August 1, 2026 • 56 mins
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. Enjoy a smooth ride through one of our top condiments in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody. It's Chuck And in COVID time it's May fourteenth,
twenty twenty, and on this Saturday Select, we're going to
bring you an episode called How Peanut Butter Works. And boy,
oh boy, I remember loving this one. I think I
was eating a lot of peanut butter at the time
during COVID because we had a good store of it already,
and I love peanut butter, and I think we talk
(00:22):
a lot about how much we both like peanut butter.
In this episode, it's bound to make you hungry. And
the good news is now you can just go right
to your store and pick it up and smile a
real smile at people, just not hidden behind a mask.
So let's celebrate that. Go out and get some peanut
butter and smile. Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
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.
And this is you should know.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, Jerry, she sent out in a smoke signal that
said send me, so she did.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
She did, and we send some on donkey back in
that general direction.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Are you peanut butter or jelly in this scenario?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I want to be peanut buttered. You always make me
be jelly.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Well, I think we should level set here at the beginning, okay,
and talk about if you like peanut butter, which is
your favorite, and then what you like how do you
utilize it?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Okay? My name is Josh C. And I love peanut butter. Okay,
almost only smooth. I will eat chunky the if civilization
is collapsed and that's all I can find. Okay, I
eat it any way, shape or form. Sometimes just peanut
butter on a spoon. Sometimes peanut butter on a spoon
(01:52):
with a little divot made with my tongue filled with
local honey. 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. Okay,
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
(02:14):
used to, so I'm having a real struggle with it.
Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And do you want to buzzmarkt your favorite brand?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
We used this Jeff Natural that's like it's like in
a brown container, and I like it so much. I've
never I purposely never looked at the label because I
don't want to know how natural it is. But my
all time favorite is Reese's peanut butter, like the like
Have you had it.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
You mean in the jar?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yes, Oh it's so good. I think I've had it once.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
But I was raised on Jeff Now go well, I.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Was raised on whatever the gigantic gallon tub is that
you used to it and Ladies Yeah, I don't remember.
I don't think it was any of those names. Now,
I mean, I love peanut butter. It's one of my
favorite things in the world. And I will go crunchy
or smooth no matter. I love them both. I also
(03:13):
like it with honey. Yeah, 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.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
You know, I've never had that? Is it good? Really? Dude?
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Do you have any cuby Yes? Do peanut butter and
cupe sammy.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Okay, so half in half or more peanut butter than
mayo or what.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
It's kind of your your jam. I definitely don't go
light on the mayo because you've got to have that tang. Okay,
peanut butter and marshmallow fluff I used to eat when
I was a kid. Yeah, that's good stuff fluff or nutter,
And now I don't eat the sugary hydrogenated types. I
either have one of the sort of artisan natural kinds
(03:57):
you have to mix up or just that. The cap
Farmers Market grinds the peanuts right in front of your
face into a tub and hands it to.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
You, right in front of your face, and it says
beat it. You can't have any of this.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
So that's just peanuts obviously.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah, and maybe a little bit of salt. Do they
add any salt or is it really just peanuts?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
It's just peanuts.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Wow. 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'd cracked the code.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
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
got to put a little bit of honey in there,
or maybe a little bit of a gave to give
it a little bit of a sweet.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Oh that's a good idea. Yeah, I was going to
ask you. I've not had any artists and stuff, and
I did a little research and found a couple I
want to try, and I didn't know, like, 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.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Well, I mean, if you don't add any sweetener, and
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.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
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 they have, you know, depending on the
kind of peanuts that are chosen, the variety of peanuts,
the way that it's roasted, almost like a coffee or
a wine or something like that. There's like a sophisticated
(05:29):
palette or tear wir 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
cow lick 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
(05:51):
peanut butter in a healthy way because it is surprisingly
from what I saw, it is healthier than you would
suspect if done right.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yes, not a big glob of peter pan with cup
mayonnaise and potato chips smashed in between white bread. Yes, yeah,
I'm hungry.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Well, peanut butter for me that has now become my
in my since January. You know, 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.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Oh good for you.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Just like a spoonful of peanut butter and honey and
that'll satiate that desire.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
I haven't seen you in a while. How's it going.
That's good.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
I mean, I'm down twenty since January? But what really
leveled off the past month?
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Congratulations, dude, that is really impressive.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Just forty more to go, man, No, that's really great.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Man, Just just yeah, yeah, it does plateau, but it
picks up again.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Don't want plat plateaus because of quarantine alcoholism.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
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. Are you finding it easier to
keep up with food or harder?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Easier because I'm cooking a lot cheese and buzz marketing again.
But you know, I'm just having one of those MIC's
mighty goods for lunch, which is very low on calories.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, it's really good too.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
And you know, I'm just tracking the calories, and it's
it's alcohol that's the problem right now.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I gotcha. Yeah, I've been doing one or two nights
a week tops, and then a couple of night. 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 happen upon the fact
of the podcast. If you ask me, this is a
(08:01):
boy 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, the Chinese,
(08:21):
other countries do not think peanut butter is particularly good.
They think it's a little nasty. And that just blew
me away to read that.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Yeah, I'd want to talk to some people before I'd
let some internet website tell me that people think peanut
butter is gross.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Some website push your brain around.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Yeah, I'd like to talk to some folks about that.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
But at the very least, even if they don't think
it's gross, it is an all American thing. Like even
countries that do enjoy it. I've read that Australia actually
likes it a lot. It's an American concoction so much
so that like it might be the most American concoction
there is, to tell you the truth.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
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. Yep, sort of Hamburgers, even
though I would argue that the hamburgers, we know it
is pretty American, sure, but peanut butter just us as
far as modern times go.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah, I think that that 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 going to make a cameo later got his
hands on the idea. But yeah, it was an American invention,
except it was actually Canadian, as we'll see. But for
(09:42):
the most part, people think of it as all American,
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.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
I think you mean Goober's.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Have you ever heard somebody outside of TV call them that?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Not really, but I knew it was a thing, but
I don't. It's not in the just daily nomenclature of
my crowd.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
But it is. It's supposedly like a Southern and I
guess an antiquated Southern word for peanut, a goober or
goober pe.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yeah, I've heard goober and that old song about the
raisinets guber. Well, Goober's is also a candy, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And there's smuckers goobers, which is peanut, butter and jelly
mixed together in a jar. It's actually good, is it. Yeah?
Even as a kid, I was like, this is gonna
be gross, and then I tried it. I was like,
not bad, not bad smuckers.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
See, I'm pretty discerning with my gems and jellies. So
that's for another day. Though you would not like this,
I probably would.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
You would not like smuckers, and if you're at all discerning,
you would not like it.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
All right, So peanuts is a it's a lagome and
it's also called a ground nut or an earth nut,
and just like a lintel or a pee, it is
a little lagoome nut. No, I'm a big fan of peanuts, though,
I like to eat them pretty much anyway. You can
slice it from boiled to straight up raw out of
the shell, like them honey, roasted, salted, and roasted, and
(11:13):
certainly in peanut butter.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
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
those are not for you, but they usually end up
(11:35):
in my tummy. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
You ever seen a squirrel stick one of those in
his mouth sideways?
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yep? I had darn cute. Yeah, we will like all
shell them and then throw like the actual peanut and
the squirrel. Somehow we'll know that there's supposed to be
another one coming, because they'll very 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.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
It's really adorable, right, or they might stick around to
see if it's one of the rare three bangers.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Right, which is just that's a good squirrel day right there.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
All right, So these things are lagomes, 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 culture from Peru from
about seventy six hundred years ago, and it was sort
of one of these things where they found the fact
(12:30):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, right, the peanut has arrived. When it shows up
on pottery, you know for real. They've also found them,
i guess, entombed with mummies from the Inca and the Aztecs,
which makes sense because when the conquistadors arrived the Spanish
and the Portuguese to South America and Central America, they
found peanuts being grown as far north as Mexico, but
(13:00):
I think the first place they encountered them was actually
in the Caribbean, and they took them back with them.
They took them to Spain, and Spain passed them along
to the rest of Europe and the Philippines and China.
The Portuguese took it back again to Europe, but also
to India and Africa, and peanuts started to be farmed
all over the world. Like the world loves peanuts, it's
(13:22):
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 Americas from Africa as
part of the West African slave trade. And actually that
word gouber, that Southern word gouber, they think comes from
a Conga Leese word or Congo with a K word
(13:45):
in gouba. Yeah, pretty surprising.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Sure, goober and gouba close enough.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, But to think like the peanut, you think of
the peanut 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 Americas. That's a pretty circuitous and weird route for
it to take.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, and Africa still grows about twenty five percent of
the peanuts in the world. Weird just below that at
about twenty one percent here in the States. And it
took all the way to eighteen forty two that we
started growing them commercially in the US in Virginia's where
it first started for oil and food and to substitute
out for cocoa. And it wasn't it just wasn't like
(14:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah, it was good for livestock and the poverty stricken
basically was who were expected to eat peanuts at the time.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
It just like Lobster. Have you ever read Considered the Lobster? That? Wow, man,
I want to say David Lee Roth so bad, but
I know that's not his name at all. Who wrote
Consider the Lobster?
