Can’t say ‘lesbian’ with Nutella!
A French Nutella marketing campaign has banned the word “lesbian”.
“Say It With Nutella” allows users to create a custom jar of the famous chocolate spread with their own phrase, to share on social media. The site says: “Here you can create your custom messages and share them with those you love.”
However, users have discovered a long list of words the site will not allow you to use. Along with swear words, drugs, and violent terms, the site does does not allow “lesbian”, “Muslim” or “Jewish”.
The full list of banned words was found by viewing the site’s source code, RTL reports. Health-related words such as “obesity, “cancer” and “diabetes” as well as “palm oil”, the controversial ingredient in Nutella, are banned. Clearly anticipating that people would use the site to highlight the controversy surrounding the use of palm oil, which reportedly threatens orangutan habitats, words such as “boycott” and “orangutan” are not permitted. While “gay” is fine, “lesbian” is not, and “Christian” is allowed despite the ban on “Jewish” and “Muslim”.
Ferrero, the company who make Nutella, said in a statement: “The negative or insulting messages were directly removed from the field of possibilities, the idea being to use the jar of Nutella as a communication medium to share enthusiasm. Similarly , words of communities that are often subject to attacks by malicious people were removed from the proposals. ”
