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How Peanut Butter Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know a production of my
0:03
Speaker 1: heart radios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to peanut
0:12
Speaker 1: butter jelly time. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. We haven't seen
0:16
Speaker 1: Jerry in a while. If you have seen Jerry, please
0:19
Speaker 1: tell her to call home. Uh. And this is stuff
0:21
Speaker 1: you should know. Yeah, Jerry, she snata in a smoke
0:26
Speaker 1: signal that said send to me. So she did, she did,
0:31
Speaker 1: and we send some on donkey back in that general janction.
0:35
Speaker 1: Are you peanut butter or jelly in this scenario? I
0:39
Speaker 1: want to be peanut buttered. You always make me be jelly. Well,
0:43
Speaker 1: I think we should level set here at the beginning,
0:46
Speaker 1: and let's talk about if you like peanut butter, which
0:49
Speaker 1: is your favorite? And then what you like, how do
0:51
Speaker 1: you utilize it? Okay, my name is Josh C. And
0:55
Speaker 1: I love peanut butter. Okay, almost only smooth. I will
1:00
Speaker 1: eat chunky if the if civilization has collapsed and that's
1:04
Speaker 1: all I can find, I eat it anyway, shape or form.
1:10
Speaker 1: Sometimes just peanut butter on a spoon. Sometimes peanut butter
1:13
Speaker 1: and a spoon with a little divit made with my
1:15
Speaker 1: tongue filled with local honey. Um. If you want to
1:18
Speaker 1: get tubby really fast. Let me introduce you to the
1:20
Speaker 1: wonder that is a spoonful of peanut butter scooped in
1:24
Speaker 1: some cool whip. Um. But really, any kind of peanut
1:28
Speaker 1: butter anytime, I will eat it. And I've noticed that
1:31
Speaker 1: once I reached my forties, peanut butter sticks around me
1:35
Speaker 1: a lot more than it used to. So I'm having
1:37
Speaker 1: a real struggle with it. Thank you for listening. Uh.
1:41
Speaker 1: And do you want to buzz market your favorite brand? Um?
1:44
Speaker 1: We use this JIF natural that's like um uh, it's
1:48
Speaker 1: liking a brown container and I like it so much.
1:52
Speaker 1: I've never I've purposely never looked at the label because
1:56
Speaker 1: I don't want to know how natural it is. Um.
1:58
Speaker 1: But my all time favorite is Reese's peanut butter. Like
2:02
Speaker 1: have you had it you mean in the jar? Yes? Yes,
2:07
Speaker 1: Oh it's so good. I think I've had it once.
2:09
Speaker 1: But I was raised on Jeff, Now go well, I
2:13
Speaker 1: was raised on whatever the gigantic gallon tub is that
2:16
Speaker 1: you used to get indies. Yeah, I don't remember. I
2:20
Speaker 1: don't think it was any of those name brands. Um. Now,
2:24
Speaker 1: I mean I love peanut butter. It's one of my
2:26
Speaker 1: favorite things in the world. Uh, and I will go
2:30
Speaker 1: crunchy or smooth, no matter. I love them both. I
2:35
Speaker 1: also like it with honey. Um. I like it. And
2:38
Speaker 1: I don't do this much obviously because it's just I'm
2:41
Speaker 1: not nineteen years old, but a peanut butter and mayonnaise
2:44
Speaker 1: sandwich is one of the best things in the world.
2:46
Speaker 1: You know, I've never had that, is it? Is it good? Really?
2:50
Speaker 1: Do you have any QUEPI? Yes, peanut butter and cupe sammy, Okay,
2:55
Speaker 1: so half and half or more peanut butter than mayo
2:58
Speaker 1: or what it's kind of your am. I definitely don't
3:00
Speaker 1: go light on the mayo because you've gotta have that tang. Uh.
3:04
Speaker 1: Peanut butter and marshmallow fluff I used to eat when
3:06
Speaker 1: I was a kid stuff fluff or nutter and um.