Speaker 1 (15:03):
I've never heard of that, But I who was the lobster?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Who was end of tour about that movie? Oh? David
Foster Wallace, Oh, sure, sure, yeah. He wrote this really
great magazine article once called Considered 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.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
That's right. Uh you know there were.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Sea spiders, yeah, or the cockroaches of the sea.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Disgusting.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
It is kind of gross when you think of it
like that. And apparently there was a law that said
that you could only feed so much lobster to patients
and mental asylums at the time, or else it became abusive.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Oh wow, yeah, they didn't know what did they try
him on a hot dog bun with mayonnaise.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
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, 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 was probably
not super appetizing, but it was also like you would
(16:15):
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. So again,
you could just dump it into a trough and feed
it to your livestock, where you could spend a lot
of time trying to separate it, or you could just
be like, I'm not messing with this. And for a
(16:35):
long time they didn't mess with it. Actually.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
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
(16:58):
the peanut gallery. And that's where that phrase came from,
which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah, because apparently if they didn't like what they saw,
they would toss their peanuts that they were eating at
the stage. So that's where peanut gallery came from.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
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 It was still hard to get like really
good quality peanuts because, like you said, the way they
were being harvested at the time by hand, it was
just tough to do.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
And then so two African Americans around the turn of
the last century 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, who actually, contrary to popular belief,
(17:51):
did not invent peanut butter, but he did come up
with more than three hundred 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 establish it as a prominent crop
was because the South had depleted its soil so badly
from growing cotton for so long, and then at the
(18:12):
worst of this there was a bull weavil outbreak that
just ruined the rest of the cotton crop. So the
South really needed something to replace cotton, and George Washington
Carver helped introduce and popularize peanuts and say, not only
can you eat these things, look at all this other
stuff you can make out.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Of them, that's right. And there was another guy around
the same time named Ben Hicks, Mister 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 like a lot of well it still goes on,
I guess, with the little guy and their patents. Big
(18:53):
farm came around and a farm equipment company challenged him.
He actually had to go to court, but won the
case in nineteen oh 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 man hours or person hours,
(19:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
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 that we
take a break and then come back, really dig into
the peanut butter.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Let's do it, okay, and.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Ut Scott shot.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Shot Okay. So, like I said, the INCA probably had
us beat as far as the invention of peanut butter went.
But it was actually a Canadian who they think was
(20:24):
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 Gilmour Edson. You
just can't say the name Marcellus and not followed up
with Wallace somewhere.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
You know, it really has become like peanut butter and
jelly very n So. He patented a paste made of
peanuts in eighteen eighty four, which was described by him
and his patent as at room temperature, having a consistency
like that of butter, lard or ointment.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Which tried this.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
It sounds gross, but when you think about peanut butter,
that's kind of about right.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
He added sugar to stabilize it a little bit, and
this was kind of like the first modern peanut butter
that we think of as peanut butter. It sold for
about six cents a pound, which is a pretty good price.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, and 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
(21:41):
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 of peanut butter.
(22:03):
He's considered one of the main inventors of peanut butter.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Well, yeah, it was right up his alley. Because I
think that might be my favorite live show we've done. Actually,
oh yeah, I think so PR was my favorite PR.
I knew you were going to say that you did. Yeah,
that was a good one you did. I think those
are my top two.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
What about pentos Man, what about Nybe Cooper?
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Those might be the first four that I would name.
What else have we done?
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Mals Bars, We did the secret one that is still
supposedly on tour but on hiatus right now. So I
think that's it. I think that's all. Well, I'm going to.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Go with John Harvey Kellogg because he as if you
listen to that one, 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'll just glide right through
your system and come out as delicious peanut butter poop.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, and it won't poison your entire body and you
want have to spend any time in the electric light bath,
right or the kneading machine. So doctor Kellogg creates basically
what we would recognize today as the the artisan version
of peanut butter. It's just ground up peanuts that form
(23:24):
a paste and apparently that's just a natural thing that happens,
like if you put roasted peanuts in a food processor
it's going to turn like gritty in 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 an ointment, like Marcellus Wallace would call it.
(23:47):
And 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 Kelly because you know that sanitarium was really expensive,
and it was for the wealthy, it was for celebrities.
(24:07):
So most people experience peanut butter at one of two places.
And Chuck, I really found out in researching this that
the history of peanut butter is super murky. It's like
a spoonful of peanut butter stood up in a glass
of water, kind of murky, right where it is kind
of cross where it's just not entirely clear who did
(24:30):
what when, whose contribution has been disproportionately mythologized. But from
what I can tell, John Harvey Kellogg is definitely one
of the fathers of peanut butter. Mister Marcellis was one
as well. And then it gets a little murkier after that,
(24:52):
so much so that people say, well, peanut butter made
his debut at the nineteen oh four Saint Louis World's Fair,
and then other people are like, no, no, that's why wrong.
It made its debut at the eighteen ninety three Chicago
World's Fair, and I can find good credible sources that
say either one. So I have no idea where it
made its debut. I believe it was sold for sure
(25:15):
at the Saint Louis Worldfair in nineteen oh four, and
that a guy named h Summers sold like twenty thousand
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
(25:35):
everyday thing. They weren't standing in their pantry eating it
off of a spoon, but they had probably had it before,
and this was like a real treat for them to
experience it. It wasn't like debuted in nineteen oh four, from
what I can.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Tell right well, regardless of who introduced it initially, By
nineteen oh seven, thanks to companies like Hines and beechnut.
They were selling thirty four million pounds of peanut butter
up for just two million in eighteen ninety nine, So
over an eight year period, that's a pretty big increase.
And the soldiers come into play again. It wasn't just
(26:09):
the Civil War and World Wars one and two. And
I've had peanut butter k rations before really, uh huh.
My dad used to get that stuff a lot when
I was a kid for camping and stuff at the
Army Navy store. So it became a big part of
your army rations and the armed forces because I had
a lot of protein. It was a good sustenance. You
(26:29):
could make a PB and J and that was pretty
comforting if you were on the front lines or in
a trench in World War One.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yeah, supposedly they popularized the PB and J. The troops did.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
That's right, and thank them for that.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Oh I will, I'll salute the troops for that one.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
But it was pretty regional at the time in the
early twentieth century. It didn't travel that great. 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
(27:10):
three gentlemen named Peter, Pan, Skippy and Jeff, which I
was curious about Jeff where that came from? And all
I found was they said, it's easy to spell, easy
to say, and easy to remember.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
It's true all three of those checks.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
And had no meaning beyond that. Basically.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Really, I would have guessed I had something to do with,
you know, like doing it in a jiff or jiffy
or something. Huh.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I mean, you know, I mean you 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 that was kind of the end of
that story.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
So good night. So whatt it more? No, I'm with you.
I do too. I'm kind of mad right now. But
we gotta press on with hydrogenation, right because there's this
guy named John Krampner, and he wrote a book called
The Creamy and Crunchy all about peanut butter, and he
basically points to that as saying, like that, that's that
(28:06):
was the turning point for peanut butter, maybe even tied
for first with its invention, 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 bonds become infused or saturated with hydrogen and so
(28:30):
they stick together a lot more easily. So those liquid
oils have a more stable 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, but
the oils mixed into the mixture and it stays that
way even on the store shelf, which people love because
(28:52):
I mean, you know from eating artis in peanut butter.
It's kind of a pain to stir it up.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
I mean in little stir is a little dodgy because
it's so close to the lid. Yeah, but you just
have to have the right spoon, take your time and
don't be in a rush. And you know, shelf life
stability is super important with peanut butter because only monsters
put their peanut butter in the refrigerator?
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Who does that? Who point them out to me? Monsters?
Like you've met somebody who's done that before?
Speaker 1 (29:23):
No? I think that was in a Judge John Hodgmen
listener mail. At one point, Oh, man, I don't think
it was a major case, but I think it was
one of the one of their listener mail ones. Okay,
but totally totally think it should be on the shelf.
