ROME: Segolene Royal, the French ecology minister, has outraged Italy by suggesting that Nutella should be boycotted because it leads to deforestation in the tropics.
Ms Royal urged consumers to stop eating the hazelnut and chocolate spread because it is made from palm oil, which comes from vast plantations in south-east Asia.
"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," she said in an interview on the French television network Canal+.
"Oil palms have replaced trees, and therefore caused considerable damage to the environment," she said.
Ferrero, the Italian chocolate company which produces the spread, should use alternative products to make Nutella, said Ms Royal, who is rumoured to have rekindled a relationship with Francois Hollande, the French president.
But Italians have pointed out that many French food products are also made with palm oil and that Nutella was being unfairly targeted.
Gian Luca Galletti, Italy's environment minister, said Ms Royal's criticism of Nutella was "baffling", and told her to "leave Italian products alone".
He said: "I'll be having bread and Nutella tonight for dinner."
Roberto Calderoli, a senator with the centre-Right Northern League party, also came to the defence of the chocolate spread. "We grew up with Nutella and we'll never give it up," he said. "If the French don't want to eat Nutella, too bad for them, they don't know what they're missing."
Michele Anzaldi, a member of the ruling Democratic Party, said Ms Royal should apologise for her remarks, which he called "a grave blunder".
The row even made it to the front page of Italy's respected financial daily, Il Sole 24 Ore, which pointed out that palm oil was not just used in Nutella, but in a huge range of products, from biscuits and chocolate to ice cream. "Boycotting Nutella will not slow down the consumption of palm oil, nor will it bring back the rainforests," the newspaper said in an editorial.
Ferrero insisted that its palm oil was sourced from environmentally sustainable plantations. It added that 100 per cent of its palm oil came from certified plantations.
The company said it had signed up to an international agreement on sustainable palm oil. It sources 80 per cent of its palm oil from Malaysia, with the rest coming from Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Brazil - all countries where extensive deforestation has occurred.
Apparently stung by the criticism in Italy, Ms Royal appeared to backtrack on her remarks. "A thousand apologies for the controversy over Nutella," she wrote on Twitter yesterday. "I agree about highlighting progress (in sustainable palm oil production)."
In 2012, French politicians tried to introduce a 300 per cent tax on palm oil, arguing that it was high in fat and that its cultivation resulted in the clearing of rainforest. The measure was defeated.
Nutella remains a jealously guarded institution in Italy. There was national mourning in February when Michele Ferrero, the patriarch of the chocolate conglomerate, died at the age of 89.
Mr Ferrero was Italy's richest man, with his family's fortune estimated at around pounds 15?billion.
It was Ferrero's father, a small-time pastry maker, who laid the groundwork for the Nutella recipe. During the Second World War, when cocoa was in short supply, he mixed in hazelnuts, which are plentiful in northern Italy, where the company is based.