3:10
Speaker 1: Now I don't eat the sugary hydrogenated types. Um. I
3:15
Speaker 1: either have one of the sort of artisan natural kinds
3:18
Speaker 1: you have to mix up or just did cab Farmers
3:22
Speaker 1: Market grinds the peanuts right in front of your face
3:24
Speaker 1: into a tub and and it to you right in
3:26
Speaker 1: front of your face, and it says beat it. You
3:29
Speaker 1: can't have any of this, so that's just peanuts obviously. Yeah,
3:33
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit of salt. Do they had any salders?
3:35
Speaker 1: They're really just peanuts. It's just peanuts. I wonder if
3:38
Speaker 1: they salt the peanuts when they roast them thing, because
3:40
Speaker 1: I've always seen like peanuts with just a little bit
3:43
Speaker 1: of salt, like you can't have peanut butter any other way.
3:45
Speaker 1: But maybe maybe they figured out they cracked the code. Well,
3:49
Speaker 1: I mean they may be salted and roasted. I have
3:51
Speaker 1: no idea about the peanut, but it's good. It's all good.
3:55
Speaker 1: But I have to mix, you know. I gotta put
3:57
Speaker 1: a little bit of honey in there, maybe a little
3:59
Speaker 1: bit of a gabba to give it a little bit
4:00
Speaker 1: of a sweet. Oh that's a good idea. Yeah, I
4:03
Speaker 1: was gonna ask you. I've not had any artisan stuff
4:05
Speaker 1: and I did a little research and found a couple
4:07
Speaker 1: I want to try um, and I didn't know, like
4:11
Speaker 1: is it is it just straight up adult kind of
4:13
Speaker 1: stuff where you're like, oh, that's really good, but you're
4:15
Speaker 1: wishing that you had like the Nasty Big three brand instead. Well,
4:20
Speaker 1: I mean, if you don't add any sweet nerve, it's
4:23
Speaker 1: it's not nearly as good as you know, but I
4:26
Speaker 1: think the naturals are all kind of the same as
4:29
Speaker 1: far as sweetness level. Yeah, the best I could discern
4:32
Speaker 1: is that if you're paying for artisan craft peanut butter,
4:35
Speaker 1: and buddy you're paying, you're like supposedly to have, you know,
4:41
Speaker 1: depending on the kind of peanuts that are chosen, the
4:43
Speaker 1: variety of peanuts, um, the way that it's roasted, almost
4:47
Speaker 1: like a coffee or a wine or something like that,
4:49
Speaker 1: there's like a sophisticated palette or tear war that you
4:53
Speaker 1: really have to pay attention to. That to me is
4:55
Speaker 1: kind of like the opposite of what peanut butter is
4:57
Speaker 1: supposed to be. It's supposed to just be like this dumb,
5:00
Speaker 1: messy thing where you know, your hair is totally normal,
5:02
Speaker 1: and you start eating the peanut butter and you suddenly
5:04
Speaker 1: have like a cowlick and you're wearing a striped shirt
5:06
Speaker 1: that shows your gut kind of thing. You know, like
5:09
Speaker 1: you just regress an age. But I also get wanting
5:12
Speaker 1: to enjoy peanut butter in a healthy way, because it
5:15
Speaker 1: is surprisingly from from what I saw, it is healthier
5:18
Speaker 1: than you would suspect if done right. Yes, not not
5:23
Speaker 1: a big glob of Peter pan with cuping cuping mayonnaise
5:28
Speaker 1: and potato chips smashed in between white bread. Yes, yeah,
5:32
Speaker 1: I'm I'm hungry now I am too. I already had
5:35
Speaker 1: some peanut butter this morning, so I'm good to go.
5:37
Speaker 1: But this thing, this is like the Yawning episode where
5:40
Speaker 1: I kept yawning doing research. This is I just wanted
5:43
Speaker 1: peanut butter the whole time. Well, peanut butter for me,
5:45
Speaker 1: and that has now become my uh in my since January,
5:49
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to lose some weight, so that's become
5:52
Speaker 1: my sweet treat at the end of the night instead
5:54
Speaker 1: of going and getting ice cream, Just like a spoonful
5:58
Speaker 1: of peanut butter and honey, and that'll satiate that desire.
