OK, fellow mothers, exactly who do we think we’re kidding with Nutella? They call it ‘hazelnut spread’, like it should belong in the peanut butter family. Ha! You can put it in the breakfast foods aisle at LuLu all you want – it still looks exactly like cake frosting to me.

If we’re going to call Nutella a sandwich spread – an actual food rather than a dessert – then I’m going to start feeling a lot better about myself. I mean, there’s got to be at least 9,000 calories in every tablespoon. Thankfully, my vision is fading so I can’t read the label.

And I’m not about to Google it or look it up on the über-handy calorie counter app I just downloaded – personally, I’d really rather not know.

Considering what an incredibly bad mother I’ve consistently been over the last six years, it’s sort of amazing that I only bought my first jar of Nutella this past week. It’s not a spread I grew up eating, and since it’s nut-based, it’s not one I can put in the kids’ lunchboxes anyway.

In fact, I might have never wandered down the ‘hazelnut’ (ha!) path if I hadn’t discovered that my sister – who is a WAY better mother than I am – gives it to her highly intelligent son. So it MUST be OK. Even still, as I stand in my kitchen slathering chocolaty ‘goodness’ (ha!) all over a frozen waffle that’s just spent 30 seconds in the microwave, it seems wrong somehow.

The only real health benefit of Nutella, I think, is that now that my kids have both acquired a taste for it. I can insist they each eat a piece of fruit before they can belly up to the breakfast bar for another choco-waffle. Come to think of it, my kids are breathless enough for another bite of our new found ‘nutritious’ (ha!) nut spread I think I could get them to do just about anything.

Come to think of it, Nutella is actually good for them. Yep – definitely healthy.

Laura Fulton