Too much refined sugar is bad. Too much fat, particularly saturated fats, are bad. When you put them together, they work synergistically to fuck you up so much more. But everyone zeroing in on the sugar exclusively, pay attention. There are 4 calories in a gram of sugar, and 9 calories in a gram of fat. In one serving that’s 21 grams of sugar times 4, which is 84 calories from sugar. By contrast, even though there is less fat by volume at 12 grams, it still amounts to more calories than the sugar at 108 calories per serving.
And notably only 1 gram of fiber per serving.
I don’t even remember what Nutella tastes like, and even when I did try it I never understood the hype. If I were trying to make a healthy alternative, I would blend together a mix of hazelnuts, walnuts, oats, cocoa, dates, and however much needed water to get the desired consistency. I don’t feel like added fats should be necessary (nuts are already naturally high in fats), but if I wasn’t satisfied with the results, I might try using a little canola or avocado oil. Knowing me, I’d probably squeeze some flax in as well.
That would be healthier, but it’s no wonder you were disappointed with the results. The stickiness of the dates would definitely let you lower the fat content, but replacing all of that with water is going to give a very different texture.
To mimic the texture of the saturated fats, you’d do better to use olive oil or the avocado oil you suggested and store the result in the refrigerator. Both of those solidify at refrigerator temperatures the way the saturated fats do at room temperature - canola doesn’t, so that won’t work as well.
Replacing the powdered milk with oats (which would also help a little with gelling the mixture) is good, but don’t forget to add a pinch of salt that is inherent in cow’s milk but the oats are lacking.
You’ll still not be getting the flavor exactly, but those two substitutions should get you a lot closer and a much more similar texture. The walnuts in particular are definitely going to throw you off though. You could reduce the cocoa powder slightly to make up for the extra bitterness, but they would still add a heavier earthy flavor to the mix that people used to milk rather than dark chocolate probably won’t find appealing.
This is all hypothetical and something I spontaneously listed based on the ingredients in the image. I haven’t actually tried making it and don’t know if the results are disappointing or not.
Some of the ingredients I chose were based more toward seeking health benefits than flavor - the walnuts and flax in particular. Both ingredients would make the results more of an acquired taste, and I might prefer something like pumpkin seeds and/or cashews if I felt stronger about flavor.
Calories are not just numbers, it matters where it comes from, and sugar is a worthless source of them, while fat is something the body needs. Palm Oil is awful though, everyone should be boycotting it. But the body doesn’t feel full until it gets an amount of fat, the brain needs it for proper functioning.
Fat was blamed for the ills of sugar our entire lives by the sugar industry in fact.
Oh, and actually plant-centric diets are a better way to achieve satiety than fat. Fats are so calorie dense that it’s way too easy to overconsume before feeling full. Since diets heavy in whole-plant foods are naturally high in fiber and low in overall calories, it’s easier for a person to eat as much as they want and still keep their weight under control. This is why vegans and vegetarians tend to average the lowest bodyweights among dietary groups.
Plants do contain fats so it’s not mutually exclusive. Nuts, beans, all sorts of seeds, all contain high amounts of fat, which is oil.
You’re just spouting half-baked influencer nonsense. Sugar is not a demon, carbohydrates are literally the primary fuel that we run on, and virtually every cell in our body uses them. It’s the improper consumption of carbohydrates outside of their natural, intact, whole-food context; as well as within the context of an overall diet that tends to be high in heavily processed foods, extremely low fiber, low antioxidant and other phytonutrient content, way too high in animal products which come packaged with too much saturated fats, especially cured meats, and in lifestyles with other significant risk factors like sedentary, smoking, and excessive alcohol consumption.
Fat has its place, but its role is mainly an emergency store for periods of starvation. Our bodies use these fuels differently too. For example if you look at textbooks on fitness training, they might talk about the myth of “the fat burning zone.” Think of our body’s energy consumption like a set of dimmer switches. The body does not switch between one or the other like a binary, it’s more that it will use differing ratios of all energy sources based partly on activity level. If you’re doing low impact activity like walking or, even just existing, the body will tend to prefer burning a ratio of calories from fat. If you move to higher impact activities, your body will start burning a much higher ratio of calories from carbohydrates. Although going back to that point about the fat burning zone myth, it must be stressed that it is a myth - you’ll burn a lot more fat with higher impact exercise despite the body using more carbs because the overall volume of calories burned is way higher than with low impact, especially if you do something like HIIT.