6:02
Speaker 1: I haven't seen you in a while. How's it going.
6:04
Speaker 1: That's good. I mean I'm down twenty since January, but
6:08
Speaker 1: really leveled off the past month. Congratulations, dude, that is
6:12
Speaker 1: really impressive. Just forty more to go, man, No, that's
6:16
Speaker 1: really great, man, Just just yeah, yeah, it does plateau,
6:19
Speaker 1: but it picks up again. Don't want plateaus because of
6:24
Speaker 1: quarantine alcoholism. Oh well, I was going to ask, because
6:26
Speaker 1: I'm finding that that quarantining has made things like we
6:31
Speaker 1: you know, we have food and everything, but we're we're
6:34
Speaker 1: eating it less for some reason rather than the opposite,
6:37
Speaker 1: which both you, me and I were really concerned was
6:40
Speaker 1: going to be the way it went. Um, are you
6:42
Speaker 1: finding it easier to keep up with food or harder?
6:46
Speaker 1: Easier because I'm cooking a lot um cheese and buzz
6:49
Speaker 1: marketing again. But you know, I'm just having one of
6:51
Speaker 1: those Mike's Mighty Goods for lunch which is very low
6:53
Speaker 1: in calories. Yeah, it's really good to uh, and you know,
6:56
Speaker 1: I'm just tracking the calories and it's it's alcohol that's
7:01
Speaker 1: the problem. Right now, I got you. Yeah, I've been
7:03
Speaker 1: doing one or two nights a week tops, um, and
7:06
Speaker 1: then a couple of nights. I've been pretty good now
7:08
Speaker 1: that I think about it. It's good. Yeah, because this
7:11
Speaker 1: has been fairly stressful, but I haven't been stressed eating
7:13
Speaker 1: too much. So okay, anyway, peanut butter here to me Chuck.
7:19
Speaker 1: Early on, we happened upon the fact of the podcast.
7:21
Speaker 1: If you ask me, this is very jarring, if you'll
7:25
Speaker 1: forgive the pun, that peanut butter outside of the United States,
7:30
Speaker 1: in a lot of different countries is looked upon as
7:33
Speaker 1: very weird and gross in much the same way that
7:37
Speaker 1: we Americans tend to think of like vegemite. People like
7:41
Speaker 1: the British, Chinese other countries do not think peanut butter
7:47
Speaker 1: is particularly good. They think it's a little nasty. Um,
7:50
Speaker 1: And that just blew me away to read that. Yeah,
7:54
Speaker 1: I'd want to talk to some people before I let
7:57
Speaker 1: some internet website tell me that people think peanut butter
7:59
Speaker 1: screw us, some some website push your brain around. Yeah,
8:04
Speaker 1: I'd like to talk to some folks about that. But
8:06
Speaker 1: at the very least, even if they don't think it's gross,
8:08
Speaker 1: it it is a an all American thing, Like even
8:12
Speaker 1: countries that do enjoy it. I've read that Australia actually
8:15
Speaker 1: likes it a lot. Um. It's an American concoction so
8:20
Speaker 1: much so that like it might be the most American
8:22
Speaker 1: concoction there is, to tell you the truth. Yeah, I
8:25
Speaker 1: mean you make a good point here. You put this
8:27
Speaker 1: stuff together that mac and cheese came from Europe, hot
8:30
Speaker 1: dogs came from Europe. Uh, sort of Hamburgers, even though
8:34
Speaker 1: I would argue that the hamburgers we know it is
8:37
Speaker 1: is pretty American, but peanut butter just us as far
8:42
Speaker 1: as modern times go, Yeah, I think that the Inca
8:45
Speaker 1: in the fifteenth century used to grind peanuts into a
8:48
Speaker 1: paste and then that was it until the nineteenth century
8:53
Speaker 1: when one of our buddies, who's gonna make a cameo
8:56
Speaker 1: later um, got his hands on the idea. But yeah,
8:59
Speaker 1: it was an American invention, except it was actually Canadian,
9:03
Speaker 1: as we'll see. But for for the most part, people
9:05
Speaker 1: think of it as all American. Um. And to talk
9:08
Speaker 1: about peanut butter, Chuck, we kind of have to talk
9:11
Speaker 1: about peanuts. There's really no way around it. Believe me,
9:14
Speaker 1: I don't want to, but we have to. I think
9:17
Speaker 1: you mean Goober's. Have you ever heard somebody outside of
9:22
Speaker 1: TV call them that? Not really, but I knew it
9:26
Speaker 1: was a thing, but I don't. It's not in the
9:28
Speaker 1: just daily nomenclature of my crowd, but it is. It's
9:32
Speaker 1: supposedly like a Southern and I guess an antiquated Southern
9:35
Speaker 1: word for peanut, a goober or goober. P Yeah, I've
9:39
Speaker 1: heard goober and that old song about the raisinets goober, Well, goober's.
