How Peanut Butter Works

want to be peanut buttered. You always make me be jelly. Well, 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 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 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 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.

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 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? 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 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 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 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, 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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,

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 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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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.

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, 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 things and choosh and shock, so okay. So, like I said, 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. 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 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,

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 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, 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? 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 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, 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.

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

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. 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 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 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, 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,

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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. 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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, let's do that. Let's take a break things and chop 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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.

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 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 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, 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 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

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 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. 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 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 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 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. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio is at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listened to your favorite shows.