How Peanut Butter Works

No food is more all-American than peanut butter – 80 percent of homes in the country have a jar of it in the pantry right now. And while the rest of the world might find peanut butter peculiar, maybe even gross, the rest of the world is wrong.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know a production of my
heart radios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to peanut
butter jelly time. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. We haven't seen
Jerry in a while. If you have seen Jerry, please
tell her to call home. Uh. And this is stuff

(00:21):
you should know. Yeah, Jerry, she snata in a smoke
signal that said send to me. So she did, she did,
and we send some on donkey back in that general janction.
Are you peanut butter or jelly in this scenario? I
want to be peanut buttered. You always make me be jelly. Well,

(00:43):
I think we should level set here at the beginning,
and let's talk about if you like peanut butter, which
is your favorite? And then what you like, how do
you utilize it? Okay, my name is Josh C. And
I love peanut butter. Okay, almost only smooth. I will
eat chunky if the if civilization has collapsed and that's

(01:04):
all I can find, I eat it anyway, shape or form.
Sometimes just peanut butter on a spoon. Sometimes peanut butter
and a spoon with a little divit made with my
tongue filled with local honey. Um. If you want to
get tubby really fast. Let me introduce you to the
wonder that is a spoonful of peanut butter scooped in

(01:24):
some cool whip. Um. But really, any kind of peanut
butter anytime, I will eat it. And I've noticed that
once I reached my forties, peanut butter sticks around me
a lot more than it used to. So I'm having
a real struggle with it. Thank you for listening. Uh.
And do you want to buzz market your favorite brand? Um?
We use this JIF natural that's like um uh, it's

(01:48):
liking a brown container and I like it so much.
I've never I've purposely never looked at the label because
I don't want to know how natural it is. Um.
But my all time favorite is Reese's peanut butter. Like
have you had it you mean in the jar? Yes? Yes,
Oh it's so good. I think I've had it once.

(02:09):
But I was raised on Jeff, Now go well, I
was raised on whatever the gigantic gallon tub is that
you used to get indies. Yeah, I don't remember. I
don't think it was any of those name brands. Um. Now,
I mean I love peanut butter. It's one of my
favorite things in the world. Uh, and I will go

(02:30):
crunchy or smooth, no matter. I love them both. I
also like it with honey. Um. I like it. And
I don't do this much obviously because it's just I'm
not nineteen years old, but a peanut butter and mayonnaise
sandwich is one of the best things in the world.
You know, I've never had that, is it? Is it good? Really?

(02:50):
Do you have any QUEPI? Yes, peanut butter and cupe sammy, Okay,
so half and half or more peanut butter than mayo
or what it's kind of your am. I definitely don't
go light on the mayo because you've gotta have that tang. Uh.
Peanut butter and marshmallow fluff I used to eat when
I was a kid stuff fluff or nutter and um.
Now I don't eat the sugary hydrogenated types. Um. I

(03:15):
either have one of the sort of artisan natural kinds
you have to mix up or just did cab Farmers
Market grinds the peanuts right in front of your face
into a tub and and it to you right in
front of your face, and it says beat it. You
can't have any of this, so that's just peanuts obviously. Yeah,
maybe a little bit of salt. Do they had any salders?
They're really just peanuts. It's just peanuts. I wonder if

(03:38):
they salt the peanuts when they roast them thing, because
I've always seen like peanuts with just a little bit
of salt, like you can't have peanut butter any other way.
But maybe maybe they figured out they cracked the code. Well,
I mean they may be salted and roasted. I have
no idea about the peanut, but it's good. It's all good.
But I have to mix, you know. I gotta put
a little bit of honey in there, maybe a little

(03:59):
bit of a gabba to give it a little bit
of a sweet. Oh that's a good idea. Yeah, I
was gonna ask you. I've not had any artisan stuff
and I did a little research and found a couple
I want to try um, and I didn't know, like
is it is it just straight up adult kind of
stuff where you're like, oh, that's really good, but you're
wishing that you had like the Nasty Big three brand instead. Well,

(04:20):
I mean, if you don't add any sweet nerve, it's
it's not nearly as good as you know, but I
think the naturals are all kind of the same as
far as sweetness level. Yeah, the best I could discern
is that if you're paying for artisan craft peanut butter,
and buddy you're paying, you're like supposedly to have, you know,

(04:41):
depending on the kind of peanuts that are chosen, the
variety of peanuts, um, the way that it's roasted, almost
like a coffee or a wine or something like that,
there's like a sophisticated palette or tear war that you
really have to pay attention to. That to me is
kind of like the opposite of what peanut butter is
supposed to be. It's supposed to just be like this dumb,
messy thing where you know, your hair is totally normal,

(05:02):
and you start eating the peanut butter and you suddenly
have like a cowlick and you're wearing a striped shirt
that shows your gut kind of thing. You know, like
you just regress an age. But I also get wanting
to enjoy peanut butter in a healthy way, because it
is surprisingly from from what I saw, it is healthier
than you would suspect if done right. Yes, not not

(05:23):
a big glob of Peter pan with cuping cuping mayonnaise
and potato chips smashed in between white bread. Yes, yeah,
I'm I'm hungry now I am too. I already had
some peanut butter this morning, so I'm good to go.
But this thing, this is like the Yawning episode where
I kept yawning doing research. This is I just wanted
peanut butter the whole time. Well, peanut butter for me,

(05:45):
and that has now become my uh in my since January,
and I'm trying to lose some weight, so that's become
my sweet treat at the end of the night instead
of going and getting ice cream, Just like a spoonful
of peanut butter and honey, and that'll satiate that desire.
I haven't seen you in a while. How's it going.
That's good. I mean I'm down twenty since January, but

(06:08):
really leveled off the past month. Congratulations, dude, that is
really impressive. Just forty more to go, man, No, that's
really great, man, Just just yeah, yeah, it does plateau,
but it picks up again. Don't want plateaus because of
quarantine alcoholism. Oh well, I was going to ask, because
I'm finding that that quarantining has made things like we

