IS IT REALLY "NATURAL" AND "HEALTHY"?
We all know that most of us have a nut butter addiction. Everyone out there PLEASE note, the nut butter world is FULL of sneaky marketing trying to trick you into thinking that things are"natural" or "healthy", but they're actually full of preservatives or added sugar.
1) Original JIF: The classic peanut butter! Unfortunately, this peanut butter has fully hydrogenated oils and mono/diglycerides. Both of these help increase shelf life and save costs for food companies, but also affect heart health by increasing “bad” (LDL) cholesterol, lowering “good” (HDL) cholesterol, while promoting inflammation/obesity.
2) "NATURAL" JIF WITH HONEY: As we move along things are a looking more optimistic - looks like this doesn't have those nasty preservatives anymore. But what about that palm oil? While not a direct health impact, palm oil has MASSIVE environmental impacts, including large-scale deforestation and loss of critical habitat for endangered species. Also when choosing to use a peanut butter with honey. "HONEY" is a buzzword companies use to market a more "NATURAL" sweetener. Additionally, this honey one has the EXACT nutrition information and ingredients as plain JIF.
3)"NATURAL" PB&CO WITH HONEY: When look for a decent spread you may stumble upon @peanutbutterco and will start to think, Wow a peanut butter that's good for me!! WRONG. Not only do they ALSO have palm oil, BUT they also have an insane amount of added sugars per serving! Also what is meant by "natural honey flavor". (Using a peanut butter with honey here to compare to JIF Natural with Honey, honey once again used as a marketing ploy!)
4) TJ PEANUT BUTTER: Finally. A freaking jar that only has TWO ingredients. AND it's actually cheap at Trader Joe's (~$2). It's made with Valencia peanuts. This variety of peanut - grown only in Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma - is naturally sweet and intensely delicious, eliminating the need to add any kind of sweeteners or flavor enhancers. In other words, no sugar here. In fact, we use only two ingredients to make the Peanut Butter - organic Valencia peanuts and sea salt. It needs nothing else. Really. THIS Organic Creamy Salted Peanut Butter available all the time, but due to the somewhat limited availability of Valencia peanuts, you may find that there are certain times of year when it's not shelves. This is what you should try to eat, not anything with all that crap. AND even if you want those delicious flavored nut butters, like cinnamon raisin peanut butter... buy the peanut butter and add those things yourself! The more you know, the better you can control what goes to fuel your body.