That's where it belongs. Although I will say if you
mix a little peeb and J with a natural kind
and you put it in the fridge because you've had
(29:44):
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. It makes for a nice little snack,
but it's certainly not anything that you can spread on bread.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
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, there's not all these
(30:18):
unused or open bonds that an oxygen atom can come
along and bond to and oxidize the peanut butter, which
creates peroxide, which gives it a rancid taste. So hydrogenation
not only made peanut butter less liquidy, more creamy. It
also made it last longer, like is sitting on the
(30:41):
shelf before it was sold and used. It wouldn't turn
rancid 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 fat,
which is really tough on the old.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Yeah, that's why I stay away from that stuff. I mean,
it's so good, but yeah, I just I made the
switch many years ago.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Good for you, Jack.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yeah. The hydrogenated outsold natural for the first time in
forty two and accounts for about eighty percent 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.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Peter Pan makes a natural one too, and I mean
I'm making air quotes like Jeff does, and it's.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
I think they all do know.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
It might even be.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Better than Jeff's natural version. I think Emily likes the
Smucker's natural huh. But I also got some I can't
remember the brand. It's one of the one of the
other natural brands. They're all pretty good, I think. Okay,
So nineteen twenty eight was when peter Pan rolled out
(31:53):
and was the first which I didn't know was the
first major brand. It was the biggest seller at the time.
It used that partial hydrogenation process that was patented by
a guy named Joseph Rosefield from Kentucky. And then that's
where Jeff Skippy came from. Peter Pan's parent company said
(32:14):
I want to cut your licensing fee. He said, I'm
done with you, and I'm going to go out and
I'm going to make Skippy on my own. And by
the end of his career he had ten patents, not
just for peanut butter but relating to food. And he
was just kind of like Chevy Chase and Vacation movies.
He was a food scientist.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Yeah, what was it the thing that he learned to
code a flake with that he used on the sled.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Oh, I don't know, some sort of a non nutritional
I can't remember.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
I'll figure it out. No need to email everyone, No
need to.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Email, No, I want to hear. I want every email
about this.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
I think it was called a non nutritional coding is
what he called it. But yes, he was very much
like that. But he was also way, way, way better
than anything the Chase could ever be because he was
a really great boss. He paid his workers really well,
and in creating the Skippy brand, he broke off from
this kind of this corporate overlord that he worked for
(33:14):
was keeping him under his thumb and then trying to
short change him. 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,
(33:35):
like if I had been born in nineteen seventy, if
I would have been raised on Skippy. But I came
along at the jiff Era really.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Yeah, he said, in your face, and they said, I
love peanut butter in my face, and he went, oh,
I got to think of a new comeback.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
I never heard that song, so I never really thought
about that.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
You didn't watch the television in the nineteen nineties, I did.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
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, gotcha. 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, how do you like being third banana?
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Because that's where you're headed.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
That same year, in nineteen fifty five, this is when
Rosefield sold Skippy to Best Foods. Procter and Gamble bought
Big Top Peanut from William T. Young, also of Kentucky,
and then they became JIFF and they held that brand
until two thou one, two thousand and two.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Yeah, I did not know that, that's right, But wait,
two thousand and one, two thousand and two.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
It's when they sold the Smuckers.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Oh okay, but Jeff is still the number one brand.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Today, right as far as I know.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
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 nineteen eighty to today,
it's it's number one.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yeah, and they got a lot of 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.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Now, well, nuts is just one variety. Well, they all
have peanuts in them. Yeah, well they have. They have
a good almond butter too. Yeah, I can.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
I can get down with some almond butter.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
You know what, buddy, I'm going to buy you some.
When we see each other again, I'm going to be
brandishing a jar of Jeff almond butter for you.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
You know, it's not good.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
What is uh?
Speaker 1 (35:59):
You know you can't take peanut butter sandwiches into classrooms
anymore mm hmm, or at least at you know, at
my kids preschool. And of course you can't take anything
in there anymore because it's closed. But you have to
make you have to make it with what a cheese
I used to chew these things all the time. What
(36:19):
a baseball players chew? Sunflower seeds, chickpeas, sunflower butter.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
That's good too. I've had that. It's not bad.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Oh, I do not care for it, So.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
You don't like it? Huh? I think it's all right,
I guess wow. I really like basically any kind of butters,
including just butter. Butter.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Well, yeah, butter's great. But I just cannot get down
with the sunflower flower.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Yeah, some flower, No, it totally, and it's definitely there's
a taste of sunflower to it. Like you could have
no idea what you were eating and somebody gives it
to you and you would be like, that's sunflower butter,
isn't it.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
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 flower seeds
on our mouth. O.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yeah, I remember the sunflower trend quite well.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Remember that. And you would crack, Yeah, you would crack
them open with your teeth and you would spit out
the shell and then swallow the seed that you on
the seed and swallow it.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
So I would eat the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
You know, you didn't eat the shell.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Yeah, this is I would eat the whole thing. And
that I would smoke a whole cigar and in hal it.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Yeah, I got it all figured out. Would you really
eat the shells? Huh? I still do to this day, really, yeah.
And it's kind of dangerous because every once in a
while there's like one 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 while and be like I
think I'm bleeding.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Well, here's how I eat peanuts when I go to
the ball game. I stick the whole peanut in my
mouth really 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.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
And then between every bite you have to coat your
lips with lipbalm because it's so dried and cracked.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
By saltby it is pretty salty. But the only time
I eat peanuts in the shell like that is at
a baseball game.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
So now I do something similar, but it's with peanut
M and MS. I will 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.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Are you kidding?
Speaker 2 (38:42):
You?
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Are you serious?
Speaker 2 (38:43):
I'm dead serious. I can't remember the last time I
ate a peanut minem without doing that with every single one.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
All right, here's what I'll do sometimes with peanut M
and MS. Okay, we should just have a side gig
where we just talk about our stupid quirks. We do.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
It's part of the podcast I put.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
And sometimes I'll just mow on them like there's no tomorrow.
But sometimes I will, and this helps me eat fewer
of them, because I will pop one or two in
my mouth, and I'll just let them sit there and
marinate in my saliva. Oh yeah, 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.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Yep. I know, I know what you mean.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
You know that move Yep, it's really good.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
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 M and ms, I might go
crazy like that.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
All right, so let's should we take a break or
should we wait a second?
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah, let's do that. Let's take a break.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
And jog jo.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Shot shot.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
All right. So where we left off was Jeff was
killing it. You and I have very weird eating habits. Yeah,
and Jeff starts killing it. They start putting sugar and
molasses in there. Everyone else followed suit, and finally, in
the nineteen sixties, the FDA stood up and said, hold
on a minute, guys, this stuff you're calling peanut butter
(40:30):
is junk food. Now there's one leading brand. I'm not
going to name names. I think it was Jeff that
was only seventy five percent actual peanuts. He's like, so
you got to start putting ninety five percent peanuts in
the whole thing. The peanut butter lobby said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
How about eighty seven percent? And they said, we're the FDA,
(40:51):
we meet people in the middle. Let's settle on ninety
percent peanuts and peanut butter. And since nineteen seventy one
that's been the standard.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Yeah, I think like 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, ninety percent,
(41:19):
that's as low as we're going. Make sure that your
peanut butter has ninety percent peanuts. Good day to you, sir.
And that was that finally, and it became enforced in
nineteen seventy two, and still today there is a federal
legal definition for what constitutes peanut butter, and one of
the first things is it has to have ninety percent
(41:41):
peanuts in it.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
That's right, because that is still the standard. 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 know who says chunky, but it's
(42:06):
definitely crunchy.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Chunky. Yeah, that's like a type of Campbell soup.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
So crunchy can be larger than one sixteenth and I
guess I mean they're all about the same size. I'd
be curious to see if there are any kind of
half sized peanuts if it gets that chunky.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Oh yeah, like larger than a sixteenth of an inch, Yeah,
like a half of a peanut, people would be like,
it's too chunky. I can't take it.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Maybe, I mean that's like candy bar level.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
It is. It is so chuck. What you've just said
is the federal 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 Rosefield, who was the founder of Skippy. He actually
created chunky sorry, crunchy peanut butter.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
We both said crunchy, and now we're both saying chunky.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
I know it's kind of stuck in my head, but
he's the guy who if you like chunky peanut butter,
first of all, shame on you. But secondly, thank Joseph
Rosefield for that, because he came up with it, I
think in the fifties.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Yeah, like I said, I like it all. There is
not a kind of peanut butter that I won't eat.
