How to buy peanut butter

“Where does peanut butter come from?” I ask myself. “Peanuts” I answer. Peanuts grow naturally on earth for us to eat. Peanuts contain natural, vital, and extremely healthy fat, protein, and fiber necessary for nerve and cell membrane development, and about a million other body functions.

Okay, if the information is true: peanuts contain fat, protein, and fiber and they grow naturally on earth, where does reduced fat peanut butter come from? Do the peanut pickers perform liposuction on each peanut? Do they cut the peanut in half and fill the jar half full of peanuts? Did they develop a method to grow peanuts with ½ the fat?

Well, the answer is simple: there is no such “food.” We cannot reduce a peanut. PHEW!

So how exactly do we sell “Reduced Fat” Peanut Butter in the store? More importantly, why do we buy reduced fat peanut butter? For starters, the food companies try to trick us into believing we are buying “healthy” food; they charge us more and slap on a pretty and jazzy label. Then, we are drawn to the label and get trapped into believing their little lies!

Luckily, we caught onto their mischievous tricks! Check out the ingredients in Jiff’s Reduced Fat Peanut Butter:

Retrieved August 5, 2010 from: http://www.jif.com/products/details.asp?prodid=330

Peanuts, corn syrup solids, sugar and soy protein, fully hydrogenated vegetable oil (might as well say: CLOG UP YOUR ARTIERS OIL), mono-and diglycerides (sugar), molasses, niacinamide, folice acid, pyridoxine hydrochloride, magnesium oxide, zinx oxide, ferric orthophosphate, and copper sulfate (yum).

So, pretty much, the food companies have learned to take a perfect food and inject the food with HAZARDOUS WASTE slap on a pretty label and sell them to us at the detriment of our life! (okay, that was kinda dramatic..but, still!)

The great news is that we CAN and SHOULD buy peanut butter because natural peanut butter still exists!! The ingredients: “peanuts & salt.” Thank goodness!

My Dad picked this out and bought it all by himself- this particular kind has flax: peanuts, salt, flax- TWO THUMBS UP!