(06:31):
you know, we have food and everything, but we're we're
eating it less for some reason rather than the opposite,
which both you, me and I were really concerned was
going to be the way it went. Um, are you
finding it easier to keep up with food or harder?
Easier because I'm cooking a lot um cheese and buzz
marketing again. But you know, I'm just having one of

(06:51):
those Mike's Mighty Goods for lunch which is very low
in calories. Yeah, it's really good to uh, and you know,
I'm just tracking the calories and it's it's alcohol that's
the problem. Right now, I got you. Yeah, I've been
doing one or two nights a week tops, um, and
then a couple of nights. I've been pretty good now
that I think about it. It's good. Yeah, because this
has been fairly stressful, but I haven't been stressed eating

(07:13):
too much. So okay, anyway, peanut butter here to me Chuck.
Early on, we happened upon the fact of the podcast.
If you ask me, this is very jarring, if you'll
forgive the pun, that peanut butter outside of the United States,
in a lot of different countries is looked upon as
very weird and gross in much the same way that

(07:37):
we Americans tend to think of like vegemite. People like
the British, Chinese other countries do not think peanut butter
is particularly good. They think it's a little nasty. Um,
And that just blew me away to read that. Yeah,
I'd want to talk to some people before I let

(07:57):
some internet website tell me that people think peanut butter
screw us, some some website push your brain around. Yeah,
I'd like to talk to some folks about that. But
at the very least, even if they don't think it's gross,
it it is a an all American thing, Like even
countries that do enjoy it. I've read that Australia actually
likes it a lot. Um. It's an American concoction so

(08:20):
much so that like it might be the most American
concoction there is, to tell you the truth. Yeah, I
mean you make a good point here. You put this
stuff together that mac and cheese came from Europe, hot
dogs came from Europe. Uh, sort of Hamburgers, even though
I would argue that the hamburgers we know it is
is pretty American, but peanut butter just us as far

(08:42):
as modern times go, Yeah, I think that the Inca
in the fifteenth century used to grind peanuts into a
paste and then that was it until the nineteenth century
when one of our buddies, who's gonna make a cameo
later um, got his hands on the idea. But yeah,
it was an American invention, except it was actually Canadian,

(09:03):
as we'll see. But for for the most part, people
think of it as all American. Um. And to talk
about peanut butter, Chuck, we kind of have to talk
about peanuts. There's really no way around it. Believe me,
I don't want to, but we have to. I think
you mean Goober's. Have you ever heard somebody outside of
TV call them that? Not really, but I knew it

(09:26):
was a thing, but I don't. It's not in the
just daily nomenclature of my crowd, but it is. It's
supposedly like a Southern and I guess an antiquated Southern
word for peanut, a goober or goober. P Yeah, I've
heard goober and that old song about the raisinets goober, Well, goober's.
It's also a candy, right, Yeah, And there's smuckers goobers,

(09:46):
which is peanut, butter and jelly mixed together in a jar. M.
It's actually good, is it? Yeah? Even as a kid,
I was like, this is gonna be gross, and then
I tried. I was like, not bad, not bad. Smuckers.
See pretty discerning with my jams and jellies. So that's
for another day. Though you would not like this, I
probably would. You would like suckers, And if you're at

(10:08):
all discerning, you would not like it. Alright. So peanuts
is a it's a legume. It's also called a ground
nut or an earth nut, and just like a little
or a pea, it is a little lagum and not
a nut. No, I'm a big fan of peanuts though
I like to eat them pretty much anyway. You can
slice it from boiled too, straight up, raw out of

(10:30):
the shell um like honey, roasted, salted and roasted, and
certainly in peanut butter. So Momo and I go and
visit squirrels whenever we can when we go on walks,
and we always take peanuts, and I read you're supposed
to take roasted unsalted peanuts, so we get like big
bags of those, and if there's no squirrels out, I

(10:50):
get to eat all peanuts. Oh yeah, yeah, mo will
give me a look like does are not for you?
But they usually end up in my tummy. Anyway, have
you ever seen a squirrel will stick one of those
in his mouth sideways are cute? Yeah, we will like
all shell them and then throw like the actual peanut
in the squirrel. Somehow we'll know that there's supposed to
be another one coming because they'll very they'll frequently put

(11:13):
one in his cheek and then like be like, okay,
toss me the other one. Then I'll take that run
off and like eat it with his two little hands.
It's really adorable, right, Or they might stick around to
see if it's one of the rare three bangers, which
is just that's a good squirrel day right there. All right,
So these things are lagoons, and we think they originated

(11:33):
in South America. You mentioned Peru, even though we cannot
prove that through the fossil record, but they have found
evidence in the archaeological um culture from Peru from about
seventy years ago. And it was sort of one of
these things where they found um the fact that they
were farming this stuff and then when you see it

(11:54):
in like artwork and pottery and stuff like that. Then
you know it's sort of a thing. Yeah, right, the
peanut has arrived. When it shows up on pottery, you
know they've also found him, I guess, entombed with mummies
from the Inca and the Aztecs. Um which makes sense
because when the uh conquistadors arrived, the Spanish and the

(12:15):
Portuguese to South America and Central America, they found peanuts
being grown as far north as Mexico, but I think
the first place they encountered them was actually in the
Caribbean um and they took him back with with them.
They took him to Spain, and Spain passed him along
to the rest of Europe and the Philippines and China.
Um the Portuguese took it back to again to Europe,

(12:37):
but also to India and Africa, and peanuts started to
be farmed all over the world, like the world loves peanuts,
is just not necessarily peanut butter that they're crazy about.
And then, in a really kind of weird, surprising twist,
the peanuts were re exported back to the America's from
Africa as part of the West African slave trade. And

(12:59):
actually that goober that Southern word goober they think comes
from a Congolese word or congo with a K word
in Guba. Yeah, pretty surprising, sure, goober and Guba close enough. Yeah,
But to think like the peanut, you think of the
peanut is as just American as it comes, and then
even as Georgia as it comes. But the idea that