There is good reason that even relatively conservative fitness organizations like NASM say right in their textbooks - carbs are equally, if not a more important nutrient than protein.
And yeah, the communication about fats in the 80s and 90s was poor. But that doesn’t mean one macro is magically innocent and the other is evil. In the big picture, experts were recommending Mediterranean style diets all the way back then. Industry did not listen. Sure some products were reduced fat - mostly the unpopular ones. And yes they raised sugar levels. But overall, both refined sugar levels, and fat levels have increased in processed food levels over time - especially saturated fats, and when it was legal, trans fats.
But yeah, palm and coconut oils are awful. They’re being put in too many things, and it won’t surprize me if we’re going to start seeing a dip in vegan health outcomes because of that.
The palm oil is especially bad because of the way it is produced - mainly by burning down rain forest and planting there, but the soil isn’t great for that and gets washed out fast, which means the next area of rain forest gets destroyed.
Carbohydrates and sugar are not the same thing, no matter how many times you regurgitate sugar industry pervertions.
Lol. Sugar industry perversions? My anointed sibling, you replied to a comment in which I recommended a list of ingredients to make a healthy Nutella alternative - not a single one of which was sugar.
And okay, carbs aren’t sugar. Except they also are sugar, because all carbs are made of sugar. That’s the point, that the substance itself is not evil or unhealthy. It’s the inappropriate consumption and other relevant lifestyle factors that are.
For example, overconsumption of fats - namely saturated fats - increases insulin resistance in the body. This effect amplifies the harmful effects of sugar. Sugar does not cause diabetes apart from obesity.
Anointed sivling eh? None of that is accurate, brother.
All of it is accurate.
Sugar causes diabetes. Carbs are very different in your body then sugar, and it looks like your post was edited, idk about fat causing diabetes as you typed, never heard that.
But it tastes soooo good!
Good thing I don’t just eat the stuff by itself right out of the jar and finish the whole thing in a single sitting.
Once read a thread where someone was asking the best way to eat it. There were suggestions like on toast, or with banana slices. But the best answer—and the one that had me laughing in tears—was:
With your whole hand.Oh god who would do such a thing!?! Next you’d tell me some people would scrape their fingers all around the inside of the jar and lick them making sure they get every last remaining chocolate of that sweet sweet nector of the gods. And even stick their tongue inside, making out style with the jar, making sure no more chocolate taste left 🤤
And even stick their tongue inside, making out style with the jar, making sure no more chocolate taste left
Ladies, are you having trouble getting your man to go down on you? Boyfriends hate this one simple trick!
All that sugar sounds like asking for a yeast infection.
brand new sentence
Couldn’t be me
Loving the Matilda reference!
Food does have ingredients, yes.
Palm oil is bad though. Besides that, I get what you mean
Ultra-processed palm oil is bad.
Palm oil is bad because rainforest is burned down to grow more monoculture palm oil. https://wwf.panda.org/discover/our_focus/food_practice/sustainable_production/palm_oil/
This basically describes all agricultural:
- Clear wild land
- Implement monoculture
This has been discussed before. Clearing out steppes and prairies is different from clearing out rainforest with its extreme biodiversity.
Because it’s being used for mass ultra processed foods. I was really just referring to the difference between that and the palm oil that’s used in traditional African cooking. Its like soy or corn or any other crop that’s being used for capitalism rather than just feeding people.
I think this is a fair point. There’s palm oil in shit that has no reason for being in there lol
Also cruel to monkeys or something.
Well orangutans live in the forest that is burned down
The use of palm trees for palm oil is bad.
sugar is worse (to your health)
I am expendable, the planet isn’t. Don’t destroy our natural resources for palm oil production
“Food”
I eat only food that has just one ingredient, myself.
