A Brief History of Peanut Butter (2021) | Hacker News Reader

A Brief History of Peanut Butter (2021)

smithsonianmag.com

53 pointsTomte35 comments

I'm not sure how an American institution can talk about the history of peanut butter in the US without mentioning Ruth Desmond:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/1988/1...

She was the underdog who took on agro-industrial companies to ensure peanut butter contained peanuts and not sawdust.

> contained peanuts and not sawdust.

It is incredible (in the strict sense: hard to believe) to discover that many foods are "fake", or contain things that are not supposed to be there.

I suggest a few readings:

0) the book "Real Food / Fake Food" [0]. This is just amazing. Highly recommend it.

1) the book "extra virginity" [1]

2) article about "truffle fraud" [2]

3) article about "fish fraud" [3]

The list could be almost infinite, of course.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Real-Food-Fake-Youre-Eating/dp/161620...

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Extra-Virginity-Sublime-Scandalous-Wo...

[2]: https://www.eater.com/2019/5/28/18638762/truffle-fraud-fake-...

[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/15/revealed...

>Kellogg’s “food compound” involved boiling nuts and grinding them into an easily digestible paste for patients at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a spa for all kinds of ailments.

That sounds similar to boiled peanuts (except without the grinding), a favorite in the U.S. southern region. I've never had them but would like to. According to Wikipedia, there are even some claims that eating boiled peanuts not only circumvents peanut allergies but can actually help reduce them.

I grew up with the Skippy-style peanut butter, but eventually switched to the type which is nothing but peanuts and salt (no sugar, no hydrogenation). Stirring in the oil is not that hard with a reasonably-sized jar.

When I was a teenager (many decades ago) I tried to engineer a cheap, nutritious diet for myself, and a cup of peanuts every day turned out to be a great way to get a lot of protein for not much cost. Still have PB sandwiches several times a week even now.

A tip to keep the oil from separating: I add about 5ml of water to a jar of peanut butter and stir in well. This creates an emulsion that thickens the peanut butter and prevents the oil from separating out. It improves the spreadability as well.

Another tip: store your unopened jar upside down.

I already do that.

Save yourself a huge mess and don't try using an electric handheld mixer to do the initial oil stir...I got peanut butter EVERYWHERE. It's a nightmare to clean.

Or just stir it up and put it in the fridge

I'm a fan of boiled peanuts. Definitely recommend them if you can get some. Just remember that it is like edamame, where you don't eat the shells. :D

> a cup of peanuts every day turned out to be a great way to get a lot of protein for not much cost

Probably similar to any other legume (lentils, beans, chickpeas)?

Boiled peanuts are sooo good. The countrier the road and the more beat up the pickup you buy them from, the better they're going to taste!

Source: grew up in Pasco County, FL.

Boiled peanuts are also popular in China. If you want to try them, I suggest having a go at it. They're very simple to make.

I'm surprised there is no mention of Marcellus Gilmore Edson [0]. He was a pharmacist from Montréal who patented a method to make an early version of peanut butter, more than a decade before the Kellogg's patent mentioned in the Smithsonian article.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcellus_Gilmore_Edson

Probably because it's the Smithsonian.

A quick Google indicates there is some confusion about whether Edson was a black or white man?

He's clearly white.

The other face you're seeing is George Washington Carver, not surprising given that fin de siècle peanut science is a small field.

Reddit and Google Images seem to be teaming up to mix these two up

- https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/f4op87/this_is_marcel...

- https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/89suoe/til_c...

- https://www.google.com/search?q=Marcellus+Gilmore+Edson&sxsr...

What's described in the patent sounds like the filling of a Reese's peanut butter cup.

Anyone else find that Covid had a strong affect on the taste of peanut butter?

Right after Covid in Nov of 2020 it started tasting like raw sewage for me. I used to love it.

It’s only somewhat improved since. Met a few people that won’t eat it anymore.

https://www.news24.com/amp/health24/medical/infectious-disea...

My coworker experienced that. They stopped eating peanut butter entirely and they were bummed about it because they loved it prior to having Covid.

Have you had COVID, and experienced any of the loss-of-taste symptoms?

Somehow, I've managed to avoid COVID. Or at least, the antibody test that I took just before my first vaccination shot last year indicated that I had never been infected. If I have had any post-vaccination COVID infection, then it was totally asymptomatic.

Peanut butter tastes no different for me today than it did three years ago.

Got Covid, just before vaccine was available. Was in rough shape for a month. Had to double blood thinner dosage for six months.

Lost all sense of smell for a couple months. Got sense of smell back over a couple months.

Peanut butter is the only food that changed for me though.

I wonder if it has to do with the hydrogenated vegetable oil added to it. Do they still like raw peanut butter?

Really interesting in the end about George Carver who taught sustainable farming techniques.

George Washington Carver is a personal hero of mine. He faced all sorts of hardship and still sought to make the world a better place.

Everyone not familiar should read about him, very inspirational.

This was a fun read, but it seemed to just stop.

I'm curious to hear what the total impact of crop rotation and other items are on modern farming. I know we are always taught that that is the correct way, and yet we also hear how there is a single banana in main use. We even learn wines by the name of the grape that is used. Is there more crop rotation in place than I give credit for?

I feel that this goes to a lot of produce, honestly. There are only two main lines of coffee. Tea is a single plant, if I'm not mistaken. Avocado is rather homogeneous.

My parents are from Canada, and when my dad was in the Navy in the 1980s, he was deployed to the UK. His biggest story is that they couldn’t buy peanut butter and Kraft Dinner except at the Base, which was obviously a problem. I travelled to the UK recently and asked someone there about those two items. Peanut butter is available now, but not that popular, but Kraft Dinner was unknown and frankly seemed disgusting to her! Which is fair, but its comfort food in Canada.

I wonder what confusion led to this, macaroni cheese (no `and`) has been a British staple for centuries.

Boxed macaroni cheese can be purchased at every Tesco as "cheesy pasta".

Judging it to be disgusting I would agree with, but 'unknown'? By no means.

Kraft Dinner (or just KD( is something special though! It's not just boxed macaroni and cheese, it has a fake cheese neon orange sauce (at least it used to, now it's apparently safer) with its own special taste. It's peak Canadian comfort food that the other boxed meals don't match. They're all gross, but KD has no peers.

> Peanut butter is available now, but not that popular

I might be an outlier but my family eats peanut butter all the time, and you wouldn't have any trouble finding it even in small local shops. Peanut butter and j(elly|am) sandwiches are less popular but I maintain that they're America's greatest export.

Interesting, more a brief history of peanut butter in the US, industrialised. Was curious what they have to say about the Dutch. We eat a lot.

Wikipedia mentions it comes from canada [0]. I had suspected an Indonesian origin.

[0] https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pindakaas

Ah, yes, Skippy Peanut Butter: another erstwhile proud product of Alameda, California--the town that brought you Perforce, and which remains ready for all your nut-butter-addicted tech venture needs.

(DISCLOSURE: Commenter received no consideration from the City of Alameda for this comment.)

(BTW who is Tomte?)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com