Is natural peanut butter really better?

[Dastardly]

If you are into protecting the environment, then palm oil is worth thinking about. The better brands of peanut butter (which are not the 100% natural ones) use palm fat instead of hydrogenated fat. Healthwise this is good. But this fat comes from aggressive reckless deforestation in the tropics to make way for mono culture farms which are prone to pests and disease. So are sprayed with toxic pesticides which harm the poorly paid workers and whatever little wildlife might be left.

[snyderman3000]

If a regular peanut butter (not the natural kind) lists "fully hydrogenated vegetable oils" on the ingredients, is it still something to worry about? I was under the impression that the partially hydrogenated oils were the ones that contained trans fats.

[Corrie]

All I taste with those brands is sugar. But if one is underweight, trying to add mass and cheap calories, go with the regular peanut butter.

I don't know, the natural stuff actually has 10 more calories per 15g. I think it will be just as good for gaining weight.

[Greg C]

Oh yeah, my dog loves the natural stuff too - I put it in a Kong for him. Wouldn't want the little guy to have all of that sugar either. This way, we only buy one jar!

[veryhrm]

You can probably chew peanuts and spit out better peanut butter than skippy.

I make my own nut butter on a food processor. 2 1/2 cups of nuts (I add cashews, almonds and sesame seeds), honey, and sea salt. Let it blend forever and don't add the honey until the last 15 seconds. More than that and the consistency goes to hell. Once you get a chance to taste the real thing, you won't be able to stomach skippy.

Same thing with bacon. I cure my own, and now my girls won't eat bacon outside of the house because to them, the store bought stuff tastes like crap.

Well... in the US things sold as "peanut butter" must be 90% peanuts (http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo.../ucm132911.htm) so you're already working in a different market. If you don't like peanut butter, that's fine, but i don't see why you're bashing Skippy.

Checking out their ingredients they're just peanuts sugar (or honey) and some hydrogenated oils as emulsifiers. http://www.peanutbutter.com/products.aspx

Some products really have been changed from "the good ol' days" by (evil) Corporations seeking Profit, (like tomatoes, chickens and bananas ), but peanut butter... not so much.

If a regular peanut butter (not the natural kind) lists "fully hydrogenated vegetable oils" on the ingredients, is it still something to worry about? I was under the impression that the partially hydrogenated oils were the ones that contained trans fats.

Fully hydrogenated vegetable oils become "saturated fats" and have no double-carbon bonds. So they're not trans fats. They're equivalent to say... lard.

[skipbeat]

My shitty no name wal mart regular peanut butter lists 0 trans fats. Has sugar though. It's meh, the real stuff is better but so thick that washing it down with milk is mandatory.

PB sandwich -> regular PB
Spooning -> natural

[Scrofula]

My shitty no name wal mart regular peanut butter lists 0 trans fats. Has sugar though. It's meh, the real stuff is better but so thick that washing it down with milk is mandatory.

'0g trans fats' is code for '0.49g trans fats per serving'. There's a 'fat free' cooking spray out there that's just plain oil, using the same sneaky labeling that your peanut butter jar is using.

[tzanghi]

Fully hydrogenated vegetable oils become "saturated fats" and have no double-carbon bonds. So they're not trans fats. They're equivalent to say... lard.

I'm not so sure about that. In fact I'm quite sure that fully hydrogenated oils are just as bad as partially hydrogenated. Either way, hydrogenation is not a natural things. Essentially, they take the fat and just force hydrogen into the fat molecules such that the molecules become rather rigid. Though they may become structurally "equivalent" to saturated fats when there are no double-carbon bonds, that would be the equivalent of saying partially hydrogenated oils are the "equivalent" of poly-unsaturated fats. Just stay away from hydrogenated oils in general.

[skipbeat]

'0g trans fats' is code for '0.49g trans fats per serving'. There's a 'fat free' cooking spray out there that's just plain oil, using the same sneaky labeling that your peanut butter jar is using.

What the hell, so they're just lying to me? Isn't that, you know, illegal?

[veryhrm]

Well in this case we're talking about relatively simple molecules so they're not just "equivalent" in some ways but actually the same.

See e.g. the three pictures here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat#Chemistry

The ratios of different fatty acids in fully hydrogenated plant oil might be different from animal fat, (similar to how different protein sources have different amino acid contents ) but i haven't seen that raised as an issue.

As to the health impacts, well saturated fat is the OG bad nutrient... it's been somewhat rehabilitated of late, but not too much. All of these designations of good and bad are based primarily on the kind of epidemiological observational studies that measure intermediate markers that are considered around here to be fatally flawed, so as far as i know there is not significantly stronger evidence that one should avoid trans fats than there is that one should avoid large amounts of meat.