Nutella, it's not for you

"This is the best chocolate ice cream I've ever had. Taste it! I wish they had it in the Czech Republic," Stella sighed. Thomas took a swallow.

400,000 tons of Nutella. That's the amount of hazelnut cream consumed by humans to this day, with a lot of help from those who are no longer with us. That's approximately 24,242 Czech Tatra 815 trucks fully loaded with the thick sweet paste. If you lined them up in a row, you'd have to circle the globe four times to see them all. And Thomas thought he could literally see his girlfriend, Stella, consuming an entire truck.

"Sorry, I can't yet," Stella said a second after he heard the door to their apartment slam. Without giving him the slightest glance, she threw off her coat, pulled her battered laptop out of her bag, and ran to the kitchen table. He sighed in annoyance.

"Tough day at work?"

"Not really. I just need to finish one article, pick out some photos and then I'll get right back to you," she responded. She managed to overlook the flowers he'd bought her on her lunch break, the new shirt he'd gotten for the occasion to make him look better, and the fact that the apartment was all cleaned up. Soon there was the familiar sound of fingers drumming hard on the keyboard, flowing to the rhythm of a partly manic and partly completely unnecessary fear that if she didn't get the article in on time, the whole world would collapse. As Thomas saw it, the only thing showing signs of collapse at that moment was Stella.

"I think I'll go to bed now," he said, hoping that Stella would understand from the tone of his announcement that the workday was over for him. He went to his bedroom, where, with a typical stubbornness that is not to be shown in today's world, he pulled off his shirt and pulled back on his favourite T-shirt that he slept in every night and in which he had secretly spent the whole day.

"Good night," he said, still in the kitchen doorway, as he watched Stella shovel in another kilo of Nutella. That's only one kilo out of the 400 million she would have to eat to equal the whole of humanity, he thought with relief, and went to sleep.

Valentine's Day was five days away.

He was awakened by the sound of Stella's door slamming as she left for work. As usual, he didn't get up early enough for them to have a few words to exchange. With each such slam, he got out of bed as if someone had just raised the alarm on the street. Reeling from the shock he couldn't face, he staggered to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, pulled on his pants and went to work.

"Where are you taking that girl of yours tomorrow?" echoed his co-worker jovially, to whom the holiday of love made perfect sense and who never dared to question the significance of the chocolates and half wilted flowers he fought over every year in crowded malls with a legion of other men. They all believed that it was the very least thing they could do for their halves, and the strength of the shared belief ultimately proved them right every February. Those who didn't buy into it had to face a few uncomfortable minutes of explaining to others that they didn't believe in Valentine's Day, or that it was a completely consumerist holiday that they refused to participate in. "We're going to this new place that just opened around the corner. That's a holiday today, isn't it?" a colleague gushed. Thomas felt like punching him right there and then. Instead, he turned his face towards another colleague, who was bored watching a review of the new games that would soon be released on the Playstation.

In the evening, a familiar scene awaited him at home. Stella, still in her work clothes and with her mascara slightly smudged, reinforcing the dark shadow under her eyes, sat at the kitchen table tapping out more words on her computer. He had come home later than usual, arousing her curiosity.

"Where are you coming from?"

"From work."

"This late?" She grumbled.

"I figured you'd probably still be working, so I did some extra work," he explained to her. Stella mumbled something vaguely, then said:

"I need to rest."

"Really?" He asked. "Come on, I'll read you something from the book I'm reading," Thomas offered her.

"Oh no, no reading at all. After all, I consume and create content from morning to night," Stella said, continuing to write as if no dialogue had taken place. A second later, she got up and ran to the pantry for more Nutella. And that's when it clicked for him.

This time they would celebrate the holiday of love together like never.  

The sun was beating down on them so hard that they could hardly keep their bodies upright. Thomas was getting tired and would have liked to stick his head in the sand if only it wasn't so hot. Stella, however, seemed to be content. There was no sign on her dark skin that the hot sun's rays could harm her in any way. She laid with her eyelids closed on the blanket, which was covered with grains of sand, while Thomas repeatedly slathered his white arms with sunscreen and gazed longingly at the surface of the water until it finally turned pink.

