Nutella vs. Nugatti -- Fight! A Comprensive Review

in GEMS4 years ago

Here in my country, debate perpetually rages over an important aspect of life. Chocolate-hazelnut spreads. When visiting grocery stores one is presented with numerous options in this category. You start with bargain-basement, god-knows-what-they-put-in-it-to-make-it-this-cheap First Price brand spread. Then you have Nugatti, the Norwegian food staple that sells so well here that entire walls of some grocery stores are devoted to it when a shipment comes in. You also have the über popular-in-Europe Nutella, at the high end of the scale. Nugatti is a very Norwegian product that is made by Stabburet -- the very same who make the famous Grandiosa pizza that singlehandedly keeps the Italian immigrant population of Norway to a minimum. It's a fact of life here. Norwegians eat their Nugatti and feel a little tinge of nationalistic pride. Although I can't confirm the facts, I've been told that Nugatti is a product of Norwegian engineering created out of necessity due to a Nutella embargo during World War II. As with Grandiosa pizza, its creator had never actually tried what it is supposed to approximate, but managed to market it well enough, and sell it cheaply enough that it took off. Nugatti is now available in several flavors - Regular, Air (slightly less than the density of a brick), Crisp (with something approximating Rice Krispies inside), Max (which is even more dense, and I think is supposed to have less sugar), and tube. I'm not sure why the tube was created, but I think it's in preparation for a new flavor called "Nugatti Industrial Adhesive".

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For today's purposes, however, we're going to look at Nugatti's famous original recipe and compare it with its old time foe, Nutella. Let the review begin!

Packaging and Labelling

To compare packaging of the two, you can see that Nutella definitely has an edge. A creatively shaped jar specially optimized for butter knives just gives this product an ease-of-use advantage over Nugatti. The transparent container also means that you can easily keep an eye on your levels so that you don't get stuck eating dry toast one morning and being angry at coworkers all day. And the lid is far more secure, ensuring that Nutella spills don't become a problem in your kitchen. As far as the design itself is concerned, the subtly branded white label is a little less frightening somehow than the red Nugatti container which screams "Biohazard!" or some such thing. Looking a little closer at the labels, we can find some interesting things revealed:

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Although nutritionally, they are each approximately as healthy as a post-trick-or-treating Halloween candy binge, look at where the Nutella is manufactured! It's a confusing mish mash of international distribution -- an Italian product intended for distribution in the USA and manufactured right in my homeland of Canada, then subsequently exported to Norway. No wonder this crap costs twice as much as Nugatti! Nutella scores! Nutella 1, Nugatti 0.

Opening

After you bring home your container of tooth-corroding agent, you have to open it, right? First we dig into the Nutella. A thin plastic-foil membrane covers the top with no obvious way to get in. Forcibly sticking a finger through, puncturing this seal works, but gets chocolate sauce all over your hands as you pick and peel little bits of foil everywere making a hell of a mess.

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Opening Nugatti, on the other hand is a straightforward affair: There is a heavy foil seal on top with a pull tab. Pull it, and it comes right off in one clean piece. The decidedly more solid Nugatti makes no messes, and you can even feel free to lick that excess gob off the top, which is probably the best part about buying a new container of Nugatti.

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Nugatti wins, hands down! This brings the score to a tie: 1-1.

Application (Installation)

The apparent intended use of these products is to eat it on bread. Eating Nugatti by itself is probably illegal in Norway without proper medical supervision, and definitely undermines the supposed efficacy of its use as a breakfast condiment. So what would a choclolate-spread smackdown be without a review of the spreading? First we have the Nugatti. Digging a knife into Nugatti is vaguely reminiscent of the feeling of doing grouting on tile when you don't have quite enough water in your mixture. The heavy, coarse Nugatti paste is a little difficult to dig into, and spreading it on a soft, fresh bread can sometimes cause the bread to tear a bit, leaving you with a ball of nugatti sitting on a shredded slice of bread. If it weren't against the rules, I'd suggest microwaving it for a bit to see how it goes. Applying Nugatti cold just isn't going to happen.

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Next up, the Nutella. Nutella has a smooth, creamy consistency that is a bit runny in comparison to the Nugatti. Although it's probably more prone to making a mess, it spreads nice and easily with no hassle.

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Nutella scores! Nutella 2, Nugatti 1.

Taste and consumption experience

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Here we have two roughly-equal pieces of bread with an equal amount of spread on each so that we can test our battling bread spreads in a real-world testing environment.

Nugatti

The Nugatti is very sweet and sugary. It has a somewhat gritty consistency on the roof of my mouth when eating it which is a little unpleasant. There is a distinctive nutty taste about Nugatti which is pleasant. All in all it is enjoyable, but those who don't like overly sweet tastes may be a bit turned off by it.

Nutella

Nutella is smooth and creamy, and just as it spreads, it goes down easily. The taste of Nutella doesn't have as much of a nutty flavor to it, but it also doesn't seem as sweet when compared to Nugatti. By itself, it tastes like a fine chocolate (i.e. a Ferrero Rocher, which is made by the same company, but comes with packaging that makes it cost about 50 times as much per gram as Nutella). Side by side, I'd have to say that Nutella gets an edge. It's not a world of difference, and it would depend on personal tastes, but Nutella just has a more pleasant taste to it, and definitely is a more pleasant feeling food to eat. Nutella 3, Nugatti 1!

Value for Money

Now remember folks, taste isn't everything to everyone! There's a cost involved. This particular point is probably only relevant to those living in Norway, but let's have a look at the cost. I purchased the standard sizes of each. Nugatti weighs in at 500 grams, and Nutella comes in at 371 grams. An odd number, but clearly lighter than Nugatti's portion. With tax included the prices were: Nugatti 500g: $3.86 USD -- Nutella 371g: $6.19 USD. Clearly Nutella is far, far more expensive. This is likely due to a large part because it is an import product that apparently gets shipped around the world at least twice before landing all the way over here in Oslo. In this case, Nugatti has the clear win, bringing the score to 3-2 for Nutella.

Summary

In conclusion, Nutella edges past Nugatti with a better taste, better presentation, and easier application. Those who don't mind the grittiness, sweetness, and prefer the nutty taste of Nugatti will be well obliged to go easy on their wallet and buy large quantities of Nugatti for far less than the cost of Nutella. Personally I'm a stingy bastard. And when I heard of Nutella, I was hoping that it would help me download files off the Internet faster or something. It didn't (it turns out that GNUtella is an unrelated product). So although I prefer the taste of Nutella, I'm probably going to stock my cupboard with Nugatti, so I don't have to go broke funding my addiction. If money were no object, however - Nutella is the clear Italian-Canadian choice. Now that this review is done, excuse me, as I need to brush my teeth in the worst way.