I swear I eat a piece of peanut butter toast almost every day. My mom actually craved peanut butter toast a lot when she was pregnant with me, so I like to think her cravings were somehow passed to me. I'm not sure if that's scientifically possible, but I'm just going to pretend it's true. Anyway, all my life I've been a Creamy Jif girl. I generally try to eat as healthily as possible, but I could never bring myself to give up my regular Jif, even though it's common knowledge that it contains a lot of added sugar and salt.
That all changed about 3 months ago, when my best friend finally convinced me to make the switch from regular Jif to Jif Natural. It ended up not being that much of a big deal for me, as the two taste extremely similar. The upside of Jif Natural, besides the fact that it's "natural," is that it has about half the sodium of regular Jif and contains more vitamins. Both types, however, contain vegetable oil, and to be honest if you are just going off of the nutrition info and ingredients listed on the jar, it doesn't appear that Jif Natural is that much better for you than Regular Jif. (Which is probably why they taste so similar.) But the point is that it's a step in the right direction for me, right? Maybe one day I'll be able to make my toast with peanut butter made only from peanuts. Baby steps.
Anyway, the main reason I'm writing this blog post is to point out the huge difference between two peanut butters that might both be perceived as healthy alternatives to regular Creamy Jif. The two contenders for "Healthiest Jif Peanut Butter" are Jif Natural and Reduced Fat Jif. Spoiler alert: Reduced Fat Jif loses.
Here's what happened. I was making a piece of toast and ran out of Natural Jif halfway through. This was clearly a PB emergency, but luckily I also had some Reduced Fat Jif in my fridge (which my mom had purchased; I feel the need to shift the blame here), so I grabbed that to finish off the toast. But when I took my first bite, I could immediately tell something was off...the peanut butter just wasn't melting on my toast as it normally does. And the texture was oddly grainy, which is never a good thing. Long story short, I checked the ingredient list on the back of the Reduced Fat Jif, and it turns out the first ingredient is corn syrup solids. What the heck does that mean?! To make matters worse, the second ingredient is sugar. Peanuts are actually not even listed as an ingredient on the jar; just pea protein and I have no clue if that is derived from peanuts or peas. According to the Jif website, their Reduced Fat PB is only 60% peanuts, and the label on the front of the jar claims that the spread has a "Fresh Roasted Peanut Taste." Gross.
For your reference, here are the links to the nutrition information and ingredients of Regular Jif, Jif Natural, and Reduced Fat Jif.
Addendum: I know that Jif has also released something called Simply Jif, which (according to the Jif website) contains 1 gram less sugar than Regular and Natural Jif, and 15 grams less sodium! I think I'm going to try this one out next. I clearly care about peanut butter way too much, have you noticed?
Bottom line: Peanut butter is delicious, and always read the labels of the foods you eat!
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