9:43
Speaker 1: It's also a candy, right, Yeah, And there's smuckers goobers,
9:46
Speaker 1: which is peanut, butter and jelly mixed together in a jar. M.
9:51
Speaker 1: It's actually good, is it? Yeah? Even as a kid,
9:55
Speaker 1: I was like, this is gonna be gross, and then
9:56
Speaker 1: I tried. I was like, not bad, not bad. Smuckers.
9:59
Speaker 1: See pretty discerning with my jams and jellies. So that's
10:03
Speaker 1: for another day. Though you would not like this, I
10:06
Speaker 1: probably would. You would like suckers, And if you're at
10:08
Speaker 1: all discerning, you would not like it. Alright. So peanuts
10:12
Speaker 1: is a it's a legume. It's also called a ground
10:16
Speaker 1: nut or an earth nut, and just like a little
10:19
Speaker 1: or a pea, it is a little lagum and not
10:21
Speaker 1: a nut. No, I'm a big fan of peanuts though
10:24
Speaker 1: I like to eat them pretty much anyway. You can
10:26
Speaker 1: slice it from boiled too, straight up, raw out of
10:30
Speaker 1: the shell um like honey, roasted, salted and roasted, and
10:35
Speaker 1: certainly in peanut butter. So Momo and I go and
10:39
Speaker 1: visit squirrels whenever we can when we go on walks,
10:42
Speaker 1: and we always take peanuts, and I read you're supposed
10:44
Speaker 1: to take roasted unsalted peanuts, so we get like big
10:47
Speaker 1: bags of those, and if there's no squirrels out, I
10:50
Speaker 1: get to eat all peanuts. Oh yeah, yeah, mo will
10:53
Speaker 1: give me a look like does are not for you?
10:56
Speaker 1: But they usually end up in my tummy. Anyway, have
10:59
Speaker 1: you ever seen a squirrel will stick one of those
11:00
Speaker 1: in his mouth sideways are cute? Yeah, we will like
11:05
Speaker 1: all shell them and then throw like the actual peanut
11:08
Speaker 1: in the squirrel. Somehow we'll know that there's supposed to
11:10
Speaker 1: be another one coming because they'll very they'll frequently put
11:13
Speaker 1: one in his cheek and then like be like, okay,
11:16
Speaker 1: toss me the other one. Then I'll take that run
11:18
Speaker 1: off and like eat it with his two little hands.
11:20
Speaker 1: It's really adorable, right, Or they might stick around to
11:23
Speaker 1: see if it's one of the rare three bangers, which
11:27
Speaker 1: is just that's a good squirrel day right there. All right,
11:30
Speaker 1: So these things are lagoons, and we think they originated
11:33
Speaker 1: in South America. You mentioned Peru, even though we cannot
11:38
Speaker 1: prove that through the fossil record, but they have found
11:41
Speaker 1: evidence in the archaeological um culture from Peru from about
11:46
Speaker 1: seventy years ago. And it was sort of one of
11:49
Speaker 1: these things where they found um the fact that they
11:52
Speaker 1: were farming this stuff and then when you see it
11:54
Speaker 1: in like artwork and pottery and stuff like that. Then
11:57
Speaker 1: you know it's sort of a thing. Yeah, right, the
12:00
Speaker 1: peanut has arrived. When it shows up on pottery, you
12:03
Speaker 1: know they've also found him, I guess, entombed with mummies
12:07
Speaker 1: from the Inca and the Aztecs. Um which makes sense
12:11
Speaker 1: because when the uh conquistadors arrived, the Spanish and the
12:15
Speaker 1: Portuguese to South America and Central America, they found peanuts
12:19
Speaker 1: being grown as far north as Mexico, but I think
12:22
Speaker 1: the first place they encountered them was actually in the
12:25
Speaker 1: Caribbean um and they took him back with with them.
