We have a day for everything these days… We celebrate even the weirdest things, from toothaches and having ice cream for breakfast to losing pennies and working naked (wtf?!)… And these are only a few of the celebration days we’ve got this month…
So, let’s take a day to celebrate Nutella too, in 2015 it’s got its 9th anniversary! 🙂
The World Nutella Day was created in 2007 by an American blogger and it has its own website – www.nutelladay.com, its own Facebook page – here, its own Twitter account – here and also its own hashtag on Twitter – #WorldNutellaDay.
Well, history tells us that it was in 1940s that Nutella got on the market and despite the many imitations, couldn’t be replaced since. Apparently, at some level, we can thank Napoleon for the creation of Nutella, when he tried to freeze out British commerce and left the chocolatiers in big trouble. These started adding chopped hazelnuts to the chocolate in order to stretch the supply as much as possible. The result? A pasta named Gianduja.
In the WWII, the Italian pastry makes, Pietro Ferrero once again created Pasta Gianduja, that was originally a solid block that could be sliced and served on bread. The Ferrero Rocher company is the one that owns Nutella now, of course.
Pasta Gianduja afterwards became known as Supercrema when it went from the solid block of chocolate and into a spreadable chocolate cream. It was renamed Nutella in 1964 when the product was first introduced to the UK. So the name turned 50 years old last year, wow!
After a bit of history, I’ll leave you with the most funny/weird things to know about Nutella:
1. You could circle the world 1.4 times with the amount of Nutella produced in one year.
2. You could cover the Great Wall of China eight times with the number of jars of Nutella sold in a year.
3. One jar of Nutella is sold every 2.5 seconds throughout the world. That is amazing, considering the fact that across the world, a baby is born every 8 seconds.
4. The owners of Ferrero currently use 25% of the world’s hazelnuts.
5. You can’t name your baby Nutella, in France… Ooops.
6. There are Nutella restaurants in New York, Frankfurt and Bologna.
7. Italian shops used to offer a smear of Nutella for free to kids, if they came in with a slice of bread.
Want more? Learn how to say ‘Happy Nutella Day’ in languages all over the world – here!