A Brief History of Peanut Butter | Hacker News Reader

A Brief History of Peanut Butter

smithsonianmag.com

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As a US native who otherwise mostly abstains from sugary processed foods, big-brand peanut butter is one part of my country's food culture that I absolutely cannot shake. I don't eat fast food or drink soda, but I must have a jar of Jif around at all times. I have tried every type of organic peanut butter and found them all more or less vile, mostly due to the oiliness but there's also usually something flat & colorless about the flavor -- not just missing sweetness but something else. On the other hand the less adulterated alternatives do taste a lot more like actual peanuts, which makes me dread to know what it is that I'm missing.

You're still addicted or accustomed to a high level of sugar. It takes time for your body to adjust to lower sugar intake but until you do, healthy alternatives to sugar-laden (or salt-laden) foods will not "taste good" for you.

Also, you probably just need to try more alternative peanut butter. It took me a few tries to find something I liked.

Costco's Kirkland brand natural peanut butter (ingredients: peanuts, salt) takes some getting used to. The first time I bought it, I felt it was so bad that I thought about returning it. But after a while I got used to it, and now I love it and don't like regular peanut butter (with sugar+salt) any more because it tastes overly sweet and fake.

However, it is pretty annoying how much work it takes to stir it to incorporate the separated oil. Particularly because it comes in a big 28 ounce jar.

It took me months of living with someone eating peanut-only pb to get used to it, at some point I stopped thinking about how gross it was, and then I tried ye olde sugar pb again after a year and almost gagged. You totally can get used to it.

Some quality of life tricks to make it easier:

  buy multiple jars and store them upside down so gravity can help you start mixing

  mix initially (if you're able) by rapidly rotating the jar in your hand (twisting your forearm), this will get you 90% of the way

  finish off the mix with a knife

  keep the well mixed open jars in the fridge

Also, if the jar is glass (many natural PBs are) then 30 seconds or so in the microwave on first open makes it much, much easier to stir. It will be very runny until it cools and sightly hard to spread, but it will quickly cool on the bread and taste fine.

Considering most of my peanut butter consumption comes in the form of PB&J, I find that the jelly/jam provides more than enough sugar and I don't miss it at all in the peanut butter. Only downside for me is mixing the natural stuff, it can be quite a workout. What I discovered recently is storing your next jar upside-down for a week or so on the shelf will make it much easier when doing the initial mixing since the oil will try to float up through the whole jar, so it kind of softens the stuff on the bottom. Once mixed, put it in the fridge and it will stay mixed.

An “old fashioned peanut butter mixer” is one of the few single purpose items that I keep in my kitchen. It doesn’t do a complete job, but cuts the effort by 90 percent.

Definitely do not do this if the jar is already opened, as the seal isn't perfect and you will end up with oil all over your pantry.

I've seen the oil seep through the safety seal when left long enough, too. This was with sunflower butter rather than peanut butter, but I don't imagine their oils are that different.

Might be worth it to find out if your brand of peanut butter contains palm oil (many do).

https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/8-things-know-about-palm-oil

That would be exactly the kind of thing I dread to know – this is the last item in my cupboard whose ingredients label I studiously avoid reading in order to keep enjoying it. But this is HN, so, let's see:

INGREDIENTS: MADE FROM ROASTED PEANUTS AND SUGAR, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF: MOLASSES, FULLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OILS (RAPESEED AND SOYBEAN), MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, SALT.

Oh, maybe molasses (and yes probably the salt) is the flavor note I'm hung up on.

Anyway this is such a pure food-industrial-complex product that I am sure the ingredients list amounts to a sort of cover story. FWIW the parent company scores rates just OK on the 'Palm Oil Scorecard' from your linked page: https://palmoilscorecard.panda.org/check-the-scores/manufact...

I usually buy Adam's, which would be the just-peanuts variety. I do find that it could use a little salt, so just add some. (Oh, and habanero powder out of a shaker, because nobody's peanut butter includes that.)

