Report claims Nutella ingredient is cancerous

Publish Date
Thursday, 12 January 2017, 11:48AM

Nutella's manufacturers have hit out at a landmark report that found one of its ingredients to be cancerous.

The chocolate spread relies on palm oil for its smooth texture and considerably long shelf life.

However, a report by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) declared it to be more carcinogenic than any other oil, following similar claims by the World Health Organization (WHO), Daily Mail reports.

Now, since Nutella's profits have taken a 3 per cent hit, the manufacturer Ferrero has launched a televised campaign, insisting they use palm oil in a way that is not dangerous.

The commercial insists the spread would not be the same without refined palm oil.

"Making Nutella without palm oil would produce an inferior substitute for the real product, it would be a step backward," Ferrero's purchasing manager Vincenzo Tapella said.

He features in a TV commercial aired in Italy over the past three months that has drawn criticism from politicians as they call for palm oil to be banned.

The detailed EFSA report said palm oil is more dangerous than other vegetable oils when refined at temperatures above 200 degrees Celsius.

High temperatures are used to remove palm oil's natural red color and neutralise its smell.

This process, however, causes contaminants called glycidyl fatty acid esters (or GE) to form.

When digested, GE has a tendency to break down and release glycidol, a compound strongly believed to cause tumors.

According to a report by the US National Institutes of Health, oral exposure to glycidol has caused tumors at many different tissue sites in lab mice and lab rats.

However, Ferrero says it uses an industrial process that combines a temperature of just below 200C and extremely low pressure to minimise contaminants.

The process takes longer and costs 20 percent more than high-temperature refining, Ferrero told Reuters.

But it said this had allowed it to bring GE levels so low that scientific instruments find it hard to trace the chemical.

"The palm oil used by Ferrero is safe because it comes from freshly squeezed fruits and is processed at controlled temperatures," Tapella says in the TV ad.

Reddit user MrFlow shared this image that claims to show the ratios of ingredients in Nutella. Photo / RedditThis image claims to show the ratios of ingredients in Nutella.

 

- Daily Mail

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