(13:22):
it wouldn't have been here had it not been for
the importation of African slaves that reintroduced the peanut to
the America's that's a pretty circuitous and weird route for
it to take. Yeah, and Africa still grows about of
the peanuts in the world. Weird just below that at
about here in the States. And it took all the

(13:42):
way to eighteen forty two that we started growing them
commercially in the US. UH in Virginia's where it first
started for oil and food and UH to substitute out
for cocoa. And it wasn't it just wasn't like a
It was kind of like for people that didn't have
the means to buy something better or maybe feed it
to your animals or something like that. Yeah, it was

(14:03):
good for livestock and the poverty stricken basically was who
were expected to eat peanuts at the time. That's right.
It's just like like lobster. Have you ever read Considered
the Lobster? That? Um? Wow, man, I want to say
David Lee Roth so bad, but I know it's not
his name at all. Who wrote Consider the Lobster? I've

(14:25):
never heard of that. But who who was end of
tour about that movie of David Foster Wallace? Sure? Um,
he wrote this really great magazine article once called Consider
the Consider the Lobster. It's good, but in it he
explains that it used to be considered a food fit
only for the poor. Basically, I guess peanuts were considered

(14:46):
the same. That's right. Uh, you know they were uh
c spiders, yeah, or the cockroaches of the sea. It
is kind of gross when you think of it like that.
In apparent only, there was a law that said that, um,
you could only feed so much lobster to patients and
mental asylums at the time, or else it became abusive. Wow. Yeah,

(15:11):
they didn't know what did they try him on a
hot dog bun with mayonnaise. So one of the reasons
why the peanut was viewed as such a lowly crop
was that it was again it was used for oil
and um, which I mean this wasn't necessarily just cooking oil.
They would use it to lubricate machinery, that kind of stuff.
So the idea of eating the same thing that your
machinery lube came from, it was probably not super appetizing.

(15:35):
But it was also like you would get just basically
trash when you got a bag of peanuts, because there
was no easy way to harvest it, stem them, clean them,
and prepare them for basically general consumption. Which so again
you could just dump it into a trough and feeded
to your livestock, or you could spend a lot of
time trying to separate it, or you could just be like,

(15:55):
I'm not I'm not messing with this. And for a
long time they didn't mess with it. Actually, Yeah, when
the Civil War happened, the Union soldiers got their hands
on some of our southern peanuts and they said these
are delicious, and both armies ate a lot of peanuts.
And then when the circus rolled around with P. T.
Barnum Hugh Jackman, they started selling peanuts there hot roasted peanuts,

(16:17):
and especially in the cheap seats, they become known as
the pet peanut gallery, and that's where that phrase came
came from, which is kind of interesting. Yeah, because apparently
if they didn't like what they saw, they would toss
their peanuts there that they were eating at the stage.
So that's where peanut gallery came from. Yeah, and then
you've got them on the street corners, you've got them
at baseball games. Peanuts are starting to get a little

(16:39):
traction as a snack, but they were still not. Uh,
it was still hard to get like a really good
quality peanuts because, like you said, the way they were
being harvested at the time by hands, it was just
tough to do. And then so too African Americans. UM
around the turn of the last century, UM stepped up

(17:00):
and basically said, we're going to make the peanut what
it is today. So one obviously was George Washington Carver,
who's known as basically the father of the peanut UM,
who actually, contrary to popular belief, did not invent peanut butter,
but he did come up with more than three different
ways to use the peanut. And I never realized like
why he was so bonkers for peanuts, but one of

(17:22):
the reasons he was trying to make the peanut established
it as a prominent crop was because the South had
depleted its soil so badly from growing cotton for so long.
And then you know, at the worst of this um
there was a bowl weevil outbreak that just ruined the
rest of the cotton crops. So the South really needed

(17:42):
something to replace cotton. And George Washington Carver helped introduce
and popularized peanuts and say, not only can you eat
these things, look at all this other stuff you can
make out of them. That's right. Uh. And there was
another guy around the same time named Ben Hicks, Mr.
Benjamin Hicks. He was from Virginia and which we already
talked about being a big peanut state. And he invented

(18:04):
a gas powered machine for cleaning and stemming these things.
He got it patented, Uh, like a lot of well
it still goes on, I guess with with a little
guy and their patents. Um big farm came around and
a farm equipment company challenged him. He actually had to
go to court, but one the case in nineteen o one,

(18:24):
and this picker was a big, big deal in modernizing
peanut farming, and all of a sudden you could get
really good peanuts a lot quicker doesn't take as many
hands or are man hours or person hours, and the
demand for peanuts, for oil for eating them, and peanut
butter and candy all just kind of went through the
roof at that point. Yeah. Yeah, because you could you

(18:47):
could get your hands on good peanuts. They were widely
available and they were just delicious. Everyone saw finally how
great peanuts are, but not peanut butter yet. And I proposed, Charles,
did we take a break and then come back really
dig into the peanut butter. Let's do it, okay, in

(19:08):
things and choosh and shock, so okay. So, like I said,

(19:34):
the INCA probably had us beat as far as the
invention of peanut butter went um. But it was actually
a Canadian who they think was probably the actual inventor
of modern peanut butter, a guy who I had never
heard of before. His name was Marcellus Gilmore Edson Wallace.