Are you turning yourself into an ingredient? Is this the future liberals want?!?
Thanks I Hate It
IIRC, it was a Depression product created for the poors to have some chocolate in their short, diseased, cast-off lives.
La Croix has more “flavor” than Nutella is “chocolate”. 🖕🏼
Spoken like someone who drinks La Croix.
Lobster was once a food of the impoverished too lol
Question: why do people like La Croix? Ive tried every flavor and each one tastes like sand and pain at best.
Palm oil = deforestation.
Nearly all agriculture clears wild land and replaces it with monoculture.
Yup. And it increases as demand increases. Palm oil has seen a surge in use, replacing other things, over the last few decades. This is due to trans fats being phased out. So we traded one major problem for another.
Or is that just propaganda to prevent palm oil from taking to much marketshare?
You need at least 3 times as much farmland to make an equal amount of any other form of vegetable oil.
Most farm oil used in Europe is from sustainable farming, Indonesia makes 50% of the palm oil on the global market, and they claim to have regulated palm oil farming to be sustainable.
Palm oil is an excellent oil, it is efficient to grow because of very high yields, and it’s been used for thousands of years.Since oil palms only grow in humid tropical environments it really comes down to which land we value the most. By using 3 hectares in Europe we could save 1 hectare of land in rainforests. What is worth more, 1 hectare rainforest in Indonesia or 3 hectares of native woodland in Europe? It’s not really clear cut. One could argue that 1 hectare of rainforest is more valuable because of the higher biodiversity. However there is not one natural answer to this question and ultimately subjective.
I heard that palm oil plantations deforest where orangutans live and I wouldn’t want to destroy their habitat. Why can’t America grow palm oil instead of so much corn and soy beans?
I absolutely love Orangutans, but then any action should be against the countries that fail to protect orangutans, not demonizing palm oil which dozens of countries depend on.
Demonizing palm oil reeks of industry manipulation, to protect agriculture in Europe or USA.Ok but you could be Mr monopoly guy behind the keyboard astroturfing your palm oil empire on Lemmy.
But seriously why isn’t the USA producing palm oil?
Not the right climate I suppose.
I buy lots of produce from Canada. I wonder if we could greenhouse palm oil trees.
I don’t see why not, the problem is probably more to make it profitable, as the product would have to compete in a market of cheap palm oil from developing countries.
In greenhouses with artificial light, you can create whatever conditions you want, including a subtropical climate.
Oil palms only grow in humid tropical environments. Environments that when left undisturbed would be tropical rainforest. Decoupling palm oil from deforestation is therefore very hard. Certified sustainable palmoil is simply from farmland that the farmers have proved not to have been deforested recently but that same land still has the potential to return to tropical rainforest after restoration.
Regarding America specifically probably only Hawaii could support it. But land there is scarce and is used for much higher value crops like fruit crops. Harvesting palm oil is also quite labor intensive since the fruit bunches are harvested manually. It therefore does not make economic sense to grow it in countries with high wages.
Palm oil is almost or entirely unique among plant oils in that it is solid at room temperature without hydrogenation, so it’s a plant oil that behaves like an animal fat in recipes. How’s it compare to lard in sustainability?
Definitely not entirely unique.
RBD coconut oil can be processed further into partially or fully hydrogenated oil to increase its melting point. Since virgin and RBD coconut oils melt at 24 °C (75 °F), foods containing coconut oil tend to melt in warm climates. A higher melting point is desirable in these warm climates, so the oil is hydrogenated. The melting point of hydrogenated coconut oil is 36–40 °C (97–104 °F).
There is not a pig breed out there that is all lard. However there is a huge difference between pig breeds regarding the procentage. Back in the day when palmoil was not available and lard was used the pigs we had were much fatter and fed a diet higher in cereal grains and lower in soy. When lard went out of fashion there was suddenly a huge oversupply of the stuff and we shifted their diets but more importantly shifted breeding efforts to ever leaner pigs.
