in 2007. She got other fans to celebrate every February 5 by posting pictures and recipes on social media.
It caught on enough that in 2015, Rosso handed the whole thing over to Ferrero, and they've been running it ever since.
So Nutella exists because cocoa was scarce after World War II, uses a staggering amount of the world's hazelnuts, doesn't include a hidden spreading knife no matter what TikTok says, and has its own holiday because a blogger loved it that much. Not bad for a super nutty chocolate spread.
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