(19:57):
I'm kidding, by the last part. It was just that
was going Marcellus Gilbore Edson. You just can't say the
name Marcellis and not followed up with Wallace somewhere. You know.
It's it really has become like peanut butter and jelly.
So he patented a paste made of peanuts in four,
which was described by him and his patent as uh

(20:19):
at room temperature, having a consistency like that of butter, lard,
or ointment. It sounds gross, but when you think about
peanut butter, that's kind of about right. He added sugar
to stabilize it a little bit, and this was kind
of like the first modern peanut butter that we think of.
His peanut butter. It's sold for about six cents a pound,

(20:39):
which is pretty good price. Yeah, and if you from
what I can tell just reading about it, if you
tried it today, you'd be like, yeah, it's peanut butter,
Whereas if you tried some of the other stuff, you'd
be like, oh, yeah, that's the artisan peanut butter. It's punished, yeah,
And the other stuff was first developed. So it's interesting
to me that there's in the first try, right out

(21:02):
of the gate, the guy who invents peanut butter basically
invents the modern version of it, and then it takes
a big step backwards or sideways, I guess you can say,
depending on your viewpoint. When our buddy doctor John Harvey
Kellogg comes along, and if you'll remember from the live
show we did on the Kellogg Brothers. He invented nut butters,

(21:23):
and in particular peanut butter is considered one of the
main inventors of peanut butter. Well, yeah it was. It
was right up his alley, because, um, I think that
might be my favorite live show we've done. Actually, I
think so PR was my favorite. PR. Howney, you're going
to say that you did. Yeah, that was a good
one you did. I think those are my top two?

(21:43):
What about Pinto's Man, what about Cooper? Those might be
the first four? Name what else have we done? Malls bars?
We did the secret one that is still supposedly on
tour but on High eight US right now, Um, I
think that's it. I think that's all. Well, I'm gonna

(22:04):
go with John Harvey Kellogg because he uh as if
you listen to that when he was very big on
chewing food until it was the consistency of peanut butter basically,
and so peanut butter comes along and he's like, well,
this is perfect because you don't have to chew it
like that, it's already like that. It'll just glad right
through your system and come out as delicious. Peanut butter poop. Yeah,

(22:26):
and it won't poison your entire body and you won't
have to spend any time in the electric light bath
for the needing machine. So Dr Kellogg creates basically what
we would recognize today as the um the artisan version
of peanut butter. It's just ground up peanuts that form
a paste, and apparently that's just a natural thing that happens.

(22:49):
Like if you put roasted peanuts in food processor, it's
going to turn like gritty and everything. But if you
just keep going, it eventually reaches this point, this threshold
where that grit turns into this oily paste like peanut butter,
like um an ointment, like Marcellis Wallace would call it,
and um that's basically what John Harvey Kellogg did and

(23:13):
served at Battle Creek. But most of the people who
would have been exposed to peanut butter would not have
tried John Kellogg's because you know, that sanitarium was really
expensive and it was for the wealthy, it was for celebrities.
So most people experience peanut butter at one or two places.

(23:33):
And Chuck I really found out in researching this that
the history of peanut butter is super murky. It's like
a smooth full of peanut butter stirred up in a
glass of water kind of murky, right where it's kind
of chriss, where it's just not entirely clear who did
what when, who's um contribution has been disproportionately mytholologized. But

(24:01):
from what I can tell, John Harvey Kellogg is definitely
one of the fathers of peanut butter um. Mr. Marcellus
was one as well. And then it gets a little
murkier after that, so much so that people say, well,
peanut butter made his debut at the nineteen o four St.
Louis World's Fair, and then other people are like, no, no,
that's way wrong. It made its debut at the Chicago

(24:24):
World's Fair, And I can find good credible sources that
say either one. So I have no idea where it
made his debut. I believe it was sold for sure
at the St. Louis World Fair in nineteen o four,
and that a guy named um C. H. Summers sold
like twenty dollars worth of peanut butter as snack items there,

(24:49):
but that the people who ate it there had probably
already been exposed to peanut butter and liked it. It
might not have been something that was part of like
their everyday thing. They weren't standing in their pantry eating
it off of a spoon, but they had probably had
it before, and this is like a real treat for
them too to experience it. It It wasn't like debuted in
nineteen o four from what I can tell right, well,

(25:11):
we're regardless of who introduced it initially. By nineteen oh seven,
thanks to companies like Hinz and beech Nut, they were
selling thirty four million pounds of peanut butter, up from
just two million in eighteen nine, So over an eight
year period, that's that's a pretty big increase. And the
soldiers come into play again. It wasn't just the Civil

(25:31):
War and World Wars one and two. Um, And I've
had peanut butter k rations before. Uh huh. It's my
dad used to get that stuff a lot when I
was a kid for camping and stuff at the Army
Navy store. So, uh, it became a big part of
your your army rations and the armed forces because I
had a lot of protein. It was good sustenance. You

(25:51):
can make a P B and J and that was
pretty comforting. If you were on the front lines or
in a trench. In World War One, supposedly they popularized
the pban a the troops did. That's right, and thank
them for that. Oh, I will all salute the troops
for that one. But it was pretty regional at the
time in the early twenties century. Uh, it didn't travel

(26:12):
that great. Um. They finally let you know, I mentioned
hydrogenized earlier. It was this hydrogenation, is that right? That
really led to the Big Three coming about with the
industrialization of peanut butter production. And three gentlemen named Peter, Pan, Skippy,

(26:37):
and Jeff, which I was curious about Jeff, where that
came from? And all I found was that they said
it's easy to spell, easy to say, and easy to remember.
It's true all three of those, and had no meaning
beyond that basically. Really, I would have guessed I had
something to do with, you know, like doing it in
a jiff or jiffy or something. Huh, I mean, you know,
I mean you've got to be in the room, I

(26:58):
guess to know where the seed came from. But they
just said it was simple and super easy, and uh,
that was kind of the end of that story. The
good night. No, I'm with you. I do too. I'm
kind of mad right now. But we've gotta we gotta
press on UM with hydrogenation, right because there's this guy

(27:19):
named John Crampner, and he wrote a book called The
Creamy and Crunchy all about peanut butter, and he basically
points that saying like that that's that was the turning
point for peanut butter, maybe even tied for first with
its invention. UM was the introduction of hydrogenation, which takes
oils that are liquid at room temperature and as hydrogen

(27:42):
and a catalyst, usually like powdered nickel, and those those
bonds become infused or saturated with hydrogen and so they
stick together a lot more easily. So those liquid oils
have a um more stable um solid state at room temperature.
So you go from like peanut butter with oil on top,

(28:05):
to peanut butter that doesn't have oil on top of
the oils mixed into the mixture, and it stays that
way even on the store shelf, which people love because
I mean, you know, from eating artist and peanut butter,
it's kind of a pain to stir it up. I
mean that that initial stir is a little dodgy because
it's so close to the lid. But um, you just

(28:27):
have to have the right spoon, take your time to
be in a rush. Uh. And you know, shelf life
stability is super important with peanut butter because only monsters
put their peanut butter in the refrigerator. Who does that?
Who point them out to me? Monsters who like you've
met somebody who's done that before. I think that was
in a Judge John hand been listener mail at one point. Uh.

