Back to school time is here, and for frazzled moms in a hurry that often means your backup lunch solution: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Easy to make and easy for kids to love, this mainstay of American school lunches can be found everywhere, but peanut butter is not necessarily as good as it’s cracked up to be. And if you asked most kids what’s in peanut butter, they’d probably say, “mushed peanuts”, but that jar of nut butter may have a few surprises in store for you, so it’s time to learn about unhealthy peanut butter.
We’re going to sort the good from the bad, so you can choose the healthiest peanut butter for your family and feel safe packing that PB&J in your child’s lunchbox
The Bad: Unhealthy Peanut Butter
First, the bad news: there’s more than just peanuts in your peanut butter. Chemicals added to unhealthy peanut butter brands include items you’d rather not see on a list like this. Here is a list of the worst offenders in popular store brands:
Sugar: When the ingredient list says “sugar”, it comes from GMO sugar beets. Cane sugar is non-GMO – so organic cane sugar is your best bet if you are using sugar at all. Skippy, Planters and Great Value peanut butter brands contain sugar from sugar beets.
Corn Syrup Solids: Essentially, this is merely dehydrated corn syrup – just sugar from GMO corn. It’s not at all necessary in a good tasting peanut butter, especially if you are adding jelly or anything sweet. Found in Skippy Peanut Butter.
Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (Cottonseed, Soybean and/or Rapeseed Oil): All three of these oils are derived from GMO crops. Rapeseed oil was formerly used for industrial purposes only. Scientists developed an edible form, better known as canola oil. As for the hydrogenated vegetable oil, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil have trans-fats, but fully hydrogenated oils are still saturated fats found in processed foods. That said, almost none of the labels I saw denoted if the hydrogenated vegetable oil was full or partial, and therefore, there’s no way to know if they contain trans fats. Unhealthy peanut butter brands containing this GMO oil include Skippy, Jif, Reese’s, Planters, Great Value Brand and Peter Pan. (Note that Peter Pan DOES lists both types, including Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oil and therefore does have trans fats.)
Mono- and Di-Glycerides: According to LiveStrong, these are food additives that are used to combine fatty substances with other substances that contain water, since the two usually don’t mix well. Think about peanut butter that you don’t have to mix – additives like these are used to keep that mixture together. These additives may contain trans fats and are related to triglycerides. Found in Skippy, Jif, Reese’s.
Maltodextrin: Found in Smucker’s Reduced Fat Peanut Butter, this sweet additive can be derived from GMO corn in the U.S. (or rice or potato). It also has a high glycemic index.
Soy Protein Concentrate: First of all, with the non-organic brands, all soy is GMO. Processed soy hiding in your food is a problem, too, because soy can possibly wreak havoc with your estrogen levels. It’s a fickle ingredient and depends on all the chemicals reactions in your body at the time you process it, which can vary. It can be good or bad for you, but the GMO version is always bad. In addition, “soy protein concentrate” can mean your product contains MSG, a neurotoxin. Found in Skippy.
Soy Lecithin: Again, a GMO product. Found in Better’n Peanut Butter.
And one note about Better’n Peanut Butter. This was an unusual case – they’ve attempted to make a “healthier” peanut butter by reducing the peanuts and adding processed foods, turning into one of the worst unhealthy peanut butter offenders. It also contains a number of sweeteners (vegetable glycerin, rice syrup, dehydrated cane juice, tapioca syrup), so I’d be cautious about using this product over one that has more peanuts than anything else.
Unhealthy Peanut Butter Brands to Avoid:
- Better’n Peanut Butter – Calcium carbonate, lecithin, 3 types of sweetener (tapioca syrup, dehydrated cane juice, rice syrup).
- Great Value Brand – Hydrogenated vegetable oil (rapeseed, cottonseed, soybean), 2 types of sweetener (sugar, molasses).
- Jif – Sugar, fully hydrogenated vegetable oil (rapeseed and soybean), monodiglycerides.
- Peter Pan – Sugar, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (cottonseed and rapeseed).
- Planters – Sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oil (rapeseed, cottonseed, and soybean oil), palm oil.
- Reese’s – Hydrogenated vegetable oil (rapeseed, cottonseed and soybean), 2 types of sweetener (sugar, molasses), monoglycerides.
- Skippy – Sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oil (cottonseed, soybean and rapeseed oil).
- Smucker’s Reduced Fat Peanut Butter – Maltodextrin.
What Are the Recommended Brands of Peanut Butter?
Peanut lovers today have lots of great options that are healthier, organic and provide better choices for sweeteners and salt. Here are the cleanest brands available. Some of these companies offer options such as flavored peanut butters or other nut butters.
This brand uses raw, organic honey to sweeten, organic coconut oil, unprocessed sea salt, dry roasted peanuts and pure Madagascar vanilla to flavor their butter. Their Honey Vanilla Bourbon Peanut Butter sounds out of this world – and healthy to boot.
Just fresh roasted peanuts, nothing else! They are not organic but they do not use oils or sweetener at all. If you are looking just for a clean roasted peanut taste, this brand may work for you.
This Non-GMO Project Verified brand may be familiar for its butter substitutes. It’s available in Creamy or Crunchy Peanut Butter and boasts that its oils are expeller-pressed. For those avoiding sugar, this brand uses agave syrup in place of it. I love that this brand contains flaxseed too! Ingredients: peanuts, flaxseed, peanut oil, agave syrup, palm fruit oil and salt.