I think it's all really good.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
So then I think also this kind of demonstrates just
how seriously Americans take peanut butter. The USDA goes on
to say, there are other qualities that make a peanut
butter either Grade A, Grade B or substandard peanut butter, and.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
It's my favorite.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
It's things like color. The color has to match certain
color samples that you can only obtain from a company
called Agtron Ink of Sparks, Nevada. This is in the
nineteen seventy two law that you have to write to
Agtron and say, can you please send me the peanut
butter colored standards because I need to make sure that
(43:54):
my peanut butter matches the USDA's standards for color of
peanut butter online.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Get with it while you're writing me a letter.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Right, That's that's a really good point. You email, or
you'd write back like, I don't know, can you please
send me the website URL? 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 five hundred calvin plus or minus
two hundred and fifty calvin or something equal to a
(44:26):
moderately partly cloudy day. That's that's the government's standard for
judging the color of peanut butter.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
All I can think of now is somebody writing a
handwritten letter to someone asking for a URL, someone with
a ballpoint pin spelling out https colon slash slash.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
I looked up agtron ink. They're still around and they
are on point man. They've been in business for I
think about a century. But they are all about like
food analysis. If you're a coffee roast or a barista
or something, you can take their online class. I think
it's online. It's like a day long class that like
really teaches you all, like the science behind the coffee
(45:10):
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
agtron Nink asking for their UURL and.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
They will send you a laminated sheet and a Manila envelope. Yeah, so,
if you're talking peanut butter. In the United States, the
about half of the edible use of peanuts is from
peanut butter. Obviously, peanut butter is and a ton of
It's one of my favorite parts of candy bars and
stuff like that. Totally, I'm a sucker for any peanut
(45:44):
butter ice creams, peanut butter candy bars. It's just I
can't get enough of that combination.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
I'm totally with you, buddy.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Which, by the way, Joseph Rosefield was the skippy guy,
was the guy who came up with that peanut butter
and chocolate combo before Reesus did. But the National Peanut
Board estimates that it takes about five hundred and forty
peanuts to make up one of those twelve ounce jars,
which is a lot of peanuts. That kind of surprised me.
It was more than I thought.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Yeah, sit there and shell peanuts until you reach five
hundred and forty individual peanuts, and you will have a
sudden appreciation for your panut butter.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
You know what I mean for sure. But of course
machines do that.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
But yeah, well, if it's artisan, no, somebody wearing like
a calico srong is doing it with by hand. In Vermont,
I do think Vermont people are like, yeah, I think
that's my conception. Prove me wrong, Vermont.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
So in two thousand and 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 peanut butter a little bit.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
In two thousand and 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.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
Well. I remember that, don't you. I remember both of them.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
The other one was in two thousand and seven, and
that was Salmonella and peter Pan and Great Value, both
owned by con Agra, and that got about six hundred
and change sick, but nobody died, luckily, but I remember
both of those. It was a big deal because peanut
butter is so ubiquitous.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
So there's also I didn't realize this until I started
researching it. There's something called affle detoxins. Have you heard
of them?
Speaker 1 (47:47):
I think I did back when all the stuff happened,
or maybe not, I have heard of it.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
So there's there's a mold called Aspergillis that grows on
peanuts because peanuts are grown underground, right, and the Aspergillis
can produce a toxin called afflotoxins. And apparently humans are
pretty much immune to its initial effects or its short
term effects, but we have no idea what happens if
(48:14):
you eat aflotoxins. You know, over the course of a lifetime,
you know what happens. And apparently there's studies of humans
that found that it's been linked to certain types of cancer,
potentially birth effects, cognitive disabilities, all sorts of horrible stuff.
(48:35):
And peanut butter producers say, well, we get at least
eighty nine percent of the aflatoxins out just by processing peanuts,
And you say, well, what about the other eleven percent,
And they're like, have some beetter pan and forget your troubles.
That's right. So there is like a real risk of
something bad happening to you, whether it's a poisoning or not.
(48:57):
But a lot of people are like, even if it's
pure peanut butter, it's still it's still not healthy for you.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
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 getting those peanuts a ground right
in front of your face.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
It's not terrible.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
You know. It's got a lot of nutrition. It's got
a lot of antioxidants. It's got we're talking, this is
one hundred grams of this stuff. You've got forty five
percent RDA of vitamin E, sixty seven percent of vitamin
B three, sixteen seven percent I'm sorry, seventy three percent
of manganese, and thirty nine percent of magnesium. So it's
(49:40):
got a lot of good stuff in there. It's got
a lot of calories too, that's about six hundred calories
eating one hundred grams worth. But if it's you know,
I mean that's one hundred grams is a lot.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
No, it is a tremendous amount. 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 monounsaturated fat is the kind
that's good for your heart. It's that saturated stuff that
(50:13):
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.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
That's right, It's just great.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
It's basically just really calorie dents. 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 a non nutritious food. It's actually pretty nutritious.
It's just calorie dents.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
Right, And if you're trying to lose weight, and you
opt for a spoonful of peanut butter and honey rather
than a pint of bin and Jerri's, then you're definitely
doing the right thing.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
For sure, man, for sure. One thing though, that has,
you know, strikes fear in 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. Is this
the rise 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
(51:15):
in two thousand and eight, and they found that between
nineteen ninety seven and two thousand and eight, in this
national survey of fifty three hundred homes, that the self
reported peanut allergies went from zero point four percent of
respondents to one point four percent of respondents, which is
(51:36):
one point four percent. Doesn't sound like a lot, but
that's a huge increase between 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.
(51:59):
That's not necessary an increase in actual peanut allergies, which
is really strange and bizarre to think of, if that's correct.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Yeah, and I have seen the trend of oral immunotherapy
like feeding your very small child and your baby peanuts
to a little bit at a time to ensure or
hopefully ensure that they won't be stricken with the worst
food allergy of all. It's true, the peanut allergy. And
there was a study in Israel that had guidelines for
(52:31):
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 happened, and.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
Make them chew, and then hit them with the lipball.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
Yeah, hit them with that. Hit them with the lipball.
Speaker 2 (52:45):
So one last thing, chuck and I couldn't find a
place to put it, but it has to be said.
There is a phobia called arak aboot to aphobia iraka
bo aphobia. Yeah, I think I nailed it that last time, okay,
And it is.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
Is that for me? Is that my cue? Yes, it's
hard to tell because you're not kicking me under the table.
Speaker 2 (53:09):
I'm not like doing that series of blinks.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
That is the fear peanut butter are 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 going to dislodge and go right down your throat.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
That's right, just like John Harvey Kellogg.
Speaker 1 (53:27):
Foresaw your little whole milk and you're all set.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
Nice man, or some cool whip. Don't forget the cool whip.
Speaker 1 (53:33):
I gotta try that.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
That's I don't know if you should try that. Like,
I think I gained ten pounds in a month just
after I discovered that it's it's not good for you, man.
Speaker 1 (53:42):
Yeah, I can't wait. Cool whip doesn't last long on
our house. We can't keep it here. It's just like
it's really hard not to just sort of, oh, I'll
just have a little spoonful every now and.
Speaker 2 (53:51):
Then, right and then where did it go? Yeah, it's
like your hair is stuck to your forehead because you've
put your whole face in the tub.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
So good, and it's good frozen too. I don't know
if you ever tried that.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Yeah, I've tried it both ways, but if you do
want to try, it's about it's about half and half
peanut butter. Cool person, grainful.
Speaker 1 (54:09):
I'll give it a shot if I'm ever allowed to
go to the grocery store again.
Speaker 2 (54:11):
Yeah right, Okay, Well I think that's it then for
peanut butter unless you have anything else.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Got nothing else?
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Okay, Well since we said we have nothing else, that
means it's time for those who are male.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
I'm going to call this early listener that came back
as an adult love these hey guys last year? 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?
(54:46):
And a need for an educational podcast on my long
drives to Blacksburg, Virginia from the Tidewater area of Virginia.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
I think they got hit by the affle a toxin.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
I think he maybe I don't know what he. When
I first started listening, I was in middle school and
I always loved trivia, and your podcast helped me annoy
other students with random facts about twin kis and Florid.
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
(55:19):
through electrical engineering and also helped me earn free beer
at trivia nights because of my tendency to remember obscure knowledge.
I even made a friend through the podcast listener Lucas.
I take it that's just Lucas.
Speaker 2 (55:36):
Listener is not his first name, I hope.
Speaker 1 (55:38):
So he was listening to your podcast while driving his
bus and I recognize the familiar voices. So I just
wanted to say thanks, guys, and that is from listener Daniel,
So maybe that's how they met. They had the same
first name, right.
Speaker 2 (55:52):
Like, I never thought I would have a brother, but
now I do. Daniel and Lucas together. Listener, you got anything.