(28:51):
I don't think it was a major case, but I
think it was one of their one of their listener
man ones. But totally totally think it should be on
the shelf. That's where it belongs. Um. Although I will
say if you mix a little P, B and J
with a natural kind and you put it in the
fridge because you've had your two bites and you made
too much the next day, it is interesting. It's more
like a Reese's cup consistency. It's kind of hard. Uh.

(29:14):
It makes for a nice little snack, but it's certainly
not anything that you can spread on bread right right. Well.
That's the other thing too, is if the oils are
mixed into the solids that forms this creamier substance that
makes it way easier to spread, which moms love. Right.
And then the other thing it does too is with
all of those hydrogen atoms linked on to the fat

(29:37):
chains the lipids, um, there's not all these unused or
open bonds that an oxygen atom can come along and
bond too, and um oxidize the peanut butter, which creates peroxide,
which gives it a rancid taste. So hydrogenation not only
made peanut butter um less liquid e more creamy, it

(29:59):
also may it last longer. Like sitting on the shelf
before it was sold and used, it wouldn't turn rants
and nearly as fast, So it was a big deal.
The problem is is that took peanut butter, which is
actually kind of healthy with a mono unsaturated fat that
liquid oil and turned it into saturated or partially saturated
saturated fat, which is really tough on the old ticker. Yeah,

(30:23):
that's why I'd stay away from that stuff. I mean,
it's so good. Um, but yeah, I just I made
the switch many years ago. Good for you, Jack. Yeah,
the hydrogenated outsold natural for the first time in forty
two and accounts for about of the current market Peter Pan,
believe it or not, I don't think I've ever had
Peter Pan. It's not bad unless it was just at

(30:44):
a friend's house or something. I don't think we ever
had it in our house. Peter Pan makes a natural
one too, and I mean I'm making air quotes um
like Jiff does, and it's I think it might even
be better than Jiff's natural version. I think Emily likes
the Smuckers Natural, but I also got some. Uh, I

(31:05):
can't remember the brand. It's one of the one of
the other natural brands. They're they're all pretty good. I
think so was when peter Pan rolled out and was
the first which I didn't know was the first major brand.
It was the biggest seller at the time. Uh. It
used that partial hydrogenation process that was patented by a

(31:26):
guy named Joseph rose Field from Kentucky. And then that's
where Jeff Skippy came from. Peter Pan's parent company said
I want to cut your licensing fee. He said, I'm
done with you, and I'm gonna go out and I'm
gonna make Skippy on my own. And by the end
of his career he had tin patents, not just for
peanut butter, but relating to food, and he was just

(31:48):
kind of like a Chevy Chase in vacation movies. He
was a food scientist. Yeah, what was it The thing
that he learned code of flake with that he used
on this lead some sort of non nutritional I can't remember.
I'll figure it out. No need to email everyone, No
need to email, I want to hear. I want every

(32:11):
email for about this. I think it was called a
non nutritional coding, is what he called it. But but yeah,
he was very much like that. But he was also way, way,
way better than anything Chevy Chase could ever be because
he was a really great boss. He um paid his
his workers really well, and in creating the Skippy brand,
he broke off from this kind of um this corporate

(32:34):
overlord that he he worked for was keeping him under
his thumb and then trying to um short change him. Uh,
and said, you know what, by creating Skippy, I'm going
to not only challenge you, Peter Pan, I'm going to
become the best selling peanut butter there is from like
nineteen fifty to nineteen eighty, like Skippy was it. And

(32:54):
I just missed the Skippy train. So I'm wondering like
if I had been, you know, born in nineteen s
and d if I would have been raised on Skippy.
But I came along at the jiff Era really yeah,
he said in your face, and they said, I love
peanut butter in my face, and he went, oh, I
gotta think of a new comeback, you know, Chuck. One
thing that's always bothered me about Peter Pan is do

(33:15):
you remember that jingle where it's like, eat some peanut
butter anytime you can. It's like, oh, that's nice, and
then they follow it up with but only if it's
Peter Pan, like it's got kind of this like if
I can't have you, no one can psychotic mentality to it. Yeah.
I never I never heard that song, so I never
really thought about that. Do you didn't watch the television

(33:38):
in the ninet nineties. I did. I don't remember that
one though, But I mean I was in the nineties.
I was in college, so I probably wasn't. I don't
even think we had cable. I didn't watch much TV
in college. Uh, so Skippy is doing great. Peter Pan
is just like, well, I guess I'll just have to
be second banana and Skippy, and Jeff said, do you

(34:00):
like being third banana because that's where you're headed. That
same year, in nineteen fifty five, this is when rose
Field sold Uh Skippy to Best Foods. Procter and Gamble
bought Big Top Peanut from William T. Young, also of Kentucky,
and then they became Jeff uh and they held that

(34:20):
brand until two thousand one, two thousand two. Yeah, I
did not know that. But wait two thousand one, two
thousand two when they sold the Smuckers. Okay, but Jeff
is still the number one brand today, right as far
as I know. Okay, Yeah, that's that's my understanding too.
I thought you were saying like it was the number
one brand until then, but yeah, from from I think

(34:42):
night two today it's it's number one. Yeah, and they
got a lot of uh, I think they all do.
But Jeff alone has fifteen different kinds of peanut butter,
which is kind of nuts. If you look at their lists,
They've got all kinds of different crazy peanut butters out there. Now, well,
nuts is just and variety. Well they all have peanuts

(35:03):
in it, but yeah, well they have they have a
good almond butter too. Yeah, I can. I can get
down with some almond butter. You know what, buddy, I'm
gonna buy you some. When we see each other again,
I'm gonna be brandishing a jar of Jiff almond butter
for you. You You know, it's not good. What is? Uh?
You know you can't take peanut butter sandwiches into classrooms anymore,

(35:26):
or at least it, you know at my kids preschool,
and um, of course you can't take anything in there
anymore because it's closed. But you have to make um,
you have to make it with what a cheese. I
used to chew these things all the time. What a
baseball players chew? Sunflower seeds? Sunflower butter? That's good too.

