can I bring food from Italy?

I normally say to go to the Customs site, but to be honest, they do not offer a great deal of help, but the general guidelines:
First, regardless of what you can bring back, liquids, pastes, including your Nutella need to go in checked, not carry-on luggage.
Anything Meat, forget about, it is just easier.
Anything like fresh fruit or vegtables, no.
Any other Canned, Jars, or packaged goods are not typically a problem. Packaged dry pasta, fine, vacuum packed olives, fine. Olive Oil, Great, Baked goods are also OK but will not fare well.
Cheese can be an issue, but any firm, packaged cheese is good, fresh soft cheeses are not...so that hunk of Parmeseana Reggiano is OK, Ricotta or fresh Mozzerella...No. If it squishes easily or requires refrigeration, good chance it is not OK. Ideally Cheese should also be packaged, vacuum packed is the most common.
Wine and liquor also is OK.
Make sure on your customs form you declare that you have food items, it may or may not trigger an FDA/USDA inspection, but if you declare no, the Beagles will find you. Also declare any Alcohol.

I think I'm prety safe...unfortuantley my town in California doesn't have nutella=)) Thanks for the help!!

I do not know if you can bring nutella back with you but it is readily available in the US at many international grocers.

Well, first off, you can get nutella in the US. It's sold on the same aisle as the peanut butter generally. You can't bring back any meat products, fruits or vegetables. I've read/heard that you can bring back vacuum packed cheese (hard cheeses)but didn't want to risk losing $25 hunk of cheese so didn't bother. The first and only thing the custom guy asked me when we got back on Sunday was whether we had any food. I told him olive oil and panettones and that was allowed.

And from experience I can tell you that for what a small jar costs you in the US, you can get the huge liter size jar there. Well worth the effort.

Nutella is plentiful in Canada. I should start an export business apparently.

Nutella is everywhere in NJ.....in all the chain supermarkets! But it should be fine to bring in. One word of caution, put in your checked bag as I was not allowed to take jam in my carryon in November (Heathrow).

Nutella is everywhere in NJ.....in all the chain supermarkets! But it should be fine to bring in. One word of caution, put in your checked bag as I was not allowed to take jam in my carryon in November (Heathrow).

not to get too OT here, but if I'm not mistaken (which I may well be), real Italian Nutella is made without hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil and is therefore slightly less unhealthy and may taste slightly better. Anyway, it's in every supermarket I've been to in LA, so I can't imagine you can't find it somewhere here unless you're out in the country and all you have is a SuperWalmart (though for all i know they have it too), but bringing home the real stuff might be worth the effort of putting it in your checked luggage if you really love it that much :)

That's an interesting point about the hydrogenated oil. I had to run over to the cabinet and read the label to see for myself.

Then I realized we don't have actual Nutella at the moment. What they do sell in Italy that I don't remember seeing in America so much is a great abundance of cheaper Nutella clones!