There is nothing more sacred to the American palette than the humble peanut butter. With a whole range of tastes, textures and brands to choose from, it’s no wonder that the Smooth versus Crunchy debate always ends with – “Well, we agree to disagree”!! Hmmm, maybe this should be a question on dating profiles!!
I am a creature of habit (or maybe we can call it brand loyalty!) and always reach for the Jif extra crunchy! Unless I am at Costco where they stock only the Skippy extra crunchy and I could not be bothered to drive to another store. The bottom line is it has to be Extra Crunchy! But then I am not a huge peanut butter person – and I do like the crunchy bits especially if I am using it as a short cut to my Pad Thai sauce!
Why worry about peanut butter?
Now that we are paying attention to sodium, I decided to do some research. Oh boy! There are so many choices and it does matter which one you choose. The sodium content in a 2 tbsp serving can go as high as 150mg. If you count the sodium in your bread and then the peanut butter, your very simple snack of a PBJ sandwich can set you back close to 500mg of sodium! And it isn’t even a meal!! To put things in perspective, for the past couple of months, we have struggled to go above 750mg of sodium per day – eating 3 solid meals and managing a few illicit forays into the pantry for snacks too!
Ingredients
So how to choose? The key is to first look at ingredients – ideally you want just one – roasted peanuts. Maybe you could allow a second ingredient of salt – but then you must look at the nutrition label as well to see how much salt was added. Avoid any jar with more ingredients. Why do we need sugar, honey, palm oil or any other fillers? One reasoning is that the hydrogenated oils makes the butter easier to spread and prevents separation. Oh and by the way, the addition of the hydrogenated oils and fillers cause fat storage as opposed to helping you burn the fat as mono unsaturated fats are supposed to do! On the other hand some brands like the Whole Foods 365 Smooth Peanut Butter get really dry in the fridge and need some muscle to work with.
The better ones
So here are a few of the better ones – from a sodium and ingredients point of view. Since visuals work better, I’ve included the front and back labels to show the ingredients and nutrition values. Of course there are many other brands that are also good and good for you!
Ideally, you just want in-store freshly ground peanut butter like they do at Whole Foods. I ran into a really nice lady there and she said she just leaves it out (as in not in the fridge) and prefers the tasty, plain peanut butter since her husband is a diabetic who needs to watch the sugar. But really, how can you go wrong with just ground peanuts?!
A butter that’s a powder?
Thinking outside the standard spreadable peanut butter, I actually found a jar of peanut butter powder! This might be a good option especially for use in recipes. The manufacturer touts it as a healthier option due to reduced fat. However, it still comes with 90mg of sodium so that’s not a great option for our purpose!
Allergies
Allergic to peanut butter? Not a problem – the same rules apply to other nut butters as well. I found a really good mixed nut butter at Costco. So yummy!
Full disclosure, I did not taste every single one of these. So if you do land up buying a jar of peanut butter that seems healthy but does not exactly pass your taste test, no worries. Use it in smoothies (banana, almond/rice/oat milk and a dollop of PB), savory sauces and even cookies! Let me know which one is your favorite (or not!) – I’d love to hear from you.