(35:47):
I've had that. It's not bad. Oh, I do not
care for it. So you don't like it? Huh? I
think it's all right. I guess wow. I'm I really
like basically any kind of butters, including just butter butter. Well, yeah,
butter is great, But I just cannot get down with
the sunflower sun flower. Yeah, yeah, no, it totally and
it's definitely there's a taste of sunflower to it, like

(36:08):
you could have no idea what you're eating and somebody
gives it to you, and you would be like that
sunflower butter, isn't it. I love sunflower seeds though. That
was a big thing in college for a little while.
We would sit around and, you know, just put a
mouthful of sunflower seeds on our mouth. Yeah, I remember
the sunflower trend quite well. Remember that. And you would, Yeah,
you would crack them open with your teeth and you

(36:29):
would spit out the shell and then swallow the seed
that you want, the seed and swallow it. So I
would eat the whole thing. You know, you didn't eat
the shell. Yeah, this is I would eat the whole thing.
And that would smoke a whole cigar and in halee it.
You're a very bad squirrel. And then you would drown,
drown your lawn and water. Yeah, and you would sit
back and say, I'm doing life just right. Yeah, I

(36:51):
got it all figured out. Would you really eat the
shells still due to this day? Really? Yeah. And it's
kind of dangerous because every once in a while there's
like one part to it that's just a spear and
you can go right into your gums if you're not careful.
So I'm pretty good at it, but every once in a
a while and be like, um, I think I'm bleeding. Well,

(37:12):
here's how I eat peanuts when I go to the
ball game. I stick the whole peanut in my mouth,
uh huh, like a squirrel, and I kind of suck
on it for a second and get that salty goodness,
and then I crack it open with my teeth and
I pull it out of my mouth and then dump
the peanuts in and throw away the shells. And then
between every bite you have to coat your lips with

(37:33):
lip balm because it's so dried and cracked it is
pretty salty. But the only time I eight peanuts in
the shell like that is in a baseball game. So
now I do something similar, but it's with peanut M
and m's. I will like crack the peanut M and
M in half and expose the peanut in your teeth, yes,
and then eat that the the freed chocolate shell side,

(37:56):
and then eat the other chocolate shelled side from around
the peanut, and then I eat the peanut by itself.
Are you kidding? Are you serious? I'm dead serious. I
can't remember the last time I ate a peanut eminem
without doing that with every single one. All right, here's
what I'll do sometimes with peanut eminem's. Okay, we should
just have a side gig where we just talk about

(38:17):
our stupid quirks. It's part of the podcast I put.
And sometimes I'll just a MoU on them like there's
no tomorrow. But sometimes I will, and this helps me
eat fewer of them because I will pop on it
or two in my mouth and I'll just let him
sit there and marinate in my saliva. Yeah, and swirl
them around and then that candy coating kind of melts
away a little bit and makes it like a really

(38:39):
soft little crunch Yep. I know, I know what you mean.
You know that move. It's really good. I do that too,
But usually I'm a little less patient than that. It's
every once in a while, maybe when I'm like, you know,
I have a whole tupperware bowl full of peanut eminem's,
I might go crazy like that. All right, So let's
should we take a break or should we wait a second? Yeah,

(39:00):
let's do that. Let's take a break things and chop

(39:22):
Josh and shock. Alright, So where we left off was
Jeff was killing it. You and I have very weird
eating habits, and Jeff starts killing it. They start putting
sugar and molasses in there. Everyone else followed suit, and

(39:44):
finally in the nineteen sixties, the f d A stood
up and said, hold on a minute, guys, this stuff
you're calling peanut butter is junk food. Now, uh, there's
one leading brand. I'm not going to name names. It
was only s actual peanuts. He's like, so you gotta
start putting peanuts in the whole thing. The peanut butter

(40:07):
lobby said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. How about And
they said, we're the FDA, We meet people in the middle.
Let's settle on peanuts and peanut butter. And since ninety
one that's been the standard. Yeah, I think, like, um,
this went on for a dozen years. There's a really
interesting article on today I found out called the Momentous

(40:28):
Peanut Butter Hearings. It's definitely worth reading. But it just
was nuts, how literally nuts how long this went on for.
And then finally it's just kind of heartening that the
FDA was like, no, that's as low as we're going.
Make sure that your peanut butter has peanuts. Good day
to you. Sir, And that was that finally, and then

(40:49):
it became enforced in nineteen seventy two UM and still
today there is a federal legal definition for what constitutes
peanut butter. And one the first things is it has
to have peanuts in it. That's right, because that is
still the standard. Uh. If it is smooth, it has
to be very fine with an even texture and no

(41:12):
hint of grainy peanuts at all. If it's a medium,
you can have a little grain to it, but nothing
larger than one sixteenth of an inch in dimension, and
then all bets are off. If you're crunchy, I don't
I don't know who says chunky, but it's definitely crunchy. Yeah,
that's like a type of Campbell soup. So crunchy can

(41:33):
be larger than one and I guess I mean they're
all about the same size. Would be curious to see
if there are any kind of half sized peanuts. If
it gets that chunky, oh yeah, like larger an yeah,
like a half of a peanut, people would be like,
it's too chunky. I can't take it. Maybe, I mean

