100 Pounds Of Nutella A Day? Dining Services Denies Dubious Claim

Are Columbia students really consuming 100 pounds of Nutella a day?

A report earlier this week claimed that the Campus dining hall spending about $5,000 a week in order to keep up with the high demand for Nutella.

Executive director of Dining Services, Vicki Dunn, said: “The demand [for Nutella] has been greater than originally expected … Students have been filling cups of Nutella to-go in Ferris Booth Commons and taking the full jars out of John Jay, which means we’re going through product faster than anticipated.”

The massive consumption of the chocolate butter made national news this week and created drama on the campus. As students allegedly gobbled up the Nutella, school officials threatened to pull the luxury product from the dining hall. But, according to a press release from Dining Services, the entire ordeal was overblown.

Dining services said that they never claimed to be spending $5,000 per week (that rumor was apparently started by a student). Instead, the dining hall said that they actually spend about $2,500 on Nutella, but only after the first week.

Dining Services said that the demand for the product was unusually high when the product was first offered but that the demand has dropped significantly. Now, the dining hall is spending about $500, not $5,000, per week.

Which means that Colombia students are eating approximately 10 pounds, not 100 pounds, of Nutella a day.

Dining Services writes in a press release: “Columbia University officials today denied press reports claiming that campus dining halls were running rivers of nut-brown ink to the tune of $5,000 per week in allegedly pilfered Nutella … Columbia Dining Services emphasized the mundane fact that the ongoing weekly cost of Nutella supply is actually less than one-tenth the purported amount originally reported on a student blog and quickly picked up by other media.”

Are you a fan of Nutella?