PARIS, June 18 — France’s Ecology Minister Segolene Royal apologised yesterday for telling people not to eat Nutella because it contributed to deforestation and climate change.

“A thousand apologies for the row over Nutella,” she wrote on her official Twitter account.

The mea culpa related to comments she made on French television on Monday, when she said “we should stop eating Nutella… because it’s made with palm oil” — an ingredient that ensures the soft but not liquid consistency of the popular chocolate-hazelnut spread.
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Italian politicians and media broadened the attack on what they saw as an unimpeachable national product.

“Segolene Royal should leave Italian products alone. The menu tonight: bread and Nutella,” Italy’s environment minister, Gian Luca Galletti, said in a tweet.

The wife of Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Agnese Renzi, was even photographed going to a ‘Nutella concept bar’ at an Expo fair in Milan with her daughter and ordering a Nutella-and-cream crepe.

Several Italian politicians called on Royal to apologise, while the Italian business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore said the French minister’s “crusade” was wrongheaded and a Nutella boycott would do nothing against deforestation. — AFP

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PARIS, June 17 — France’s ecology minister, Segolene Royal, has rankled the company that makes Nutella by urging the public to stop eating its irresistible chocolate hazelnut spread, saying it contributes to deforestation.

“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,” Royal said in an interview late Monday on the French television network Canal+.

“Oil palms have replaced trees, and therefore caused considerable damage to the environment,” she explained.

Nutella, she said, should be made from “other ingredients”.

The comments needled Ferrero, the giant Italian chocolate group that makes Nutella.

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Ferrero gets nearly 80 per cent of its palm oil from Malaysia. The rest of its supply comes from Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Brazil.

Two and a half years ago, French senators tried to impose a 300 per cent tax on palm oil, saying it was dangerously fattening and its cultivation was bad for the environment. The measure was defeated. — AFP

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