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#3 Peanut Butter

More acres are devoted to growing peanuts in the U.S. than to any fruit, any vegetable, or any nut (peanuts are legumes, like beans or peas). More than 99% of these acres are conventional¹⁶. Peanut butter is the leading use of all these acres of peanuts¹⁷.

I loved peanuts and peanut butter when I was a kid. Baseball games, circuses, favorite sandwiches made with love by my mom… but somewhere along the way, about the time peanut allergies started increasing, I started thinking of peanut butter as an over-sweetened, unhealthy, high fat food. And if you look at the ingredients on a jar of conventional peanut butter, it's not hard to see why. In addition to peanuts, the next ingredient may well be corn syrup, then sugar. You might also find partially hydrogenated and/or fully hydrogenated fats, mono- and diglycerides, the pesticides ferric orthophosphate¹⁸ and copper sulfate¹⁹, and a long list of other ingredients.

Organic peanut butter will have a short, natural ingredient list. It might contain only organic dry roasted peanuts, perhaps with a pinch of salt. Peanuts are a good source of heart-healthy²⁰ mono-unsaturated fats, protein, vitamin E, niacin, and folate²¹. Peanuts are packed with antioxidants, on par with blackberries (and roasting peanuts raises the antioxidant levels) ²². And they even contain resveratrol (something special we'll talk about on page xx). Organic peanut butter can be a good picture of something convenient made naturally from whole foods.

Back on the farm, peanuts start out as above-ground flowers. Then the stalks bend over, and burrow under the ground, where the peanut matures. Molds can grow on peanuts during growth and storage, so fungicide use on peanuts is very common (on strawberries and grapes too). Fungicides can be quite toxic and disrupt endocrine systems. A recent study suggests that in pregnant animals, even one-time exposure to certain fungicides may affect several future generations²³.

Organic farming methods, including crop rotation, cover crops, and tillage, tend to result in more bio-diverse soil and less mold and mold toxins than does spraying fungicides²⁴. I suspect organic growing and processing would result in fewer allergies as well.

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