(41:53):
that's that's like candy bar level. It is. It is
so chuck what you've just said is the FED real
government's definition of the different varieties of peanut butter as
far as they're concerned. And I don't know if you
said it or not, but that guy Joseph rose Field
who who was the founder of Skippy, he actually created
chunky sorry um, crunchy peanut butter. We both said crunchy,

(42:16):
and now we're both saying chunky. I know it's kind
of stuck in my head, but he's the guy. If
you like chunky peanut butter, first of all, shame on you.
But secondly, thank Joseph rose Field for that, because he
came up with it I think in the fifties. Yeah.
Like I said, I like it all. Uh, there is
not a kind of peanut butter that that I won't eat.
I think it's all really good. So then I think

(42:36):
also the um the this kind of demonstrates just how
seriously Americans take peanut butter. The U. S. D A.
Goes on to say, there are other qualities that make
a peanut butter either Grade A, Grade B or sub
standard peanut butter. And it's my favorite. It's things like
um color. The color has to match certain color samples

(43:01):
that you can only obtain from a company called Aggtron, Inc.
Of Sparks, Nevada. This is in the two law that
you have to write to Aggtron and say, can you
please send me the peanut butter colored standards because I
need to make sure that my peanut butter matches the U.
S d A standards for color of peanut butter. They're online.

(43:23):
Get with it while you're writing me a letter, right,
That's that's a really good point. You do you email,
or you'd right back like, I don't know, can you
please send me the website you are l And then
they would. But when you get this color standard, you
can't just look at it wherever you have to. You
have to look at it with a at a light
with a color temperature of about seventy d calvin plus

(43:45):
or minus two hundred and fifty kelvin or something equal
to a moderately partly cloudy day. That's that's the government's
standard for judging the color of peanut butter. All I
can think of now somebody writing a handwritten letter to
someone asking for U r L. Someone with a ballpoint

(44:05):
pin spelling out https slash slash. I looked up aggtron Inc.
They're still around and they are on point many They've
been in business for I think about a century. But
they are all about like food analysis. If you're a
coffee roaster or barista or something, you can take their
online class. I think it's online. It's like a daylong

(44:27):
class that like really teaches you all like the science
behind the coffee you're selling and roasting and grinding. It's
a really interesting company, it looks like. But that's if
you start making peanut butter, you need to You need
to write a letter to aggtron Ink asking for their
u are l and they will send you a laminated
sheet and a Manila envelope. So if you're talking peanut butter.

(44:51):
In the United States, about half of the edible use
of peanuts is from peanut butter um. Obviously peanut butters
and a ton of It's one of my favorite parts
of candy bars and stuff like that. I'm I'm a
sucker for any peanut butter ice creams, peanut butter candy bars.
It's just I can't get enough of that combination. Totally

(45:12):
with you, buddy, which, by the way, Joseph rose Field
was the skippy guy was the guy who came up
with that peanut butter and chocolate combo before Rees's did.
But the National Peanut Board estimates that it takes about
five hundred and forty peanuts to make up one of
those twelve bounced jars, which is a lot of peanuts.
That kind of surprised me. It was more than I thought. Yeah,

(45:32):
sit there and shell peanuts until you reach five hundred
and forty individual peanuts, and you will have a sudden
appreciation for your butter, you know what I mean for sure,
But of course machines do that. But yeah, well, if
it's artisan, no, somebody wearing like a calico so wrong
is doing it with my hand in Vermont? Uh, I

(45:57):
don't think Vermont people are like, yeah, I think that's
my conception. Proved me wrong, Vermont. So in two thousand nine,
we're talking about health aspects. There's a couple of parts
to the health of it, of whether or not it's
just good for you, which we'll get to. But also
there have been a couple of peanut butter incidents throughout

(46:18):
the years in recent years that have scared people off
from peanut butter a little bit. Uh. In two thousand
nine was the second one. There were five hundred people
who got sick and eight people died from eating peanut
butter from a plant in Blakely, Georgia. That was pretty
gross and not maintained well. I remember that, don't you.

(46:39):
I remember both of them. The other one was in
two thousand seven, and that was sam and Ella in
peter Pan and Great Value, both owned by ConAgra, and
that got about six d and change sick, but nobody died.
But I remember both of those. It was a big
deal because peanut butter so ubiquitous. So there's also I

(47:00):
didn't realize this until I started researching it. There's something
called um aflatoxins. Have you heard of them? I think
I did, back when all the stuff happened or not.
So there's there's a mold called Aspergillis that grows on
peanuts because peanuts are grown underground, right um and the

(47:24):
Aspergillis can produce a toxin called aflatoxins. And apparently humans
are um pretty much immune to its initial effects or
its short term effects. But we have no idea what
happens if you eat afflatoxins. You know, over the course
of a lifetime, you know, what what happens, And apparently
there's studies of humans that found that it's been linked

(47:46):
to certain types of cancer, UM, potentially birth defects, UM,
cognitive disabilities, all sorts of horrible stuff. And peanut butter
producers say well, we get at least eighteen percent of
the athlet toxins out just by processing peanuts. You say, well,
what about the other eleven percent? And they're like, I

(48:06):
have some peter pan and forget your troubles. That's right.
So so there is like a real risk of something
bad happening to you, whether it's a poisoning or not.
But a lot of people are like, even if it's
pure peanut butter, it's it's still it's still not healthy
for you. Yeah, I mean the major brands that are

(48:29):
sugary and hydrogenated certainly aren't good for you. If you're
going to the farmer's market and and getting those peanuts
ground right in front of your face, it's not it's
not terrible. You know, it's got a lot of nutrition,
it's got a lot of antioxidants. Uh, it's got we're
talking this is a hundred grams of this stuff. You've
got r D A of vitamin E, sent of vitamin

