Frequently (or not frequently enough) asked questions
How is Nutty Hazel different from conventional hazelnut spreads?
Most hazelnut spreads are palm oil and sugar led, with hazelnuts somewhere further down the list. We lead with hazelnut, and without compromise.
The world's most recognized hazelnut spread contains sugar, modified palm oil, hazelnuts, cocoa powder, skimmed milk powder, whey powder, soy lecithin, and vanillin — eight ingredients, two dairy-derived and one a synthetic flavor. Nutty Hazel has six whole ingredients, is stir-free, palm oil-free, dairy-free, and naturally gluten-free, stabilized with an upcycled byproduct of rice milling. The taste is richer because the hazelnut has more room to shine, and the story behind every ingredient is one we're proud to tell.
Are six ingredients really enough to make a great spread?
Yes — and we'd argue six is the right number, not a limitation.
Research consistently shows that nearly 76% of consumers are more likely to buy products with ingredients they understand and trust, and shorter lists signal confidence. Every ingredient in our spread has a clear, single job: hazelnuts provide the base and healthy fats, cane sugar adds sweetness, rice bran butter delivers stability and creaminess, cocoa powder brings depth, vanilla bean adds warmth, and sea salt balances everything. Nothing is there by accident. Nothing is there to mask something else. Six ingredients isn't a constraint — it's the point.
What makes Nutty Hazel completely stir-free?
Our hazelnut spread never separates because we use rice bran butter as a natural stabilizer — no stirring needed, no messes to clean up.
Oil separation is the default state of any natural nut or seed spread. Without a stabilizer, the oils released during grinding will phase-separate from the solids within days, leaving a layer of liquid oil on top and a dry, compact mass below. The industry's conventional fix has been hydrogenated oils or palm oil — effective, but not clean. Rice bran butter solves the same problem differently with its natural stabilizing plant lipids that immobilizes free oil and maintains a consistently creamy texture from the first spoonful to the last. No stirring, no mess, no upside-down storage tricks, no compromise on what's inside the jar.
What is rice bran butter and where does it come from?
Rice bran butter is a natural fat derived from the outer layer of rice grains — a byproduct of the very same milling process that gives us white rice.
When rice is milled to produce white rice, the bran layer is stripped away and typically winds up as animal feed or discarded as waste. Rice bran butter recovers that material and transforms it into a high-performance food ingredient — which makes it a genuinely upcycled ingredient. It's a smarter, cleaner use of a resource that already exists in the food system: no new land, no new crops, no palm oil.
What exactly is an upcycled food ingredient?
An upcycled ingredient is one that would have otherwise been discarded during food production, but is instead redirected into a new, higher-quality food product.
Upcycled foods use ingredients that otherwise would not have gone to human consumption, are procured through verifiable supply chains, and have a positive impact on the environment. Think of it as closing the loop on food waste — rather than burning, composting, or sending a byproduct to a landfill, upcycling puts it back to work. Rice bran fits squarely in this category: it begins as an overlooked byproduct of rice milling, frequently discarded or used as animal feed, and gets elevated into a functional, clean-label ingredient.
Why is palm oil in most hazelnut spreads, and why did you leave it out?
Palm oil is cheap, stable, and prevents oil separation — which is why it's in nearly every conventional hazelnut spread, and many other products. We left it out because we simply found a better, smarter way using a byproduct of existing agricultural production.
Palm oil handles the stabilization job inexpensively at industrial scale, which is why the food industry has relied on it so heavily. But palm oil production has driven the expansion of plantations across some of the world's most biodiverse tropical ecosystems — an estimated 300 football fields of forest are cleared globally every hour to make room for them, threatening critically endangered species like the Sumatran tiger and orangutan. The amount of land under palm oil cultivation has increased almost ninefold in the past 50 years. By replacing it with rice bran butter — an ingredient that already exists as a byproduct of rice production — we opt out of that supply chain entirely while solving the same functional problem more cleanly.
What does a clean ingredient label actually mean?
A clean label means every ingredient is something you'd recognize from your own kitchen — nothing coded, nothing synthetic, nothing that requires an advanced degree to understand.
Clean label means making a product with as few ingredients as possible, ensuring each one is something consumers recognize and think of as wholesome. There's no official regulatory definition of the term, which means brands can use it loosely. At Nutty Hazel, we think the label speaks for itself: six ingredients, every one pronounceable, none of them hiding anything. Hazelnuts, cane sugar, rice bran butter, cocoa powder, vanilla bean, sea salt. That's it — and not a trace of gluten in the bunch.
What does dairy-free mean for hazelnut spread lovers?
It means the spread works for you whether you're vegan, lactose intolerant, dairy-allergic, or simply cutting back — no compromises needed.
Most conventional hazelnut spreads contain dairy in the form of skimmed milk powder and whey powder — the whey acting as a binder and fat stabilizer in the emulsion. While dairy performs a real functional role in those recipes, we've engineered our spread so that rice bran butter handles that job entirely. The result is a product that's genuinely dairy-free at the formulation level — not a reformulated version of something that originally contained it.
Is Nutty Hazel gluten-free and safe for gluten-sensitive diets?
Yes — every ingredient in Nutty Hazel is naturally free of gluten, with no wheat, barley, rye, or malt anywhere in the formulation.
Hazelnuts, cane sugar, rice bran butter, cocoa powder, vanilla bean, sea salt — none of these ingredients contain gluten. The FDA allows naturally gluten-free foods to be labeled gluten-free, provided the product contains less than 20 parts per million of gluten. That said, we want to be upfront: Nutty Hazel is not yet third-party certified gluten-free, which means there is no independent verification of our manufacturing environment for cross-contamination. If you have celiac disease and rely on certified products for your safety, we want you to have that full picture. Pursuing certification is definitely on our roadmap as we scale.
What nutritional claims can Nutty Hazel make?
Cholesterol Free. No Saturated Fats. Very Low in Sodium.
Because enjoying something indulgent and maintaining a clean ingredient line are not mutually exclusive.
What is the shelf-life of the Original Hazelnut spread?
12 months.
Whether it is supply chain events in getting product out into the world, or different levels of appetite in a given household, - there’s a lot of variability in this world but rest assured the product will be good to consume despite all that can go nuts around us.