He didn't enjoy it much. But he was glad that Stella was finally resting. She loved the sea, and after years of denial, for which she could blame the randomness of fate, which had not bestowed wealth on either of them, he could finally take her to the shores of Italy. Stella could lie on the beach all day and boredom did not come upon her. He envied her for it and looked forward himself to the day giving way to night, and them finally replacing the natural solarium with a nice warm breeze and stone sidewalks to keep them pleasantly cool while they sipped wine in one of the overpriced restaurants.

The sun was beating down on them so hard that they could hardly keep their bodies upright. Thomas was getting tired and would have liked to stick his head in the sand if only it wasn't so hot. Stella, however, seemed to be content. There was no sign on her dark skin that the hot sun's rays could harm her in any way. She laid with her eyelids closed on the blanket, which was covered with grains of sand, while Thomas repeatedly slathered his white arms with sunscreen and gazed longingly at the surface of the water until it finally turned pink.

He didn't enjoy it much. But he was glad that Stella was finally resting. She loved the sea, and after years of denial, for which she could blame the randomness of fate, which had not bestowed wealth on either of them, he could finally take her to the shores of Italy. Stella could lie on the beach all day and boredom did not come upon her. He envied her and looked forward himself to the day giving way to night, and them finally replacing the natural solarium with a nice warm breeze and stone sidewalks to keep them pleasantly cool while they sipped wine in one of the overpriced restaurants.

"Mhmm," the voice beside him echoed just as he thought his body temperature must soon be climbing to a life-threatening high. Stella stretched her arms behind her head and purred like a cat that had just decided to wake up from a sleep that was none of people's business. She felt her eyelids flutter open in a complicated way; the red darkness replaced by a harsh light they rarely experienced at home. She looked at him and said, "You want to be somewhere else now, don't you?"

"Why can't you relax at home like this?" He shot out and stopped himself. She stiffened.

"What do you mean?"

"Why don't you relax like this normally? Why do you have to work all the time?" he finished the thought.

"Because you work too little. Come on, let's go get some ice cream, at least you'll get a break from the sun for a while," she suggested.

At that moment, he pouted like a cat.

She ordered a hazelnut flavoured ice cream. He watched her lick the first layer of the runny substance with her tongue, and with each successive lick, he could feel the anger building inside him. So, he wasn't working enough? If he worked so little, they wouldn't even be here, he thought angrily in his mind. A scooter drove past them, and Thomas wished for nothing more than to knock its driver to the ground, grab the bike, drive to the other side of Italy and drink himself into a stupor. Instead, he continued to watch his girlfriend dangerously dispose of an enormous portion of the sweet icy substance.

He was about to take a breath to tell her everything he'd ever missed when suddenly Stella said, "Thanks for bringing me here. It's great here, and this ice cream tastes like Nutella, but it's even a little better, you know? It tastes like the rest I haven't had in a thousand years."

About three quarters of a year later, he stood in the kitchen doorway and watched Stella with suppressed enthusiasm as she slammed down another glass of Nutella. This time he felt he had found a surprise that would pull Stella out of her daily stress and overwhelmed state. A surprise with a story behind it far more powerful than the one Stella taps into her computer daily to satisfy the dubious fantasies of her superiors.

With one day left until Valentine's Day, he left Stella in her anxiety, laid in bed, and looked for a place in Prague to get ice cream with the same exact flavour that had managed to stop Stella for a fleeting moment.

He found out a lot of interesting things about it. Gianduja, as Stella's ice cream flavour was called, refers to a sweet chocolate spread that contains about 30% hazelnut paste. It was invented in Turin in the 18th century during Napoleon's regency. At the time, Europe was governed by the Continental System, introduced by Napoleon in 1806, which prevented British goods from entering European ports under French control. The result was a shortage of cocoa supplies. The Turin chocolatier Michele Prochet therefore mixed the little chocolate he had with hazelnuts from the Langhe hills south of Turin. Some historical sources consider it to be the basis of today's Nutella.

But Thomas couldn't find any ice cream parlours serving the same flavour in Bohemia. So, when he came home from work on February 14, he took off his shirt and pants, pulled on his pyjamas and headed straight to bed.

He was awakened only by the sound of a spoon dropped on the floor a few hours later by Stella as she was taking another empty Nutella jar to the sink.