This company’s Classic Peanut Butter contains no sweeteners. Their products are not all organic at this time but they are working towards that goal. Currently, they are in the process of verifying products with the Non-GMO Project. Ingredients: dry roasted peanuts, and palm fruit oil. Justin’s also makes different flavors – 5 kinds of Almond Butter, Classic and Honey Peanut Butter, and Chocolate Hazelnut Butter. Check the ingredients of each to learn more.
This brand is not Project GMO verified but they claim to only use “100% non-GMO sourced ingredients”. I do like that these products contain flaxseed oil, an item I try to eat regularly. Ingredients: peanuts, dried cane sugar, salt, molasses and natural oils (palm fruit and flaxseed oils).
Woodstock Foods Peanut Butters
Bearing both the Non-GMO Project and USDA Organic labels, Woodstock is an excellent choice. They have lots of varieties, with or without sweeteners or sea salt. Most common ingredients: organic blanched peanuts, organic palm oil, organic sugar, and salt. Note that their Easy Spread items only contain peanuts or peanuts and salt, and only their Classic varieties contain organic palm oil. A clean choice for everyone.
I hope this list will get you thinking when you are at the supermarket or purchasing peanut butter online for your family. Check out the varieties and find a brand your child loves that is healthier for his lunchbox!
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Walmart has an organic version of their “Great Value” brand. It’s just peanuts and salt, and very reasonably priced.
Would Mamavation consider testing different brands of PB in plastic jars for antimony? Peanut butter has to be heated to go into the jars, and I’m wondering if anything leaches into the peanut butter. Thank you!
I feel compelled to inform you and your readers that brands (such as Justin’s) that use palm are doing a great disservice to workers, the environment, and one’s health. Not only does the palm oil industry promote child abuse, but it is manifestly unhealthy. “Tens of thousands of children, earning little to no pay, work alongside their parents in Indonesia and Malaysia, which supply 85% of the world’s palm oil. Along with being exposed to toxic chemicals and other dangerous conditions, some of these children never go to school, while others are smuggled across borders and left vulnerable to trafficking or sexual abuse….For 100 years, families have been stuck in a cycle of poverty and they know nothing else than work on a palm oil plantation.”
Harvesting oil from palm trees is also controversial due to environmental concerns such as deforestation and resultant loss of animal habitats.
Moreover, In fractionated palm oil, the liquid portion is removed by a crystallizing and filtering process. The remaining solid portion is higher in saturated fat and has a higher melting temperature–not so heart healthy! Compared with other liquid vegetable oils, red palm oil was worse at lowering cholesterol, increased cholesterol in healthy individuals compared with olive oil, and may even raise “bad” LDL cholesterol levels.
Peanut butter does NOT need any oil to be creamy and delectable! Witness all the organic brands that use only peanuts and salt! You left out so many great brands–Once Again, Santa Cruz, and Brad’s Organics, for starters–all available in health food stores.
Thanks for the detailed report. Santa Cruz peanut butter is just organic peanuts. It is my go-to brand now that I can not grind my own organic peanut butter at my local co-op.
Yes! Santa Cruz!
Smart Balance is now verified non-gmo:)
Thank you for this information on peanut butter, as my family, especially my grandson and I, eat it frequently.
I only buy the natural versions of JIF and Peter Pan, and occasionally Skippy peanut butters.
It’s my understanding that the natural ones do not have hydrogenated oils nor many additives, if any. .
However, now I’m concerned as to whether any of them/all of them contain GMO oils and GMO sugar!
Do any of you know, or know how I can find out?
Thank you again for your work and for getting what you learn out to all of us.
So if you see the word “sugar” it’s likely beet sugar which is typically genetically engineered. When it comes to oils, look for vegetable oil, corn oil, canola oil and there are some additional oils coming you can read about here, https://www.mamavation.com/2017/04/foods-that-have-gmos.html
according to Peter Pan’s website at least the palm oil is from sustainable Palm resources and their peanut butter is entirely non-GMO….that said it is not organic but at least these two factors come into play for a more affordable peanut butter
I think the admin of this site is in fact working hard in favor of his web page, since here every data is quality based data.
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l’admin
Actually JIF is the only peanut butter that I can use because it does NOT have cottonseed oil in it. I am EXTREMELY allergic to cottonseed oil so I know what does and does not have it as an ingredient. I have fibromyalgia and cottonseed causes me the most severe pain that is not alleviated by any pain meds that I can find. One drop of cottonseed oil makes me suffer for over 24 hours. So please do not include JIF in your list of nasty peanut butters. Also I would point out that all Planter’s Peanut products have cottonseed oil on them. They can sell peanut oil for a greater profit and use cottonseed oil on their products. Also if you are sensitive to peanuts you need to know that many chocolate chips have peanuts in them. If you have problems with gluten you need to steer clear of the cheaper store bands of chocolate chips as they often contain gluten as a filler. I wish that the FDA would make them list EVERY ingredient in every product regardless of how small the amount of that ingredient. Thank you for what you do!
Hi Kathy, I apologize. It does not have cottonseed but it does have soybean and rapeseed oil and those are GMO. I have edited the bullet to read “and/or”. Thanks for sharing and for the update on Planters!
I like the helpful information you provide in your articles.
I’ll bookmark your blog and check again here regularly.
I am quite sure I’ll learn many new stuff right
here! Best of luck for the next!
Place me on your mailing list/peanut butter
No lie, my husband and I stood in front of the peanut butter at the grocery store a few weeks ago for nearly 30 minutes just trying to find one that didn’t have a crazy oil or a ton of sugar in it. We were at a different store than usual and couldn’t just grab our usual choice. Buying peanut butter is hard work.
I do like the Justin’s nut butters, and the freshly ground stuff at Fresh Market is pretty good too. I usually get both peanut butter and almond butter.