This makes it harder to say exactly what environmental impact lard would have if we shifted back to using it as one of our main solid fats. I would argue that lard right now could be seen as a byproduct. In my country a lot of the lard is currently used as a feedstock for biodiesel which, when you think about it, is absolutely insane considering we at the same time import copious amounts of palm oil. You could even see it as us currently making biodiesel from palmoil by proxy. Which is not ideal.
But let’s say we could make the shift back to lard. We would get slightly less biodiesel but at the same time we could shift to a cereal grain heavy diet for the pigs and go back to those old breeds. Soy yields far less than say corn yields. Fatty pigs could therefore be less land demanding than lean pigs are to raise. I can’t exactly say if the demand for land would go up or down in the final equation but theoretically we could end up actually needing less land when also taking account the less land we would need for palm oil. But the main obstacle here is that people simply don’t want to eat lard anymore. It’s “icky” for the modern consumer. Which is ironic as we still consume it in sausages as one of the largest ingredients, but the consumers won’t accept it in baking products anymore.
In the end lard is just the carb in cereal grain converted to fat via a pig. And cereal grains are plentiful and very high yielding. Is using corn to produce fatter pigs, pigs that we would still raise anyway for the meat, really be worse than using the same corn for bio ethanol? It’s worth a thought. I would be very interested in seeing a full life cycle analysis of the land use and environmental impact such a shift would lead to.
Excellent point, compared to lard it’s probably more like 30 times more efficient in the amount of farmland needed.
The problem is not palm oil, the real problem is that the global population has increased from 5 to 8 billion in 50 years. Without palm oil, deforestation would probably have been worse.
Well, I hope you are correct and that there are no reasons for Indonesia to be lying about that.
Demand has only gone up in the past few decades. It’s in more and more highly processed foods.
I don’t think any of this changes past deforestation, either.
That’s why it is delicious.
I’m actually not seeing anything especially surprising here. Does anyone eat a bite of it and not immediately know it’s got a ton of fat and sugar in it?
I’m not surprised by it any more, but only because I’ve known this for a while now. When I first saw this breakdown (and looked at other sources to confirm), I was caught a bit off guard by the realization that this stuff is well over 50% sugar. The palm oil is not exactly a plus, either.
Honestly, I’d have thought there’s more added oil/fat in it.
But it tastes SO sweet…
Well, it was supposed to be mainly a hazelnut cream with some sugar, cocoa and maybe a few other minor ingredients. And in fact, when it was new and conquering markets, that was what it was.
I think the decades starting with the early 1990s had desensitized a lot of us to enormous amounts of sugar, and in the end we didn’t even consciously notice anymore how sweet that stuff had gotten.
I’m actually a bit surprised it has so much sugar in it and they haven’t tried to replace it with some sort of artificial sweetener or HFCS. The sugar has to be the lion share of the cost, maybe tied with the Coco.
The sugar also supplies a significant amount of the volume of the product. Artificial sweetener is significantly sweeter than sucrose, like hundreds of times sweeter, so just swapping the sugar for artificial sweetener would require them to use a bulking agent. The safest bulking agent that doesn’t change the flavor or texture would be sugar.
Many years ago I developed a weird food intolerance called Fructose Malabsorption. Basically, free fructose molecules mess me up, but sucrose (table sugar) doesn’t, so among other things I started avoiding things with much HFCS in them. I started getting unsweetened iced tea at restaurants and adding sugar. I was absolutely disgusted by how much sugar you have to add to make it as sweet as a soda or sweet tea. In a regular sized drink cup (american medium), I add three packets, and that is very slightly sweet. To make it as sweet as “normal” I’d easily have to add three times that.
They sure tried advertising it as a health food in the USA 20-ish years ago when it was relatively new to the market—“simple, quality ingredients like hazelnuts, skim milk, and a hint of cocoa.” They were sued for deceptive advertising and had to pay millions of dollars.
But yeah, one bite or a look at the ingredients and nutrition label should be enough to warn anyone. The first ingredient is sugar and more than 50% of the food’s mass comes from added sugar.
It’s amazing that anyone was fooled by this marketing. It shows you the power of it I guess.
The first time I tried Nutella I immediately knew what it was: chocolate hazelnut cake frosting. The fact that people slather it on their toast every day seemed as absurd to me as eating cake frosting every day.
