French ecology minister: stop eating Nutella, harmful to 'environment'

PARIS , June 17 (UPI) -- Nutella, the popular hazelnut-chocolate spread, is harmful to the environment, French Ecology Minister Segolene Royal suggested.

Its main ingredients include sugar palm oil, and Royal, in an interview Monday with France's Canal Plus television channel, noted, "We have to replant a lot of trees because there is massive deforestation that also leads to global warming. We should stop eating Nutella, for example, because it's made with palm oil. Oil palms have replaced trees, and therefore caused considerable damage to the environment."

She suggested Nutella should be made with different ingredients, and urged the French population to stop eating it.

Ferrero, the Italian company which has manufactured Nutella since 1964, replied in a statement the product accounts for 170,000 metric tons of palm oil annually, or about 0.3 percent of the world's supply. It gets the majority of its palm oil from Malaysia, and added it launched the Palm Oil Charter in 2013, committing the company to responsible palm oil sourcing and protecting wildlife, the environment and workers' rights.