(48:53):
B three sixteen seven percent I'm sorry, se of manganese,
and thirty nine percent of magnesium. So it's got a
lot of good stuff in there. It's got a lot
of calories too. That's about six hundred calories reading a
hundred gram's worth. But if it's you know, I mean
that's a hundred grams is a lot. No, it is

(49:15):
a tremendous amount. Um. The other thing is too, is
if you're eating that artisan peanut butter, that craft peanut butter,
the non hydrogenated I guess I should say peanut butter,
the oils and the fats in it are actually good
for you. The mono unsaturated fat is the kind that's
good for your heart. Um. It's that saturated stuff that

(49:35):
becomes shelf stable. That's the stuff that can build up
as plaque in your arterial walls and cause heart attacks
and strokes and that kind of thing. But the natural
peanut butter actually does the opposite. It helps your cholesterol levels.
That's it's just great. It's basically just really calorie dance.
Like if you're trying to lose weight, it's a good

(49:56):
idea to shy away from peanut butter. But if you're
eating natural peanut butter, it's not like in a non
nutritious food. It's actually pretty nutritious. It's just calorie dance, right,
And if you're trying to lose weight and you up
for a spoonful of peanut butter and honey rather than
a pint of bin and Jerry's, then you're definitely doing
the right thing, for sure, man, for sure. Um. One

(50:19):
thing though that has, you know, strikes fear and a
lot of people, like you were saying, in your daughter's preschool,
you can't even bring a peanut butter sandwich in there anymore. Um,
is this the ride of the peanut allergy? Like? There's
a survey that was conducted in the eighties, the nineties,
and the two thousands, and I think the most recent
one was in two thousand eight, and they found that

(50:39):
between two thousand and eight, in this national survey of
fifty homes that the um the self reported peanut allergies
went from point four percent of respondents to one point
four percent of respondents, which it's one point four percent
doesn't sound like a lot, but that's a huge increase

(51:02):
between UM uh, Like eleven years, I guess. But the
thing is is, if you look at other studies, they
found that, yes, self reported rates are on the rise,
but doctor diagnosed rates have held steady. So there seems
to be an increase in perception that people have peanut allergies,
that's not necessarily an increase in actual peanut allergies, which

(51:25):
is really strange and bizarre to think of, if that's correct. Yeah,
and I have seen the trend of oral immunotherapy like
um feeding your very small child and your baby peanuts
to a little bit at a time to ensure or
hopefully ensured that they won't be uh stricken with the
worst food allergy of all. It's tough, the peanut allergy.

(51:49):
And uh they there was a study in Israel that
had guidelines for early infant feeding and they said, around
four to six months of age, just shove a bunch
of peanuts in their mouth and see what happens and
make them chew and then hit him with the lip ball. Yeah,
hit him with that, hit him with the ball. Um as.
So one last thing, chuck and I couldn't find a

(52:10):
place to put it, but it has to be said.
There's a phobia called um araca boot to a phobia,
iraq a boodh or phobia. Yeah, I think I nailed
it that last time, and it is is that for me?
Is that my cue? Yes, it's hard to tell because
you're not kicking me under the table. I'm not like

(52:31):
doing that series of blinks. Uh. That is the fear
of peanut butter getting stuck on the roof of your mouth.
That is a true thing, which is shouldn't be a
fear because all you gotta do is just keep working
the tongue and that peanut butter is gonna dislodge and
go right down your throat. That's right, just like John
Harvey Kellogg foresaw little whole milk and you're all set,

(52:52):
nice man, or some cool whip. Don't forget the cool whip.
I gotta try that. That's I don't know if you
should try that. Like I think I gained ten hounds
in a month just after I discovered that it's it's
not good for you, man. Yeah, I can't wait. Cool
whip doesn't last long on the house. We can't keep
it here. It's just like it's really hard not to
just sort of I'll just have a little spoonful every

(53:12):
now and then, right and then Yeah, it's like your
hair is stuck to your forehead because you put your
whole face in the tub. So good, and it's good
frozen too. I don't know if you ever tried that. Yeah,
I've tried it both ways, but if you, if you
do want to try, it's about it's about half and
half peanut butter cool whip per spoonful. I'll give it
a shot if I'm ever allowed to go to the

(53:32):
grocery store again. Yeah right, um, okay, well I think
that's it then for peanut butter unless you have anything else,
got nothing else? Okay, Well, since we said we have
nothing else, it means it's time for loosener mail. I'm
gonna call this early listener that came back as an
adult love these hey guys. Last year, I well, what

(53:54):
I really love is people that never stopped listening. Right,
But we'll take this, Hey guys. Last year I started
getting back into stuff you should know after a long
break from the nine to ten days? What does that mean?
And a need for an educational podcast? On my long
drives to Blacksburg, Virginia from the Tidewater area of Virginia.

(54:14):
I think they got hit by the apple at toxin. Uh.
I think he may be. I don't know what he means.
When I first started listening, I was in middle school
and I always loved trivia in your podcast helped me
annoy other students with random facts about twin Kings and floride.
Once I went through church camp, it was appreciated. I
earned the name random fact kid. You guys helped me

(54:38):
encourage my natural instincts in the world that got me
through electrical engineering and also helped me earn free beer
at trivia nights because of my tendency to remember ob
secure knowledge. I even made a friend through the podcast
listener Lucas. I take it that's just Lucas listeners, not
his first name, I hope. So uh. He was listening

(55:02):
to your podcast while driving his bus and I recognize
the familiar voices. So I just want to say thanks, guys,
And that is from listener Daniel. So maybe that's how
they met. They had the same first name, right, They're
like I. I never thought I would have a brother,
but now I do. Daniel and Lucas together, Are you

(55:22):
got anything else? Now? I got nothing at all? Well,
if you want to be like listener Daniel and let
us know how long you've been listening. UM, we want
to hear from you. UM. You can get in touch
with this just through a simple email. Simple gesture, the
gesture of wrapping it up, the gesture of spanking it
on the bottom, gesture of early feeding at peanuts, and
sending it all to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com.

(55:48):
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