North America has long had sweet treats as breakfast or early morning food so I’m surprised you’re surprised.
Things like Danish, donuts, pop tarts, toaster strudel, breakfast cereal… Etc etc
Hold up the Dutch straight up put chocolate sprinkles onto buttered toast and you’re coming at exclusively at the US? And Danish were named after somewhere. Strudel… that sounds awfully germanic… I think Europe is gaslighting us. Also I’ve had European milk chocolate, holy shit.
The danish aren’t all overweight though. 50% of white people in the US are now. 60% or more of the general population last I checked, and it takes an immigrant on average 7 years to become as overweight as the average American.
So something is different.
Sure but not a chocolate cake. Putting Nutella on a piece of bread is basically having a piece of chocolate cake for breakfast.
I mean we have a cereal that’s openly marketed as just a box full of mini chocolate chip cookies
Everyone knows those cereals are for kids and only as a special treat, not an every day thing.
If someone wants to have banana Nutella crepes for breakfast once a month I don’t think that’s a big deal. But having toast with Nutella every day (or cookie cereal) is not a normal thing to do.
Lol, the commercials for said cereal were always literally about everyone saying it was cookies for breakfast, and who doesn’t have the same breakfast every day? If there was a box of cereal, that’s what we were eating until it was gone and then you open the next box of cereal or switch to toast/waffles/pancakes/biscuits/oatmeal until that box is used up, and so on and so forth until it’s time to go back to the grocery store.
If your parents bought the cookie cereal (and there were apparently enough to keep it on the shelves for years) then you were eating it everyday as a normal thing.
Umm lots and lots of kids, and some adults, have that kind of cereal for breakfast most mornings
Everyone knows those cereals are for kids and only as a special treat, not an every day thing.
LOL, no, we really don’t.
Same in Europe in the late 00s/early 10s anyway - the ads here boasted about it being a good source of slow-release energy to keep you going til lunch
It tastes like hazelnut cake frosting.
I think the surprising part is that this guy got a jar that was seperated and layered. Mine just comes as one consistant spread.
I think it’s a photoshop to show proportions.
It’s clearly AI. How is the jar see through?
Glass?
/s I think lol
Doesn’t matter. If someone put time and effort into creating something it is disheartening to be accused of AI slop. If people actually care about reducing AI slop and protecting actual creativity and art, we shouldn’t make aimless accusations.
A photoshoot?
not a photoshop
How do you know this?
I can tell by the pixels
It’s for sure not nutella that just separated. I don’t see how it can be anything other than a shop.
ah yes. the only two options.
definitely not something someone has made as a prop to show the proportions
Some shopping prior to photo could be involved though.
They might use a toxic emulsifier in it for that reason.
Only it wasn’t palm fat until recently. Shittiest oil on the planet, they’re destroying SO much rain forest and replacing it with palms.
If I’m not mistaken palm oil is the best of the worst. It is fast growing in contrast to the alternatives meaning we’d clear much more rain forest if we were to boycott it straight away. We have to remember to have an alternative on hand every time we propose a boycott of something that’s not easily omitted from use.
Rapeseed (canola) oil doesn’t destroy rain forests. Sunflower oil doesn’t destroy rain forests. Palm oil is the worst.
Propaganda / marketing, but still interesting:
There’s a shocking number of people who see words like “hazelnuts” and think its healthy like plain hazelnuts.
It doesn’t help that Nutella has been advertised as being “part of a healthy breakfast”.
I mean, hitting yourself in the face can be a part of an otherwise healthy routine.
Yeah, I have a healthy routine. Make myself a nice breakfast and eat it while I read the paper, take the dog out, have a shower, take the bus to work, jog at lunch, take the bus home, go for an evening bike ride, punch myself in the dick, have a healthy balanced dinner and in bed by 9.
“With natural ingredients”
Always my favorite
For sure. Peanut butter isn’t much better.
I mean, even the worst peanut butter brands are still mostly peanut. Like, they definitely add sugar and soybean oil to them, but, not to that extent. And it’s fairly easy to find peanut butter that is only peanuts without being 4 times the price.