My parents would always buy salted Adam’s, and I remember finding the transition to unsalted difficult but satisfying.

Jif uses molasses where as most peanut butters just have plain sugar. I suspect this is primary difference in flavor.

The creamy solid frosting like texture of peanut butters like Skippy and Jif comes from the high content of saturated fats, which are more solid and shelf stable at room temperature. Traditionally they use hydrogenated vegetable oils to achieve this. The newer "natural" versions just use palm oil instead, which is naturally higher in saturated fats.

I also wouldn't be surprised if the type of peanuts used are unique to each company. Many of theses mega corporations breed their own specific cultivar of produce for their own use. Examples of this is (Nestle) Libby's pumpkin and Lays potatoes.

I got hooked on peanut butter during a 6 month stay in the US and have also noticed a lot of variety in the products available here (Denmark). I really dislike most of the products, but have found a discount brand that is now my favorite.

All of them are 99% peanuts, so I also wonder where the variety in taste comes from. My own theory is that it is a combination of the following: 1. How much the peanuts are roasted. 2. How much of the peanut ends up in the product. Some have a strong bitter taste that I suspect is from skins that haven't been properly separated from the peanuts. 3. Emulsifiers. 4. Oils and 5. Sugars.

bitterness is mentioned in the video - it can originate from the "heart" (https://imgur.com/EngcEbm) of a peanut

They're all just ground up peanuts, right? Some brands have an emulsifier to avoid separation. Big brands add a little bit a sugar.

Have you tried making your own and adding a sweetner? Easily made with a food processor.

I have been buying the Smucker's natural peanut butter directly online a case at a time as I cannot reliably find it in local retail stores: https://www.smuckers.com/products/peanut-butter/natural-pean...

Here in the central US, I'm able to find Smucker's natural peanut butter at Walmart of all places. The other grocery stores don't carry it.

You're probably just noticing more salt in the processed stuff. Usually the only other additives are sugar and hydrogenated veg oil.

I think the magic formula to "nice" peanut butters like jif/skippy are:

- hydrogenated: oil doesn't separate, at the expense of your health

- sugar - on the Dr Rhonda Patrick episode of Joe Rogan, she said sugar+fat is really bad for you

- salt

That said, I agree with you on the organic stuff. You either get an oily mess or cement.

Joe Rogan is not a person to quote as a source.

I updated the comment to be more clear that the guest said it.

I like the oily ones, where you have to mix it in, with no additional ingredients (except salt). The stuff in Reese’s Pb cups.. I don’t care for.

I carried peanut butter with me on long trips to Europe. Never found anything that satisfied my homegrown PB yearnings.

I've found the Whole Foods store-brand smooth peanut butter is a good happy medium between Jif and the organic stuff. It stays emulsified a lot longer than others, but has more roasty peanut flavor (and less sugar) than the cheap stuff.

It seems that palm oil makes a decent alternative to hydrogenation. My current favorite butter is Trader Joe’s Crunchy No Stir, which contains 90% roasted peanuts, powdered sugar (cane sugar and cornstarch), palm oil, and sea salt (in that order on the label). 3g total sugar (2 added) in one 2 tablespoon / 32g serving.

Palm oil cultivation is responsible for massive rainforest deforestation.

Palm oil comes in chemical tank ships.

These have a lot more piping than oil tankers, so each cargo compartment can be loaded with a different industrial commodity, some of which are known to be highly incompatible, such as acids vs alkalis. There's usually 10 or 20 different chemicals on a vessel at any one time.

This way if they are careful, the operators on board and on shore can transfer the parcel, without significant enough contamination from foreign chemicals in other tanks, otherwise the material would fail to meet specifications.

Not everyone is as careful as they should be all the time.

When a cargo does go off-test it can take a lot of prime material to blend it with in order to pass.

It can be a headache of industrial proportions. Lloyds of London can get involved.

