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Comment by madengr | Hacker News Reader

Sounds damn near impossible. I'll wager a peanut butter sandwich has more than that, not accounting for jelly.

This comment is a great microcosm of what's gone wrong in the US food supply. "Peanut butter" doesn't by definition require any ingredients other than peanuts. Want some added salt for flavor? Sure!

This is America though. So let's take those healthy salty nuts and mix in a few tablespoons of high-fructose corn syrup! Not just as an option - let's put that in every damn product we offer, except maybe a double the price "natural" option for yuppies. Same with yogurt - great, healthy food: almost impossible to find in a US supermarket without shitloads of added sugar.

I don't care about "what the market wants" comments, nor am I a fan of NYC-style "soda laws". I do think it ought to be borderline criminal that basically all the huge companies whose job it is to supply the US public with food have laced a majority of their otherwise healthy product lines with poison, to the point where the inability to find basic foodstuffs not laced with poison is just taken as a fact of modern life.

Blame the FDA. They are the ones who sent everyone into a panic over saturated fat 20 or 30 years ago, resulting in the trans-fat and sugar laden processed foods of today.

Wasn't it the USDA (US Dept. of Agriculture) that did that?

Try eating natural peanut butter. The only listed ingredient should be peanuts. Very healthy.

Have you noticed that the price of natural peanut butter is almost 2 times that of the sugar-adulterated peanut butter?

I wonder if this is purely price discrimination or if requiring more peanuts means the cost is actually higher (relative to using HFCS).

Nut quality. Try eating a bitter rancid old peanut alone and then smothered in corn syrup.

The more sugar you add, the lower quality/cheaper of a nut you can use.

It depends on the season. Prices of natural peanut butter (by natural peanut butter I mean the only ingredients are peanuts and salt) are really cheap right now in September ($3.60 for me). But by February they can get up to $8.00 a jar.

Just checked the Jif peanut butter in the cupboard. 3g of sugar per serving. But yes with typical supermarket bread and jelly added, a lot more.

I'm not sure about either (a) what kind of peanut butter you're eating or (b) how huge of a sandwich you've got.

You can buy both peanut butter and fruit spread without added sugar. They taste much better then the sugar heavy brands.

25 grams of sugar is about 5 teaspoons.

How the fuck does a peanut butter sandwich end up with that much sugar?

It's between 6-9g. Two tbsp of peanut butter is 3g, then 3-6g for the bread.

Now add a tbsp of jelly and it goes up 10g.

So you are talking 19g for a pb&j.

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