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Good Peanut Butter vs. Bad Peanut Butter
at Thu, 26 Feb 2004 23:26:20 GMT in
>, (Nancree)
wrote :
>Most peanut butters that are in supermarkets don't have oil rising to
>the top--they are of one consistency. This means that they have
>"Hydrogenated fat", which is very bad for your health--like butter, or
>beef fat.
>
Some research suggests that it's in fact *worse* than either butter or beef
fat. However, I believe that whatever the merits of the fat involved, the
bigger factor is proportion and moderation. No doubt if you lived in
reasonably temperate latitudes and ate virtually nothing but hard,
saturated fat (of any kind), you'd be setting yourself up for heart
disease. But if your fat intake were in moderation (say, 20-30% of
calories) and you distributed the types of fats you ate relatively evenly
between polyunsaturated (e.g. sunflower oil), monounsaturated (e.g. olive
oil) and saturated (e.g. lard) fats, I don't think there's any real harm in
the saturated fat intake.
....
>Do your children, and yourself, and buy a peanut butter that has the oil
>"separated", or floating on top. A nuisance, but so much healthier.
Oil separation in additive-free peanut butter means it's spent a long time
at room temperature. In other words, it's not especially fresh. Ideally,
what you want is freshly ground peanut butter - usually easy enough to find
at health food stores where they have grinders. If you grind it then, and
bring it home to your refrigerator, it'll stay unseparated for many weeks.
(which goes to show you how long the separated peanut butters have sat
around). Really, the additive-free peanut butter manufacturers should ship
their peanut butter refrigerated, and it should be stored in a refrigerator
case.
However, the only company I'm aware of that actually does this is
Rejuvenative Foods. They don't make peanut butter AFAIK, although with the
prevalence of peanut grinders in the stores that tend to carry
Rejuvenative, it's rather immaterial. The difference in flavour between
Rejuvenative nut butters and similar products from other manufacturers
(e.g. Maranatha, Kettle Foods) was, to me, amazing. Rejuvenative are much
stronger, without even a trace of the rancid taste you can catch hints of
in other nut butters. They literally taste like fresh nuts. Now, if only
they'd make a hazelnut butter, I'd be in heaven.
--
Alex Rast
(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)
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