Speaker 1 (56:00):
Else, now I got nothing at all.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
Well, if you want to be like listener Daniel and
let us know how long you've been listening, we want
to hear from you. 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, the gesture of early feeding at peanuts and
sending it all to stuff podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (56:26):
You Know Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hi, everybody. It's Chuck And in COVID time it's May fourteenth,
twenty twenty, and on this Saturday Select, we're going to
bring you an episode called How Peanut Butter Works. And boy,
oh boy, I remember loving this one. I think I
was eating a lot of peanut butter at the time
during COVID because we had a good store of it already,
and I love peanut butter, and I think we talk
(00:22):
a lot about how much we both like peanut butter.
In this episode, it's bound to make you hungry. And
the good news is now you can just go right
to your store and pick it up and smile a
real smile at people, just not hidden behind a mask.
So let's celebrate that. Go out and get some peanut
butter and smile. Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
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.
And this is you should know.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, Jerry, she sent out in a smoke signal that
said send me, so she did.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
She did, and we send some on donkey back in
that general direction.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Are you peanut butter or jelly in this scenario?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I want to be peanut buttered. You always make me
be jelly.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Well, I think we should level set here at the beginning, okay,
and talk about if you like peanut butter, which is
your favorite, and then what you like how do you
utilize it?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Okay? My name is Josh C. And I love peanut butter. Okay,
almost only smooth. I will eat chunky the if civilization
is collapsed and that's all I can find. Okay, I
eat it any way, shape or form. Sometimes just peanut
butter on a spoon. Sometimes peanut butter on a spoon
(01:52):
with a little divot made with my tongue filled with
local honey. 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. Okay,
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
(02:14):
used to, so I'm having a real struggle with it.
Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And do you want to buzzmarkt your favorite brand?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
We used this Jeff Natural that's like it's like in
a brown container, and I like it so much. I've
never I purposely never looked at the label because I
don't want to know how natural it is. But my
all time favorite is Reese's peanut butter, like the like
Have you had it.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
You mean in the jar?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yes, Oh it's so good. I think I've had it once.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
But I was raised on Jeff Now go well, I.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Was raised on whatever the gigantic gallon tub is that
you used to it and Ladies Yeah, I don't remember.
I don't think it was any of those names. Now,
I mean, I love peanut butter. It's one of my
favorite things in the world. And I will go crunchy
or smooth no matter. I love them both. I also
(03:13):
like it with honey. Yeah, 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.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
You know, I've never had that? Is it good? Really? Dude?
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Do you have any cuby Yes? Do peanut butter and
cupe sammy.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Okay, so half in half or more peanut butter than
mayo or what.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
It's kind of your your jam. I definitely don't go
light on the mayo because you've got to have that tang. Okay,
peanut butter and marshmallow fluff I used to eat when
I was a kid. Yeah, that's good stuff fluff or nutter,
And now I don't eat the sugary hydrogenated types. I
either have one of the sort of artisan natural kinds
(03:57):
you have to mix up or just that. The cap
Farmers Market grinds the peanuts right in front of your
face into a tub and hands it to.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
You, right in front of your face, and it says
beat it. You can't have any of this.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
So that's just peanuts obviously.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah, and maybe a little bit of salt. Do they
add any salt or is it really just peanuts?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
It's just peanuts.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Wow. 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'd cracked the code.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
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
got to put a little bit of honey in there,
or maybe a little bit of a gave to give
it a little bit of a sweet.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Oh that's a good idea. Yeah, I was going to
ask you. I've not had any artists and stuff, and
I did a little research and found a couple I
want to try, and I didn't know, like, 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.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Well, I mean, if you don't add any sweetener, and
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.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
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 they have, you know, depending on the
kind of peanuts that are chosen, the variety of peanuts,
the way that it's roasted, almost like a coffee or
a wine or something like that. There's like a sophisticated
(05:29):
palette or tear wir 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
cow lick 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
(05:51):
peanut butter in a healthy way because it is surprisingly
from what I saw, it is healthier than you would
suspect if done right.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yes, not a big glob of peter pan with cup
mayonnaise and potato chips smashed in between white bread. Yes, yeah,
I'm hungry.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Well, peanut butter for me that has now become my
in my since January. You know, 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.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Oh good for you.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Just like a spoonful of peanut butter and honey and
that'll satiate that desire.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
I haven't seen you in a while. How's it going.
That's good.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
I mean, I'm down twenty since January? But what really
leveled off the past month?
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Congratulations, dude, that is really impressive.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Just forty more to go, man, No, that's really great.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Man, Just just yeah, yeah, it does plateau, but it
picks up again.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Don't want plat plateaus because of quarantine alcoholism.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
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. Are you finding it easier to
keep up with food or harder?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Easier because I'm cooking a lot cheese and buzz marketing again.
But you know, I'm just having one of those MIC's
mighty goods for lunch, which is very low on calories.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, it's really good too.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
And you know, I'm just tracking the calories, and it's
it's alcohol that's the problem right now.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I gotcha. Yeah, I've been doing one or two nights
a week tops, and then a couple of night. 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 happen upon the fact
of the podcast. If you ask me, this is a
(08:01):
boy 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, the Chinese,
(08:21):
other countries do not think peanut butter is particularly good.
They think it's a little nasty. And that just blew
me away to read that.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Yeah, I'd want to talk to some people before I'd
let some internet website tell me that people think peanut
butter is gross.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Some website push your brain around.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Yeah, I'd like to talk to some folks about that.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
But at the very least, even if they don't think
it's gross, it is an all American thing. Like even
countries that do enjoy it. I've read that Australia actually
likes it a lot. It's an American concoction so much
so that like it might be the most American concoction
there is, to tell you the truth.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
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. Yep, sort of Hamburgers, even
though I would argue that the hamburgers, we know it
is pretty American, sure, but peanut butter just us as
far as modern times go.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah, I think that that 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 going to make a cameo later got his
hands on the idea. But yeah, it was an American invention,
except it was actually Canadian, as we'll see. But for
(09:42):
the most part, people think of it as all American,
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.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
I think you mean Goober's.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Have you ever heard somebody outside of TV call them that?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Not really, but I knew it was a thing, but
I don't. It's not in the just daily nomenclature of
my crowd.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
But it is. It's supposedly like a Southern and I
guess an antiquated Southern word for peanut, a goober or
goober pe.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yeah, I've heard goober and that old song about the
raisinets guber. Well, Goober's is also a candy, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
And there's smuckers goobers, which is peanut, butter and jelly
mixed together in a jar. It's actually good, is it. Yeah?
Even as a kid, I was like, this is gonna
be gross, and then I tried it. I was like,
not bad, not bad smuckers.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
See, I'm pretty discerning with my gems and jellies. So
that's for another day. Though you would not like this,
I probably would.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
You would not like smuckers, and if you're at all discerning,
you would not like it.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
All right, So peanuts is a it's a lagome and
it's also called a ground nut or an earth nut,
and just like a lintel or a pee, it is
a little lagoome nut. No, I'm a big fan of peanuts, though,
I like to eat them pretty much anyway. You can
slice it from boiled to straight up raw out of
the shell, like them honey, roasted, salted, and roasted, and
(11:13):
certainly in peanut butter.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
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
those are not for you, but they usually end up
(11:35):
in my tummy. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
You ever seen a squirrel stick one of those in
his mouth sideways?
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yep? I had darn cute. Yeah, we will like all
shell them and then throw like the actual peanut and
the squirrel. Somehow we'll know that there's supposed to be
another one coming, because they'll very 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.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
It's really adorable, right, or they might stick around to
see if it's one of the rare three bangers.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Right, which is just that's a good squirrel day right there.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
All right, So these things are lagomes, 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 culture from Peru from
about seventy six hundred years ago, and it was sort
of one of these things where they found the fact
(12:30):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, right, the peanut has arrived. When it shows up
on pottery, you know for real. They've also found them,
i guess, entombed with mummies from the Inca and the Aztecs,
which makes sense because when the conquistadors arrived the Spanish
and the Portuguese to South America and Central America, they
found peanuts being grown as far north as Mexico, but
(13:00):
I think the first place they encountered them was actually
in the Caribbean, and they took them back with them.
They took them to Spain, and Spain passed them along
to the rest of Europe and the Philippines and China.
The Portuguese took it back again to Europe, but also
to India and Africa, and peanuts started to be farmed
all over the world. Like the world loves peanuts, it's
(13:22):
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 Americas from Africa as
part of the West African slave trade. And actually that
word gouber, that Southern word gouber, they think comes from
a Conga Leese word or Congo with a K word
(13:45):
in gouba. Yeah, pretty surprising.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Sure, goober and gouba close enough.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, But to think like the peanut, you think of
the peanut 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 Americas. That's a pretty circuitous and weird route for
it to take.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, and Africa still grows about twenty five percent of
the peanuts in the world. Weird just below that at
about twenty one percent here in the States. And it
took all the way to eighteen forty two that we
started growing them commercially in the US in Virginia's where
it first started for oil and food and to substitute
out for cocoa. And it wasn't it just wasn't like
(14:33):
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.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah, it was good for livestock and the poverty stricken
basically was who were expected to eat peanuts at the time.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
It just like Lobster. Have you ever read Considered the Lobster? That? Wow, man,
I want to say David Lee Roth so bad, but
I know that's not his name at all. Who wrote
Consider the Lobster?
