Earlier this year, Swiss company Ferraro, makers of the popular spread Nutella, were ordered to pay out between 2.5 and 3 million dollars to plaintiffs alleging they were mislead by the companies’ advertisements.

The advertisements depicted the product as being made of “simple, quality ingredients like hazelnuts, skim milk and a hint of cocoa.” This lead to some consumers purchasing the product, believing what they were feeding themselves or their children was healthy, or at least wholesome and part of a nutritious breakfast. What they may not have picked up on is that a few tablespoons of the spread is about on par nutrition wise with a “Three Musketeers bar” in that it contains about 200 calories, 3.5 grams of fat and 21 grams of sugar. Unsurprisingly this doesn’t exactly correlate with the healthy and wholesome direction that Ferraro were trying to point consumers. As such it came as no surprise to many, when they lost this class action lawsuit in January.

So what does this have to do with the ethics of Ferraro? On one hand, Ferraro can point to the fact that they do not explicitly state that “Nutella is healthy” or try to hide the fact that it’s full of sugar. On the other, in painting their product as one that fits in with a healthy lifestyle, they are deceiving consumers, and ultimately this is poor practice on their part, as it is fundamentally untrue. Had they exclaimed Nutella was tasty, a nice treat, or merely bypassed any direction that could lead one to believe it would be healthy, they’d have been three million dollars richer, and without the poor PR.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/04/27/nutella-lawsuit.html

http://blogs.laweekly.com/squidink/2012/04/nutella_settles_lawsuit_over_h.php