Peanut Butter

Natural Peanut Butter:

Left in the photo is peanut butter with only peanuts and salt. The sample is 365 brand distributed by Whole Foods Market. Ingred: Roasted Peanuts, Salt. There are other brands as well, but you're unlikely to find any of these in your local super market.

"Enhanced" Peanut Butter:

Right in photo is the form offered by almost all commercial producers, including at minimum sugar, an emulsifier, and salt. The sample is Skippy Natural Creamy, one of the less "enhanced" brands. Ingred: Roasted Peanuts, Sugar, Palm Oil, Salt.

"Crunchy" Peanut Butter:

It's Creamy Peanut Butter with some crushed roasted peanuts mixed in.

Peanut Butter Spread:

This is peanut butter with more than the usual number of added ingredients.

Sugar:

Even the first patented commercial Peanut Butter included sugar to act as a stiffener. Different brands have different amounts of sugar. Jif brand is historically one of the sweetest, thus favored by children.

Emulsifiers:

These are to stiffen the Peanut Butter so it looks like the right half of the photo. Typical are Fully Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils. Formerly Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils (deadly Trans Fats). Fully hydrogenated oils are actually Saturated Fats. Palm Oil is a natural Saturated Fat. Saturated fats were demonized by the American Heart Association based on junk science from Ansel Keys. They promoted deadly Trans Fats as "healthy" replacements for over 50 years.

History:

The Aztecs and Incas were grinding roasted peanuts into paste in pre Colombian days. The first commercial process for making what was later called "peanut butter" was patented by Marcellus Gilmore Edson in 1884. George Washington Carver is popularly reputed to have invented peanut butter in 1916, but it was already being made by several patented processes before then.

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© Andrew Grygus - agryg@clovegarden.com - Photos on this page not otherwise credited are © cg1.- Linking to and non-commercial use of this page permitted.