Nuts for Peanut Butter: The Best Spread on Bread

Some kids eat it with bread and jelly. Others prefer it with bananas. And some just like it straight off the spoon. What is it? America’s favorite bread spread: peanut butter! Kids like it so much that by the time they graduate from high school, they will have eaten more than 1,500 sandwiches of the sticky stuff. That’s enough to cover the entire floor of the Grand Canyon!

People in South America have been eating peanuts for thousands of years. But in North America, they were not as quick to catch on. Peanuts were grown as pig food until the Civil War, when food became hard to find and people needed something new to eat. It wasn’t until after World War II that peanut butter became a super popular food.

The Peanut Butter Process

So where does peanut butter come from? It actually starts with a legume, not a nut. That’s right, peanuts are members of the pea family! The yellow flowers of the plant bend down to the ground so that their seed pods (the peanuts) can grow and ripen underground.

Farmers pull the peanuts up from the ground when they are ready to be harvested. The peanuts still have the hard shell around them, so the farmers force them through a metal grid that has holes just big enough for the peanuts—without their shells—to pass through. The shelled peanuts are then bounced on a vibrating screen to shake off any bits of shell or other material like roots, leaves, and dirt.

After that, the peanuts are trucked to a peanut butter plant and put into a large round machine called a tumbler. The tumbler looks a lot like a clothes dryer, and it does almost the same thing. The tumbler cooks, or roasts, the peanuts. This is important because taking out the moisture prevents the peanuts from rotting.

Once the peanuts cool, another machine with hot air and rubber blocks removes the outer skin and the ‘hearts’ of the peanuts. The heart is a little piece that holds the two peanut halves together. The hearts taste very bitter, so they are left out of the peanut butter and sold for animal feed.

Now, only the peanut kernels are left. They are poured into a grinder and are smashed into either a smooth consistency (most popular with kids) or a crunchy consistency (what the adults prefer). Usually salt is added, and sometimes sugar and vegetable oil. The peanut butter is then packed into jars and sent to stores.

From Store Shelf to Stomach

Most grocery stores carry at least seven different brands of peanut butter. If it’s natural peanut butter, you’ll need to stir it up after you open the jar. That’s because the peanut oil will float to the top. Hydrogenated peanut butter doesn’t separate. Invented in the 1920’s, it’s the top-selling kind today.

But…do other kids around the world like peanut butter as much as Americans do? No! In fact, children from other countries often find it disgusting. In Scandinavian countries, they prefer herring (a type of fish) paste on their bread. And in Australia, kids like Vegamite©, a strong-tasting yeast spread.

Chances are, if you’re from the United States, peanut butter is tops with your taste buds. However you like it, crunchy or smooth, with jelly or without, peanut butter will always have a favorite place in America’s heart—and in your lunch bag!