Speaker 1 (15:03):
I've never heard of that, But I who was the lobster?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Who was end of tour about that movie? Oh? David
Foster Wallace, Oh, sure, sure, yeah. He wrote this really
great magazine article once called Considered 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.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
That's right. Uh you know there were.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Sea spiders, yeah, or the cockroaches of the sea.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Disgusting.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
It is kind of gross when you think of it
like that. And apparently there was a law that said
that you could only feed so much lobster to patients
and mental asylums at the time, or else it became abusive.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Oh wow, yeah, they didn't know what did they try
him on a hot dog bun with mayonnaise.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
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, 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 was probably
not super appetizing, but it was also like you would
(16:15):
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. So again,
you could just dump it into a trough and feed
it to your livestock, where you could spend a lot
of time trying to separate it, or you could just
be like, I'm not messing with this. And for a
(16:35):
long time they didn't mess with it. Actually.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
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
(16:58):
the peanut gallery. And that's where that phrase came from,
which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah, because apparently if they didn't like what they saw,
they would toss their peanuts that they were eating at
the stage. So that's where peanut gallery came from.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
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 It was still hard to get like really
good quality peanuts because, like you said, the way they
were being harvested at the time by hand, it was
just tough to do.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
And then so two African Americans around the turn of
the last century 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, who actually, contrary to popular belief,
(17:51):
did not invent peanut butter, but he did come up
with more than three hundred 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 establish it as a prominent crop
was because the South had depleted its soil so badly
from growing cotton for so long, and then at the
(18:12):
worst of this there was a bull weavil outbreak that
just ruined the rest of the cotton crop. So the
South really needed something to replace cotton, and George Washington
Carver helped introduce and popularize peanuts and say, not only
can you eat these things, look at all this other
stuff you can make out.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Of them, that's right. And there was another guy around
the same time named Ben Hicks, Mister 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 like a lot of well it still goes on,
I guess, with the little guy and their patents. Big
(18:53):
farm came around and a farm equipment company challenged him.
He actually had to go to court, but won the
case in nineteen oh 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 man hours or person hours,
(19:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
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 that we
take a break and then come back, really dig into
the peanut butter.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Let's do it, okay, and.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Ut Scott shot.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Shot Okay. So, like I said, the INCA probably had
us beat as far as the invention of peanut butter went.
But it was actually a Canadian who they think was
(20:24):
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 Gilmour Edson. You
just can't say the name Marcellus and not followed up
with Wallace somewhere.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
You know, it really has become like peanut butter and
jelly very n So. He patented a paste made of
peanuts in eighteen eighty four, which was described by him
and his patent as at room temperature, having a consistency
like that of butter, lard or ointment.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Which tried this.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
It sounds gross, but when you think about peanut butter,
that's kind of about right.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
He added sugar to stabilize it a little bit, and
this was kind of like the first modern peanut butter
that we think of as peanut butter. It sold for
about six cents a pound, which is a pretty good price.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, and 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
(21:41):
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 of peanut butter.
(22:03):
He's considered one of the main inventors of peanut butter.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Well, yeah, it was right up his alley. Because I
think that might be my favorite live show we've done. Actually,
oh yeah, I think so PR was my favorite PR.
I knew you were going to say that you did. Yeah,
that was a good one you did. I think those
are my top two.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
What about pentos Man, what about Nybe Cooper?
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Those might be the first four that I would name.
What else have we done?
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Mals Bars, We did the secret one that is still
supposedly on tour but on hiatus right now. So I
think that's it. I think that's all. Well, I'm going to.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Go with John Harvey Kellogg because he as if you
listen to that one, 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'll just glide right through
your system and come out as delicious peanut butter poop.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, and it won't poison your entire body and you
want have to spend any time in the electric light bath,
right or the kneading machine. So doctor Kellogg creates basically
what we would recognize today as the the artisan version
of peanut butter. It's just ground up peanuts that form
(23:24):
a paste and apparently that's just a natural thing that happens,
like if you put roasted peanuts in a food processor
it's going to turn like gritty in 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 an ointment, like Marcellus Wallace would call it.
(23:47):
And 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 Kelly because you know that sanitarium was really expensive,
and it was for the wealthy, it was for celebrities.
(24:07):
So most people experience peanut butter at one of two places.
And Chuck, I really found out in researching this that
the history of peanut butter is super murky. It's like
a spoonful of peanut butter stood up in a glass
of water, kind of murky, right where it is kind
of cross where it's just not entirely clear who did
(24:30):
what when, whose contribution has been disproportionately mythologized. But from
what I can tell, John Harvey Kellogg is definitely one
of the fathers of peanut butter. Mister Marcellis was one
as well. And then it gets a little murkier after that,
(24:52):
so much so that people say, well, peanut butter made
his debut at the nineteen oh four Saint Louis World's Fair,
and then other people are like, no, no, that's why wrong.
It made its debut at the eighteen ninety three Chicago
World's Fair, and I can find good credible sources that
say either one. So I have no idea where it
made its debut. I believe it was sold for sure
(25:15):
at the Saint Louis Worldfair in nineteen oh four, and
that a guy named h Summers sold like twenty thousand
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
(25:35):
everyday thing. They weren't standing in their pantry eating it
off of a spoon, but they had probably had it before,
and this was like a real treat for them to
experience it. It wasn't like debuted in nineteen oh four, from
what I can.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Tell right well, regardless of who introduced it initially, By
nineteen oh seven, thanks to companies like Hines and beechnut.
They were selling thirty four million pounds of peanut butter
up for just two million in eighteen ninety nine, So
over an eight year period, that's a pretty big increase.
And the soldiers come into play again. It wasn't just
(26:09):
the Civil War and World Wars one and two. And
I've had peanut butter k rations before really, uh huh.
My dad used to get that stuff a lot when
I was a kid for camping and stuff at the
Army Navy store. So it became a big part of
your army rations and the armed forces because I had
a lot of protein. It was a good sustenance. You
(26:29):
could make a PB and J and that was pretty
comforting if you were on the front lines or in
a trench in World War One.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yeah, supposedly they popularized the PB and J. The troops did.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
That's right, and thank them for that.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Oh I will, I'll salute the troops for that one.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
But it was pretty regional at the time in the
early twentieth century. It didn't travel that great. 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
(27:10):
three gentlemen named Peter, Pan, Skippy and Jeff, which I
was curious about Jeff where that came from? And all
I found was they said, it's easy to spell, easy
to say, and easy to remember.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
It's true all three of those checks.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
And had no meaning beyond that. Basically.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Really, I would have guessed I had something to do with,
you know, like doing it in a jiff or jiffy
or something. Huh.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I mean, you know, I mean you 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 that was kind of the end of
that story.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
So good night. So whatt it more? No, I'm with you.
I do too. I'm kind of mad right now. But
we gotta press on with hydrogenation, right because there's this
guy named John Krampner, and he wrote a book called
The Creamy and Crunchy all about peanut butter, and he
basically points to that as saying, like that, that's that
(28:06):
was the turning point for peanut butter, maybe even tied
for first with its invention, 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 bonds become infused or saturated with hydrogen and so
(28:30):
they stick together a lot more easily. So those liquid
oils have a more stable 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, but
the oils mixed into the mixture and it stays that
way even on the store shelf, which people love because
(28:52):
I mean, you know from eating artis in peanut butter.
It's kind of a pain to stir it up.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
I mean in little stir is a little dodgy because
it's so close to the lid. Yeah, but you just
have to have the right spoon, take your time and
don't be in a rush. And you know, shelf life
stability is super important with peanut butter because only monsters
put their peanut butter in the refrigerator?
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Who does that? Who point them out to me? Monsters?
Like you've met somebody who's done that before?
Speaker 1 (29:23):
No? I think that was in a Judge John Hodgmen
listener mail. At one point, Oh, man, I don't think
it was a major case, but I think it was
one of the one of their listener mail ones. Okay,
but totally totally think it should be on the shelf.
That's where it belongs. Although I will say if you
mix a little peeb and J with a natural kind
and you put it in the fridge because you've had
(29:44):
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. It makes for a nice little snack,
but it's certainly not anything that you can spread on bread.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
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, there's not all these
(30:18):
unused or open bonds that an oxygen atom can come
along and bond to and oxidize the peanut butter, which
creates peroxide, which gives it a rancid taste. So hydrogenation
not only made peanut butter less liquidy, more creamy. It
also made it last longer, like is sitting on the
(30:41):
shelf before it was sold and used. It wouldn't turn
rancid 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 fat,
which is really tough on the old.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Yeah, that's why I stay away from that stuff. I mean,
it's so good, but yeah, I just I made the
switch many years ago.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Good for you, Jack.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yeah. The hydrogenated outsold natural for the first time in
forty two and accounts for about eighty percent 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.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Peter Pan makes a natural one too, and I mean
I'm making air quotes like Jeff does, and it's.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
I think they all do know.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
It might even be.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Better than Jeff's natural version. I think Emily likes the
Smucker's natural huh. But I also got some I can't
remember the brand. It's one of the one of the
other natural brands. They're all pretty good, I think. Okay,
So nineteen twenty eight was when peter Pan rolled out
(31:53):
and was the first which I didn't know was the
first major brand. It was the biggest seller at the time.
It used that partial hydrogenation process that was patented by
a guy named Joseph Rosefield from Kentucky. And then that's
where Jeff Skippy came from. Peter Pan's parent company said
(32:14):
I want to cut your licensing fee. He said, I'm
done with you, and I'm going to go out and
I'm going to make Skippy on my own. And by
the end of his career he had ten patents, not
just for peanut butter but relating to food. And he
was just kind of like Chevy Chase and Vacation movies.
He was a food scientist.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Yeah, what was it the thing that he learned to
code a flake with that he used on the sled.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Oh, I don't know, some sort of a non nutritional
I can't remember.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
I'll figure it out. No need to email everyone, No
need to.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Email, No, I want to hear. I want every email
about this.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
I think it was called a non nutritional coding is
what he called it. But yes, he was very much
like that. But he was also way, way, way better
than anything the Chase could ever be because he was
a really great boss. He paid his workers really well,
and in creating the Skippy brand, he broke off from
this kind of this corporate overlord that he worked for
(33:14):
was keeping him under his thumb and then trying to
short change him. 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,
(33:35):
like if I had been born in nineteen seventy, if
I would have been raised on Skippy. But I came
along at the jiff Era really.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Yeah, he said, in your face, and they said, I
love peanut butter in my face, and he went, oh,
I got to think of a new comeback.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
I never heard that song, so I never really thought
about that.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
You didn't watch the television in the nineteen nineties, I did.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
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, gotcha. 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, how do you like being third banana?
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Because that's where you're headed.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
That same year, in nineteen fifty five, this is when
Rosefield sold Skippy to Best Foods. Procter and Gamble bought
Big Top Peanut from William T. Young, also of Kentucky,
and then they became JIFF and they held that brand
until two thou one, two thousand and two.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
Yeah, I did not know that, that's right, But wait,
two thousand and one, two thousand and two.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
It's when they sold the Smuckers.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Oh okay, but Jeff is still the number one brand.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Today, right as far as I know.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
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 nineteen eighty to today,
it's it's number one.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yeah, and they got a lot of 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.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Now, well, nuts is just one variety. Well, they all
have peanuts in them. Yeah, well they have. They have
a good almond butter too. Yeah, I can.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
I can get down with some almond butter.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
You know what, buddy, I'm going to buy you some.
When we see each other again, I'm going to be
brandishing a jar of Jeff almond butter for you.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
You know, it's not good.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
What is uh?
Speaker 1 (35:59):
You know you can't take peanut butter sandwiches into classrooms
anymore mm hmm, or at least at you know, at
my kids preschool. And of course you can't take anything
in there anymore because it's closed. But you have to
make you have to make it with what a cheese
I used to chew these things all the time. What
(36:19):
a baseball players chew? Sunflower seeds, chickpeas, sunflower butter.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
That's good too. I've had that. It's not bad.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Oh, I do not care for it, So.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
You don't like it? Huh? I think it's all right,
I guess wow. I really like basically any kind of butters,
including just butter. Butter.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Well, yeah, butter's great. But I just cannot get down
with the sunflower flower.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Yeah, some flower, No, it totally, and it's definitely there's
a taste of sunflower to it. Like you could have
no idea what you were eating and somebody gives it
to you and you would be like, that's sunflower butter,
isn't it.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
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 flower seeds
on our mouth. O.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yeah, I remember the sunflower trend quite well.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Remember that. And you would crack, Yeah, you would crack
them open with your teeth and you would spit out
the shell and then swallow the seed that you on
the seed and swallow it.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
So I would eat the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
You know, you didn't eat the shell.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Yeah, this is I would eat the whole thing. And
that I would smoke a whole cigar and in hal it.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Yeah, I got it all figured out. Would you really
eat the shells? Huh? I still do to this day, really, yeah.
And it's kind of dangerous because every once in a
while there's like one 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 while and be like I
think I'm bleeding.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Well, here's how I eat peanuts when I go to
the ball game. I stick the whole peanut in my
mouth really 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.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
And then between every bite you have to coat your
lips with lipbalm because it's so dried and cracked.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
By saltby it is pretty salty. But the only time
I eat peanuts in the shell like that is at
a baseball game.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
So now I do something similar, but it's with peanut
M and MS. I will 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.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Are you kidding?
Speaker 2 (38:42):
You?
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Are you serious?
Speaker 2 (38:43):
I'm dead serious. I can't remember the last time I
ate a peanut minem without doing that with every single one.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
All right, here's what I'll do sometimes with peanut M
and MS. Okay, we should just have a side gig
where we just talk about our stupid quirks. We do.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
It's part of the podcast I put.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
And sometimes I'll just mow on them like there's no tomorrow.
But sometimes I will, and this helps me eat fewer
of them, because I will pop one or two in
my mouth, and I'll just let them sit there and
marinate in my saliva. Oh yeah, 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.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Yep. I know, I know what you mean.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
You know that move Yep, it's really good.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
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 M and ms, I might go
crazy like that.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
All right, so let's should we take a break or
should we wait a second?
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah, let's do that. Let's take a break.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
And jog jo.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Shot shot.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
All right. So where we left off was Jeff was
killing it. You and I have very weird eating habits. Yeah,
and Jeff starts killing it. They start putting sugar and
molasses in there. Everyone else followed suit, and finally, in
the nineteen sixties, the FDA stood up and said, hold
on a minute, guys, this stuff you're calling peanut butter
(40:30):
is junk food. Now there's one leading brand. I'm not
going to name names. I think it was Jeff that
was only seventy five percent actual peanuts. He's like, so
you got to start putting ninety five percent peanuts in
the whole thing. The peanut butter lobby said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
How about eighty seven percent? And they said, we're the FDA,
(40:51):
we meet people in the middle. Let's settle on ninety
percent peanuts and peanut butter. And since nineteen seventy one
that's been the standard.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Yeah, I think like 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, ninety percent,
(41:19):
that's as low as we're going. Make sure that your
peanut butter has ninety percent peanuts. Good day to you, sir.
And that was that finally, and it became enforced in
nineteen seventy two, and still today there is a federal
legal definition for what constitutes peanut butter, and one of
the first things is it has to have ninety percent
(41:41):
peanuts in it.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
That's right, because that is still the standard. 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 know who says chunky, but it's
(42:06):
definitely crunchy.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Chunky. Yeah, that's like a type of Campbell soup.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
So crunchy can be larger than one sixteenth and I
guess I mean they're all about the same size. I'd
be curious to see if there are any kind of
half sized peanuts if it gets that chunky.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Oh yeah, like larger than a sixteenth of an inch, Yeah,
like a half of a peanut, people would be like,
it's too chunky. I can't take it.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Maybe, I mean that's like candy bar level.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
It is. It is so chuck. What you've just said
is the federal 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 Rosefield, who was the founder of Skippy. He actually
created chunky sorry, crunchy peanut butter.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
We both said crunchy, and now we're both saying chunky.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
I know it's kind of stuck in my head, but
he's the guy who if you like chunky peanut butter,
first of all, shame on you. But secondly, thank Joseph
Rosefield for that, because he came up with it, I
think in the fifties.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Yeah, like I said, I like it all. There is
not a kind of peanut butter that I won't eat.
