Peanut Butter

For as long as I can remember I have loved peanut butter! It is how I have to start the day … even just a little bit of peanut butter helps. Always the natural … but sometimes the crunchy … with extra peanuts of course. Just how my grandfather taught me!

The other day, I became curious about what exactly I could learn about this staple food in my diet. I wondered whether it was considered healthy or not.

The first place I looked was Foods that Harm Foods that Heal: The Best and Worst Choices to Treat Your Ailments Naturally. It was here that I learned that peanuts “heal” diabetes, high blood pressure and low energy. This peaked my interest.

Later on in the same section of this book I found a particular statement hard to believe:

The Nurses’ Health Study found that women who ate peanut butter at least five times a week were as much as 30% less likely to develop diabetes.

All I could think was if this is the case — awesome.

There was another statement regarding heart disease that also intrigued me:

Peanuts are rich in plant compounds called sterols, one of the top proven cholesterol busters. Eating peanuts several times a week keeps high blood pressure under control. Both are risk factors for heart disease.

I found all of that information interesting and yet I was perplexed; peanut butter is good (according to the first statement) for diabetes, yet the unhealthy fats in it are bad for the heart, which, is commonly affected by diabetes. Moreover, peanuts contain those plant compounds that are good for the heart, but, when made into peanut butter, oils are added which makes it bad for the heart.

Therefore, I wondered, does this put peanut butter at a stand still for whether it is healthy or not?

So I pulled out my trusty laptop to access Google where I found an article titled Is peanut butter healthy? Yes, says Harvard Heart Letter. (Here is the link if you would like to look further: http://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/Is-peanut-butter-healthy) This article stated:

Numerous studies have shown that people who regularly include nuts or peanut butter in their diets are less likely to develop heart disease or type 2 diabetes than those who rarely eat nuts. Although it is possible that nut eaters are somehow different from, and healthier than, non-nut eaters. It is more likely that nuts themselves have a lot to do with these benefits.

Bonus!

Now I cannot guarantee that this is for sure the case as I just have the two sources. However, I definitely do believe that the type of peanut butter you purchase impacts how many health benefits are potentially available. It is definitely best to avoid hydrogenated ingredients.

While using Google to look up peanuts I ran into the National Peanut Board website where I learned a few fun facts about peanut butter:

http://nationalpeanutboard.org/the-facts/fun-facts/

A few of my favourite facts are:

• In one acre of land there are enough peanuts to make 30,000 peanut butter sandwiches (The average farm for peanuts is 100 acres)
• The largest peanut butter factory produces 250,000 jars daily
• $4 billion is contributed to the economy in the United States from peanuts
• In one year, Americans consume approximately 1.5 billion pounds of peanut butter and peanuts
• By the time the average person graduates high school they will have consumed 1,500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches