All Natural Peanut Butter: A Survivor's Guide

This just in, if you ain't on the all natural peanut butter train, and you're eating all that "normal" stuff like Jiff, Skippy, or Peter Pan, then you are headed for trouble. They've got trans fatty acids, and that's no good. Time to smarten up and stir that oil that's separated to the top.

The fats you don't have to stir in are no longer "good" fats, which are what peanuts have before the Man starts hydrogenating them, these good ones are the monounsaturated fats. They are the Annakin Skywalker of fats. Hyrdogenation is the corrupting process by which the good fats become the bad. The reasons for hydrogenation are many -- but the main one here is the separation anxiety.

Hydrogenation keeps things nice and smooth and even, all the way down to the bottom of the jar.  Now at this point I could start in on an analogy of hydrogenation and oil and the separation of oil and state, and war and oil, and make this about the Gulf War as well as Star Wars, but the two have a lot in common anyway, and the peanut butter issue is just the final ingredient to a tasty symbolic stew of how capitalists runneth amok in your digestive track: Since you don't like to stir the oil into your peanut butter, they fix it for you, but in doing so they turned a good fat (one that actually lowers "bad" cholesterol) to the bad fat. See? See how your American desire for modernized ease is digging your own grave!!!??!!?!?!

But I'm not going to talk about that as I drink my diet pepsi and eat my fried chicken, because that's not what this is about. This is about solutions! This about how we can avoid the trans fats and STILL not have to stir in oil, because let's face it, no matter how well you stir that oil in, the last 1/4 of the jar is usually pretty damned dry by the time you get to it.

There are several methods that people use in dealing with the oil-on-top situation. Perhaps you could tell me yours. Here are three I've witnessed or practiced firsthand:

The Hippy Jeff Method - Old Jeff would merely turn the jar upside down and let it sit for awhile. This doesn't really work, some of the oil sneaks around the sides but you still have a lot of oil left. This may have been his secret way of getting his roommates to leave his jar alone.

The Erich Method - You get a knife and you get it down in there arnd you stir it around, cleaving the solid part from the jar edges around it, allowing the oil to then sink down to the bottom and be covered over as you swirl the knife around. This is a good work out for your wrists and thumb as you move that utensil slowly through the thick insides of the jar, and though it's kind of satisfyingly gross out yucky in that first grade mud pie sort of way. The final result will still be oily, but once you put it in the fridge after the first usage, things have a way of settling down.

The Lazy Susanna Lee Method - Ever the vegan conservative, Poor Susanna Lee would just dump the oil off the top and down the sink. End result? The first few spreads were okay, but after that, Susanna Lee's jar began to look like an August Arizona afternoon. The bottom part was so dry it came out like cracked lump clay… and the taste was not much different.

Again you may be leaning back in your chair and harrumphing at the very idea of natural peanut butter. "Erich," you say to me, "all I want is some goddamned peanut butter, not to have to make these difficult choices. I like me some Skippy, so let's just move on."

Well, don't move on just yet. There's a solution here, involving a "patent pending" process by which the peanut oil stays good and un-trans and doesn't separate. An example of this, and one I regularly buy, is Once Again Butter's American Classic, an upstate New York butter that employs a "patent pending" trick involving adding a bit of palm oil to retard separation. This oil is "saturated" but it's not "trans"  and there's not much of this palm oil (3 out of the 15g of fat in a two tablespoon serving) in the mix, but if you want to feel bad about even this, dig what the palm oil industry does to the rainforests!

The palm oil secret is also employed by the good folks at Manhattan's own Peanut Butter Company who offer an assortment of flavors that make it "fun" to be all natural. They make no boasts about having a "patent pending" and actually assume that their oil will separate, though the jar of Cinammon Raisin Swirl that I bought while diligently and stomach-achingly researching this post, needed no stirring, it was dry as a bone on top (making me think old Susanna Lee had already opened it), but it proved to be perfectly, evenly oiled in the bit I tried, like a good peanut butter should be. Now, these flavored ones have sugar in them, but since these guys are natural, it's that old "evaporated cane juice" variety, so therefore it must be better than those faceless corporation brands.

Another entry in the healthy but sweet-stakes is called Peanut Better and like the American Classic, it does boast that it has a "patent pending" on its non-separation method and like the PBC it has a wide assortment of flavors. Yet the jars I inspected at the local Food Emporium all showed a pretty substantial oil slick on top. I bought the vanilla-cranberry and I guess it was good, but make no mistake, I had to stir. Such is life when you fight the power, but hey, in doing so, you build your stirring muscles, save your arteries, and just might save your own damned world one day.