I think it's all really good.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
So then I think also this kind of demonstrates just
how seriously Americans take peanut butter. The USDA goes on
to say, there are other qualities that make a peanut
butter either Grade A, Grade B or substandard peanut butter, and.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
It's my favorite.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
It's things like color. The color has to match certain
color samples that you can only obtain from a company
called Agtron Ink of Sparks, Nevada. This is in the
nineteen seventy two law that you have to write to
Agtron and say, can you please send me the peanut
butter colored standards because I need to make sure that
(43:54):
my peanut butter matches the USDA's standards for color of
peanut butter online.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Get with it while you're writing me a letter.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Right, That's that's a really good point. You email, or
you'd write back like, I don't know, can you please
send me the website URL? 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 five hundred calvin plus or minus
two hundred and fifty calvin or something equal to a
(44:26):
moderately partly cloudy day. That's that's the government's standard for
judging the color of peanut butter.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
All I can think of now is somebody writing a
handwritten letter to someone asking for a URL, someone with
a ballpoint pin spelling out https colon slash slash.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
I looked up agtron ink. They're still around and they
are on point man. They've been in business for I
think about a century. But they are all about like
food analysis. If you're a coffee roast or a barista
or something, you can take their online class. I think
it's online. It's like a day long class that like
really teaches you all, like the science behind the coffee
(45:10):
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
agtron Nink asking for their UURL and.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
They will send you a laminated sheet and a Manila envelope. Yeah, so,
if you're talking peanut butter. In the United States, the
about half of the edible use of peanuts is from
peanut butter. Obviously, peanut butter is and a ton of
It's one of my favorite parts of candy bars and
stuff like that. Totally, I'm a sucker for any peanut
(45:44):
butter ice creams, peanut butter candy bars. It's just I
can't get enough of that combination.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
I'm totally with you, buddy.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Which, by the way, Joseph Rosefield was the skippy guy,
was the guy who came up with that peanut butter
and chocolate combo before Reesus did. But the National Peanut
Board estimates that it takes about five hundred and forty
peanuts to make up one of those twelve ounce jars,
which is a lot of peanuts. That kind of surprised me.
It was more than I thought.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Yeah, sit there and shell peanuts until you reach five
hundred and forty individual peanuts, and you will have a
sudden appreciation for your panut butter.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
You know what I mean for sure. But of course
machines do that.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
But yeah, well, if it's artisan, no, somebody wearing like
a calico srong is doing it with by hand. In Vermont,
I do think Vermont people are like, yeah, I think
that's my conception. Prove me wrong, Vermont.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
So in two thousand and 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 peanut butter a little bit.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
In two thousand and 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.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
Well. I remember that, don't you. I remember both of them.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
The other one was in two thousand and seven, and
that was Salmonella and peter Pan and Great Value, both
owned by con Agra, and that got about six hundred
and change sick, but nobody died, luckily, but I remember
both of those. It was a big deal because peanut
butter is so ubiquitous.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
So there's also I didn't realize this until I started
researching it. There's something called affle detoxins. Have you heard
of them?
Speaker 1 (47:47):
I think I did back when all the stuff happened,
or maybe not, I have heard of it.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
So there's there's a mold called Aspergillis that grows on
peanuts because peanuts are grown underground, right, and the Aspergillis
can produce a toxin called afflotoxins. And apparently humans are
pretty much immune to its initial effects or its short
term effects, but we have no idea what happens if
(48:14):
you eat aflotoxins. You know, over the course of a lifetime,
you know what happens. And apparently there's studies of humans
that found that it's been linked to certain types of cancer,
potentially birth effects, cognitive disabilities, all sorts of horrible stuff.
(48:35):
And peanut butter producers say, well, we get at least
eighty nine percent of the aflatoxins out just by processing peanuts,
And you say, well, what about the other eleven percent,
And they're like, have some beetter pan and forget your troubles.
That's right. So there is like a real risk of
something bad happening to you, whether it's a poisoning or not.
(48:57):
But a lot of people are like, even if it's
pure peanut butter, it's still it's still not healthy for you.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
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 getting those peanuts a ground right
in front of your face.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
It's not terrible.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
You know. It's got a lot of nutrition. It's got
a lot of antioxidants. It's got we're talking, this is
one hundred grams of this stuff. You've got forty five
percent RDA of vitamin E, sixty seven percent of vitamin
B three, sixteen seven percent I'm sorry, seventy three percent
of manganese, and thirty nine percent of magnesium. So it's
(49:40):
got a lot of good stuff in there. It's got
a lot of calories too, that's about six hundred calories
eating one hundred grams worth. But if it's you know,
I mean that's one hundred grams is a lot.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
No, it is a tremendous amount. 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 monounsaturated fat is the kind
that's good for your heart. It's that saturated stuff that
(50:13):
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.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
That's right, It's just great.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
It's basically just really calorie dents. 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 a non nutritious food. It's actually pretty nutritious.
It's just calorie dents.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
Right, And if you're trying to lose weight, and you
opt for a spoonful of peanut butter and honey rather
than a pint of bin and Jerri's, then you're definitely
doing the right thing.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
For sure, man, for sure. One thing though, that has,
you know, strikes fear in 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. Is this
the rise 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
(51:15):
in two thousand and eight, and they found that between
nineteen ninety seven and two thousand and eight, in this
national survey of fifty three hundred homes, that the self
reported peanut allergies went from zero point four percent of
respondents to one point four percent of respondents, which is
(51:36):
one point four percent. Doesn't sound like a lot, but
that's a huge increase between 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.
(51:59):
That's not necessary an increase in actual peanut allergies, which
is really strange and bizarre to think of, if that's correct.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Yeah, and I have seen the trend of oral immunotherapy
like feeding your very small child and your baby peanuts
to a little bit at a time to ensure or
hopefully ensure that they won't be stricken with the worst
food allergy of all. It's true, the peanut allergy. And
there was a study in Israel that had guidelines for
(52:31):
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 happened, and.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
Make them chew, and then hit them with the lipball.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
Yeah, hit them with that. Hit them with the lipball.
Speaker 2 (52:45):
So one last thing, chuck and I couldn't find a
place to put it, but it has to be said.
There is a phobia called arak aboot to aphobia iraka
bo aphobia. Yeah, I think I nailed it that last time, okay,
And it is.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
Is that for me? Is that my cue? Yes, it's
hard to tell because you're not kicking me under the table.
Speaker 2 (53:09):
I'm not like doing that series of blinks.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
That is the fear peanut butter are 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 going to dislodge and go right down your throat.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
That's right, just like John Harvey Kellogg.
Speaker 1 (53:27):
Foresaw your little whole milk and you're all set.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
Nice man, or some cool whip. Don't forget the cool whip.
Speaker 1 (53:33):
I gotta try that.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
That's I don't know if you should try that. Like,
I think I gained ten pounds in a month just
after I discovered that it's it's not good for you, man.
Speaker 1 (53:42):
Yeah, I can't wait. Cool whip doesn't last long on
our house. We can't keep it here. It's just like
it's really hard not to just sort of, oh, I'll
just have a little spoonful every now and.
Speaker 2 (53:51):
Then, right and then where did it go? Yeah, it's
like your hair is stuck to your forehead because you've
put your whole face in the tub.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
So good, and it's good frozen too. I don't know
if you ever tried that.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
Yeah, I've tried it both ways, but if you do
want to try, it's about it's about half and half
peanut butter. Cool person, grainful.
Speaker 1 (54:09):
I'll give it a shot if I'm ever allowed to
go to the grocery store again.
Speaker 2 (54:11):
Yeah right, Okay, Well I think that's it then for
peanut butter unless you have anything else.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Got nothing else?
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Okay, Well since we said we have nothing else, that
means it's time for those who are male.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
I'm going to call this early listener that came back
as an adult love these hey guys last year? 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?
(54:46):
And a need for an educational podcast on my long
drives to Blacksburg, Virginia from the Tidewater area of Virginia.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
I think they got hit by the affle a toxin.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
I think he maybe I don't know what he. When
I first started listening, I was in middle school and
I always loved trivia, and your podcast helped me annoy
other students with random facts about twin kis and Florid.
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
(55:19):
through electrical engineering and also helped me earn free beer
at trivia nights because of my tendency to remember obscure knowledge.
I even made a friend through the podcast listener Lucas.
I take it that's just Lucas.
Speaker 2 (55:36):
Listener is not his first name, I hope.
Speaker 1 (55:38):
So he was listening to your podcast while driving his
bus and I recognize the familiar voices. So I just
wanted to say thanks, guys, and that is from listener Daniel,
So maybe that's how they met. They had the same
first name, right.
Speaker 2 (55:52):
Like, I never thought I would have a brother, but
now I do. Daniel and Lucas together. Listener, you got anything.
Speaker 1 (56:00):
Else, now I got nothing at all.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
Well, if you want to be like listener Daniel and
let us know how long you've been listening, we want
to hear from you. 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, the gesture of early feeding at peanuts and
sending it all to stuff podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (56:26):
You Know Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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