Which Peanut Butter is Best?
IT’S PEANUT BUTTER TASTE TEST TIME! (If you don’t get that reference, please click here… Sorry, no baseball bat.)
There is probably some research on this but our guess is that peanut butter is like car brands, and everyone has a vehement brand preference. Before this test, we asked if our testers had a favorite brand of peanut butter. Not only did people have a favorite, they were adamant that theirs was the best, and would win!
A lot of brands were mentioned during this pre-test questionnaire. A couple people agreed on one brand, and they were almost fanatic about it. Spoiler, it did end up winning. Interestingly, there was one person that was extremely fanatic about a different brand, and had stories about how much they buy a month and eat a day. And how they put it on everything. They keep it in the fridge and start their day with a spoonful of it… It came in second to last, and they ranked it in the middle.
But that’s why we do The Food Showdown, so we can make informed purchasing decisions.
FYI, that person who didn’t even rank their “favorite” peanut butter in first place said they were going to change the brand they buy. They saw the light!
Contenders:
The brands in the peanut butter taste test are listed below with their price per ounce, and listed in order of most expensive to least expensive.
Organizing the Peanut Butter Taste Test
All brands are creamy. We figured it’s like cheese pizza, if you like it without the extra (in this case: peanuts, in pizza’s case: toppings), you’re going to like it with the extra.
We had various ways for people to eat their peanut butter: celery, pretzel sticks, and spoons. Most people just ended up using a spoon.
To avoid the naturals from separating, and therefore clueing in our panelists, we thoroughly mixed each brand in a food processor before placing in identical bowls. This is actually an awesome hack for anyone who loves natural peanut butter but doesn’t want to deal with the annoying oil separation.
The best part is, it stays mixed! We had jars of peanut butter left over after this showdown, and all the naturals stayed mixed for as long as it took us to eat them all.
To see how we keep all tests unbiased, click here.
Interesting fact:
Before I get into the results, I want to point out what makes peanut butter natural or not. Most peanut butters are ground up peanuts and salt, and maybe a type of oil. Smuckers Natural, O Organics, and Kirkland Organic do not have added oil, and are just peanuts and salt. The last two being sea salt. The rest have oil, but Skippy Natural has palm oil, making them able to claim they are natural. The rest use hydrogenated vegetable oil, making them not natural.
Palm oil is apparently better for you, but is not harvested sustainably at all. (source) And hydrogenated anything is bad for you. (source) So you basically get to choose to harm yourself or harm the world. Yippee! Or you can go the truly natural route of just peanuts and salt.
Cause we all know there’s no way you won’t choose peanut butter… it’s delicious!
So who won?
PEANUT BUTTER TASTE TEST RESULTS
1 – Jif
2 – Smucker’s Natural
3 – Skippy
4 – Safeway Signature Select
5 – Skippy Natural
6 – O Organics
7 – Kirkland Organic
Interesting takeaways:
Jif is the brand that most people ranked as their favorite, and is the only brand that adds an extra ingredient. No, it’s not love, but rather Molasses. It’s low on the ingredient list, but apparently it makes a difference. As Jif won handedly.
Of the 3 brands that were just peanuts and salt, Smuckers Natural took second, overall! (The rest were in the last 2 places) Maybe you don’t have to choose to harm the world after all.
Once again, more expensive doesn’t always mean better. The top 4 slots held the top 3 cheapest brands!
For a food that has almost the exact same ingredients, we were all surprised at how different the flavors are in each brand. Not the first time that’s happened, and probably won’t be the last.
This has completely changed our buying habits, as we almost exclusively buy Jif now. (The exception is if the natural is on sale.)
There are so many different brands of peanut butter! Let us know in the comments if you agree, and what brands we missed. Enjoy!
Well, duh. Molasses is sugar. People love sugar.
True, but they all have sugar. JIF was just the only one to use it in molasses form. Thank for checking out the post! (and sorry for the slow reply, your comment got put into spam.)