Hold on, we’re going to do one of those journalism ledes that describes an item to you before making you guess what we’re actually talking about:
You can dip pretzels in it. You can slather it on cookies. It makes a great sandwich when paired with banana slices. Nutella. Thanks for humoring us. We’re not the only ones obsessed with the chocolate-hazelnut spread. College students and international thieves are as well. Let us explain.
Last month, the Columbia University’s college newspaper reported an interesting fact about the spread.
“It seems like undergrads have a sweet tooth — and it’s costing Dining $5,000 per week in Nutella,” said an article in the Columbia Spectator. “Since Dining started offering the sweet spread in Ferris Booth Commons last month, administrators have observed a high demand for Nutella — up to 100 pounds per day. But that seemly sum could be due in part to students stealing the chocolate-hazelnut topping.”
“And before you could say chocolate-covered Nutella marshmallow cookies,” joked an article in the New York Times last month, “the council member, Peter Bailinson, heard from Vicki Dunn, the executive director of Dining Services. The subject was how much Nutella students were taking back to their dorms, or wherever they were taking it, and how much all that Nutella was costing.”
“People take silverware, cups and plates, and that adds up over the course of a year to a lot of money,” Bailinson said, according to the article. “With Nutella, it added up much more quickly. Where Dining might have to spend $50,000 to replace silverware and cups, they were spending thousands of dollars on Nutella in one week.”
Is there regulation within Columbia dining halls?
“The mundane fact, according to the University’s Division of Dining Services, is that the weekly cost of the Nutella supply is actually less than 10 percent of the amount originally reported on a student blog and quickly picked up by other media,” said Columbia officials in a press release.
But what about the international thieves you promised us in this editorial?
“At some point over this past weekend, a group of unidentified thieves broke into a parked trailer in central Germany and made off with more than five tons of Nutella,” said an article by Time magazine, sourcing an Associated Press report.
“It is not yet clear how the chocolate-and-hazelnut heist was carried out. The culprits would have had to find a way to abscond with more than 6,500 jars of the stuff, according to some back-of-the-envelope calculations by The Atlantic Wire,” continued the article. “The value of the pilfered condiment is believed to be about $20,000.”
Is there something nefarious you can do with or to Nutella? Because some group of thieves, maybe the same ones, also took energy drinks with them. “According to the English-language German news site The Local,” the Time article states, “a trailer-full of coffee and several tons of Red Bull went missing a few weeks ago in the same town.”
Fill us in on the Nutella secret, y’all.
