Sweet-toothed shoppers in France went nutty for heavily-discounted jars of Nutella yesterday, leading to violent scenes in a chain of French supermarkets. Intermarché supermarkets offered a whopping 70 per cent discount on the delicious hazelnut spread, bringing the price down from €4.50 (£3.90) to €1.40. But police were called when customers began fighting and pushing one another. "They are like animals,” one customer told French media. “A woman had her hair pulled, an elderly lady took a box on her head, another had a bloody hand.” A member of staff at one Intermarché shop in central France told the regional newspaper Le Progrès: "We were trying to get in between the customers but they were pushing us." All of Intermarché’s stock sold out within 15 minutes and one customer was given a black eye, the report adds. Similar scenes have been reported across France, with some being described as "riots". The French are second only to the Germans as the world’s leading consumers of Nutella. It was created by the Italian company Ferrero in the 1940s in the Piedmont region of Italy, which is famed for its hazelnuts. The company churns out 365,000 tons of Nutella every year, with the French consuming about 100 million jars annually Ferrero said it regretted Thursday's violence, but noted that the discount had been unilaterally decided by Intermarché.