Thread: Know your food series-Peanut butter

I am always interested in how people perceive food and what is good and what is bad. In this inaugural post of what I hope to be a weekly series, I will discuss peanut butter. If some of these entries are old news to you or if you have further to contribute, please excuse my simpleness and feel free to add.

The food industry goes out of their way to confuse the public enough to buy whatever they need to sell. From buzzwords like “non GMO” to “gluten free”, they hope the average person latches onto something simply because they see this label. I see people in the stores all the time, reading and conversing out labels yet having no idea what they are even discussing.
How many of us have seen labels so ridiculous that we soon expect to see a bottle of oil labeled “zero carbs” or a steak that states it is “gluten free”? This may seem like a joke to some of us but I assure you, many folks would fall for this ploy.

My first entry, Peanut Butter, is all too misunderstood. From my friends feeding their kids JIF or Skippy or Alladino in Mexico, thinking they are giving a nutritious item to their children...all the way to bodybuilders eating “all natural” peanut butter, You will see the nefarious word games played with food.

Peanut butter should be simple. It should contain: peanuts. OK, maybe salt as an ingredient too. But that’s it folks. I am sure we are all familiar with the chemical soup known as the popular brands like JIF, et al, and this is why we gravitate toward “all natural”.
The thing is, “all natural” just means that the product hasn’t been tampered with regarding hydrogenation and/or preservatives. I won’t bore you hydrogenation and shelf life. Hopefully everyone is wise to these practices at this point.
I do want to point out that “all natural” peanut butter is anything but natural, meaning a butter made from peanuts.
Peanut oil is a very valuable commodity. It is pressed out of the peanut to be sold at a high cost to the pharmaceutical and food industry. Processors are left with very dry peanut mash/powder which had little value compared to the oil for the longest time. Then the fitness industry sparked a new trend for new products like PB Fit and these so-called “all natural” peanut butters.
To recover the consistency of real peanut butter, manufacturers began adding palm kernel oil (now just called palm oil) to peanut mash. This had not only the benefit of recovering some peanut waste to a salable product, but also gave them a use for palm oil, also a by-product of other food production.
People love it! It not only makes them think they are consuming a natural, healthy product, they are also happy that their peanut butter doesn’t need constant stirring.

Why is that? Because palm oil is one of the few, along with coconut oil, that is a vegetable derived, saturated fat. Not something most of us want to consume. At least not from sources or foods that shouldn’t normally contain saturated fats.

I sure wouldn’t want to eat peanut butter containing lard. This isn’t exactly the same thing but in my opinion, not that far off.

I consume about 3 tablespoons of peanut butter every day. I don’t know about you folks but I want my peanut butter label to say

Ingredients: Peanuts.

That’s it.