Peanut Butter

I absolutely adore peanut butter. It is one of my favourite foods in the world. I eat it on my toast almost every morning. However, some people consider me kind of a peanut butter snob, because I only eat natural peanut butter. Other people agree with me, and think I am making the right choice.

            Natural peanut butter is peanut butter containing only a single ingredient: peanuts. No salt, sugar, oil, fat, preservatives, or stabilizers were added. Fresh, raw peanuts were taken, ground up, and put in a jar. That’s it. Sometimes the peanuts are dry-roasted first, but this is actually a bad thing, because even though dry roasted means no oil or salt was added, roasting still ruins all of the good fats in peanuts, so you will not get any benefit from eating them. Natural peanut butter actually has the taste of real peanuts, and you do not miss the sugar or salt at all. You may think that other peanut butters taste like real peanuts, but they really do not, they contain too many additives.

            So what do I mean by “unnatural” peanut butter. Well, it is any peanut butter that contains more than just peanuts. Some brands manufacture both types of peanut butters. Unnatural peanut butters may contain added sugar, salt, oil, fat, preservatives, and stabilizers. None of these ingredients are beneficial to you. Because of the added preservatives, unnatural peanut butter can stand up at room temperature, even years past the best before date; while natural peanut butters should be kept in the refrigerator to preserve them. Some people argue that natural peanut butters become hard to spread, but stirring the oil that settles on top into the peanut butter before each use completely prevents this from occurring.

            So, as you know, I will only use natural peanut butter. Recently, I was a guest where an unnatural brand of peanut butter was used in the house, and I had some. I couldn’t get over how sweet it was, it was almost sickly to me, and the taste was certainly not of peanuts. The first time you try “real” peanut butter, you may not like it at first if you are so accustomed to the fake stuff. But believe me, soon enough, you will be just like me, and you won’t be able to stand that other stuff. By the way, this goes for all nut butters. There are so many others out there, they just aren’t as well known. Almond butter, walnut butter, hazelnut butter, cashew butter; give one of these a try!

PHOTO CREDIT:"peanut-butter-sandwich"   http://www.epicurean.com/articles/beyond-jelly-reinventing-the-peanut-butter-sandwich.html  .epicurean.com, n.d. Sunday, March 18, 2012.