I’m telling about the kind of peanut butter most people buy. For instance, according to the Skippy peanut butter site, two tablespoons of Skippy has 4g of added sugar, which is about a teaspoon. It’s not Nutella levels for sure, but it’s still a lot.
Roasted peanuts (91%)
No comparison to Nutella.
Around here, peanut butter is between 90% and 100% peanuts.
No comparison to Nutella.
Knowing it has sugar is one thing. Seeing the volume of sugar relative to the other ingredients is still a shock
I guess I’ve seen so many of these things that I’ve stopped being surprised. This one was really popular for a long time.
That one can’t be real. There’s more sugar than could physically fit in the coke can. Like no liquid, just sugar, there’s more than 12oz of sugar.
16 to 20 teaspoons of sugar or the equivalent, in a 16 oz pop I’ve read. Can you imagine putting 10 teaspoons of sugar in a cup of coffee?
Yes
There’s 39 grams of sugar in a a coke can. Sugar is water soluble and 90% of the can is water that can absorb the 10% of sugar.
whoa, the Quoakka. I didn’t fact check your comment but upvoted anyway. Hopefully you aren’t wrong.
I hope I’m not wrong as well! I did my best research (I googled) and looked at the nutritional labels (100% 39g of sugar).
Hmmm, look at the labels. They each say something something “100”.
Not the right language, but maybe something like per 100? Like per 100 grams of water? Or… something about volume?
IDK, it would be a weird way to do it. But something like that might explain why so much sugar, seemingly more than can fit in the can.
Sugar is heavy, there’s no way 39 grams is the same size as the can
Edit: gandalf seems to have the right idea here! https://sh.itjust.works/comment/24686999
Edit2: wait, a can has 300+ grams of fluid in it… So the sugar would be 1/3 of what the whole can would be. This actually makes the picture more confusing 🤔
Edit 3:
Behold, 39 grams of sugar. About one shot glass worth.
Here’s that glass next to a can. I don’t have any soda pop in the house.
Doing the real science! Thanks!!
thank you for your efforts 🌟
The sugar is liquidated dude, what are you talking about? 😳
there isn’t more than a can full of sugar in a can of soda, that would be syrup.
There is a video about it on YouTube, one can of coke has 8 big full spoons of sugar in it
Yeah, even considering the angle, that seems off. I just did a search and plucked one of the first to come up; I wonder if that version has been messed with.
Like, for solid food, 50% sugar is what’s typically in sweets, that means 50g sugar in 100g food. 10% sugar (that means 10g sugar in 100g liquid) is what’s in sweet drinks like soda.
The WHO recommends restricting your sugar intake to a maximum of 10% of your calories intake. So for solid food that would be 10g sugar per 100g food, assuming the rest of the food is calorie-rich. For liquids it would be virtually 0g sugar per 100g liquid as liquids contain essentially no other calorie source.
The sugar and fat is why I eat it
I’m fat and sweet. Eat me!
Hmm. I’m still eating it!!
Thank God it’s skim milk.
It’s amazing that it can have all those shit ingredients but still be a health food.
Can make own at home, with a blender.
Roast your own nuts of choice.
Roasted Almond. Great.
Roasted Almond with roasted Hemp kernels. Great.
Roasted Almonds with roasted Hemp kernels, walnuts, pecans, pistachios, brazil nuts, hazelnuts, with a dash of chocolate, chilli, turmeric and white pepper… Great.
Taking the junk from the corporation… Not so great.
Much more fun exploring what ingredients go in your food, rather than have the corporation choose for you. They don’t choose for you. They choose for themselves, at you. You end up with junk instead of food.
Much more fun making your own. Healthier, cost similar, more nutrition, and no where near as much nutrientless white crystalline addictants… unless you want that, and can add sugar back in if you want. (Roasting makes it sweet though. Top tip. Healthy sweet.)
Just almonds, roasted, then blended smooth at a medium speed. Try it. See which wins your taste test.
Okay. Gimmy.
Most of it is sugar ig?
And palm oil