For that reason I hate it when a benzene or methanol transfer picks up a little too much palm oil.

on the other hand, palm oil, compared to rapeseed or sunflower, need much smaller surfaces to produce the same volume of oil

Palm and other added oils are pretty much superfluous for peanut butter though, only really added to prevent the minor inconvenience of stirring the peanut butter.

I find the no-stir sugar-free peanut butters to be much more bland than the ones that separate, likely because the palm-oil dilutes the flavor.

The more 'health-food' oriented your peanut butter, the less salt it is likely to have as well. This is a big factor in the taste.

Fun fact: they remove the little nub in the middle of the peanut (called the "heart") before making peanut butter. Apparently the heart is more bitter than the two halves.

https://youtu.be/4iUduCtx7cA?t=96

Observed Fact: If you make butter in blender from Lidl Salted Peanuts it is (very) good only for a day or two, thereafter it tastes little bitter. But you can compensate by adding raisins to the blend.

I'm quite thankful so much of How it's Made is available on youtube by Discovery, curious why they've even done that.

It’s probably so niche that they make more money monetizing it on youtube than putting it on other channels.

Oh no, this is not available in Canada?

Weird! It’s “How It’s Made” about peanut butter. Many of the episodes have British narration, and I watch them in the US.

And it's a Canadian (Quebec) production

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_It%27s_Made

Related - how peanut butter was central in food regulation:

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/the-uncertain-hour/s02-1-p...

Pet Theory: The reason peanut allergies are more prevalent in the US as opposed to other countries that consume peanuts is a difference in the way the body processes peanut butter as opposed to regular peanuts.

No I think it's because up until recently, American parents were told to avoid giving young kids peanuts or peanut butter.

Israel has very low rates of peanut allergies and peanut butter is the main ingredient in a popular snack:

Peanut snacks called Bamba, which are made of peanut butter and corn, are wildly popular in Israel, where parents give them to their kids when they're very young. That's very different from what parents do in Britain and the United States, where fears about food allergies have prompted many parents to keep their children away from peanuts, even though the American Academy of Pediatrics revised a recommendation to do so in 2008.

- https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/02/23/388450621/fe...

Hmm, interesting theory, what would the grinding change about the peanuts?

My daughter ate PB&Js when she was little but developed a peanut allergy around 3 or 4. She also has tree-nut allergies that are more severe than her peanut allergy, though, so it's hard to say how that's all connected.

I'd guess that US peanut allergies are by and large due to the somewhat prevalent myth that pregnant mothers shouldn't eat peanut products.

Shameless plug: I didn't invent peanut butter, but did invent the first half-calorie peanut butter.

www.ownyourhunger.com

AMA.

I stopped buying peanut butter when I realized how quickly I was finishing the pots, usually eaten straight from the pot with a spoon. Though at least those that I can find here in France usually don't contain added sugar.

My favorite childhood breakfast was peanut butter on toasted Wonder Bread. This was probably about as bad as 1960s processed food got, Velveeta apart. But it sure tasted good.

My childhood was a few decade after that, but peanut butter on toasted white bread and Velveeta (+ Rotel[1]) were pretty much stables of my youth.

[1] https://www.ro-tel.com/products/original

Bummer that George Washington Carter died penniless and insane, trying to make a peanut into a phonograph needle.[0]

[0]https://snltranscripts.jt.org/84/84iminute.phtml

This is one of those things that will still be rattling around in my head long after I’ve forgotten everything else.

I suspect SNL would last longer in the public's mind if it was available on youtube, maybe even just clips.

Is it me or was that really weird? There were 2 bylines in what seemed like a single article. I understand why the bit about Carver was there - honestly if you had asked me I would have said he invented it; that he didn't was the most surprising thing in it.

It's an article with a separately-written (and credited) sidebar in the print magazine.

It's pretty common to mention the fact that GW Carver did NOT invent peanut butter anytime the history of peanuts is discussed.

I specifically remember being taught in elementary school that GWC was the inventor, and I carried that misconception for decades. I appreciate the correction.

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