Let Them Eat Nutella: French Shoppers Riot Over Sale On Hazelnut Spread

By  Gwen Ihnat

When a French grocery chain reduced the price of Nutella 70 percent, it greatly underestimated the public's craze for the hazelnut spread. The BBC reports, "Intermarché supermarkets offered a 70% discount on Nutella, bringing the price down from €4.50 ($5.59) to €1.40 ($1.74)." This caused stampedes in the markets, resulting in violence, according to one customer: "They are like animals. A woman had her hair pulled, an elderly lady took a box on her head, another had a bloody hand."

This frightening detail from Irish Times:

In one video posted on Twitter, stunned bystanders declare "ce n'est pas normal" as they watch the scrum.

While we love the hazelnut spread as much as the next person, we hopefully would not hit an elderly woman in the head to get it, even if we got caught up in the crazed crowd mentality. In the rioting French people's defense, that is a considerable price reduction, and it's not like Nutella is about to go bad any time soon, so stocking up makes sense. Besides, the French have precedent: Will these Nutella riots go down in history like the 1775 Flour Riot before the French Revolution? Or at least, in the Twitter archives, along with a lot of "spread" jokes?

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