Chocolate Hazelnut Spread

Food · Pantry & Condiment · Food, Typed Supps

More than half sugar, under a third fat, and the hazelnuts are the smallest part.

Stage by stage

Sugar first (The jar): Sugar leads the ingredient list by weight, ahead of the palm oil and the hazelnuts.
Little protein (Stomach): 6.8 g per 100 g against peanut butter’s ~25 g, so almost no satiety benefit.
Free sugar (Circulation): 52.6 g added per 100 g — a tablespoon is around 11 g.
Saturated fat (Liver): 7.96 g per 100 g, from palm oil rather than from the hazelnuts.

Timing

Nothing to time. It usually arrives on bread, which moderates the glycaemic rise slightly.

Time to effect

15–30 min: Glycaemic peak.
Per tablespoon: Around 11 g free sugar and 100 calories.

Allergens

Contains: Tree nuts. May contain: Milk, Soya. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.

Eating patterns

Fits: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher, Gluten-free. Depends on the product: Low-FODMAP.

Satiety

Not scored: the satiety index is measured on 240 kcal servings, and nobody eats a 240 kcal serving of this. The question does not apply rather than the answer being unknown.

Environmental footprint

0.4 kg CO2e and 4134 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Nuts" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.

Cost band

Pricey — roughly £16 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.

Key nutrients

Sugar
Fat
Magnesium

Nutrition per 100g

Calories: 524
Protein: 6.8g
Carbohydrate: 57.8g
of which sugars: 57.2g
Fat: 30.3g
of which saturated: 8g
Fibre: 3.7g
Sodium: 42mg

Food vs. supplement

Placement on the shelf next to nut butters does most of the work here. The compositional distance between this and peanut butter — four times the protein, a tenth of the sugar — is larger than between many foods in different aisles entirely.

Kitchen tip

Read the first three ingredients. If sugar comes before the nut, you are buying confectionery, and that is a fine thing to buy knowingly.

Common myth

“It’s a nut spread, so it’s a reasonable alternative to peanut butter.” In reality: Sugar is the first ingredient by weight and palm oil the second; hazelnuts are third. Peanut butter carries roughly 25 g of protein per 100 g and a few grams of sugar, against 6.8 g of protein and 52.6 g of added sugar here. It is a confectionery spread that lives on the wrong shelf. Enjoying it is fine — treating it as a nut butter is what costs you.