12:28
Speaker 1: They took him to Spain, and Spain passed him along
12:30
Speaker 1: to the rest of Europe and the Philippines and China.
12:33
Speaker 1: Um the Portuguese took it back to again to Europe,
12:37
Speaker 1: but also to India and Africa, and peanuts started to
12:41
Speaker 1: be farmed all over the world, like the world loves peanuts,
12:44
Speaker 1: is just not necessarily peanut butter that they're crazy about.
12:47
Speaker 1: And then, in a really kind of weird, surprising twist,
12:50
Speaker 1: the peanuts were re exported back to the America's from
12:55
Speaker 1: Africa as part of the West African slave trade. And
12:59
Speaker 1: actually that goober that Southern word goober they think comes
13:03
Speaker 1: from a Congolese word or congo with a K word
13:07
Speaker 1: in Guba. Yeah, pretty surprising, sure, goober and Guba close enough. Yeah,
13:13
Speaker 1: But to think like the peanut, you think of the
13:16
Speaker 1: peanut is as just American as it comes, and then
13:19
Speaker 1: even as Georgia as it comes. But the idea that
13:22
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have been here had it not been for
13:24
Speaker 1: the importation of African slaves that reintroduced the peanut to
13:28
Speaker 1: the America's that's a pretty circuitous and weird route for
13:31
Speaker 1: it to take. Yeah, and Africa still grows about of
13:35
Speaker 1: the peanuts in the world. Weird just below that at
13:38
Speaker 1: about here in the States. And it took all the
13:42
Speaker 1: way to eighteen forty two that we started growing them
13:45
Speaker 1: commercially in the US. UH in Virginia's where it first
13:49
Speaker 1: started for oil and food and UH to substitute out
13:52
Speaker 1: for cocoa. And it wasn't it just wasn't like a
13:56
Speaker 1: It was kind of like for people that didn't have
13:58
Speaker 1: the means to buy something better or maybe feed it
14:01
Speaker 1: to your animals or something like that. Yeah, it was
14:03
Speaker 1: good for livestock and the poverty stricken basically was who
14:07
Speaker 1: were expected to eat peanuts at the time. That's right.
14:11
Speaker 1: It's just like like lobster. Have you ever read Considered
14:14
Speaker 1: the Lobster? That? Um? Wow, man, I want to say
14:19
Speaker 1: David Lee Roth so bad, but I know it's not
14:21
Speaker 1: his name at all. Who wrote Consider the Lobster? I've
14:25
Speaker 1: never heard of that. But who who was end of
14:29
Speaker 1: tour about that movie of David Foster Wallace? Sure? Um,
14:34
Speaker 1: he wrote this really great magazine article once called Consider
14:37
Speaker 1: the Consider the Lobster. It's good, but in it he
14:40
Speaker 1: explains that it used to be considered a food fit
14:43
Speaker 1: only for the poor. Basically, I guess peanuts were considered
14:46
Speaker 1: the same. That's right. Uh, you know they were uh
14:51
Speaker 1: c spiders, yeah, or the cockroaches of the sea. It
14:57
Speaker 1: is kind of gross when you think of it like that.
14:59
Speaker 1: In apparent only, there was a law that said that, um,
15:03
Speaker 1: you could only feed so much lobster to patients and
15:06
Speaker 1: mental asylums at the time, or else it became abusive. Wow. Yeah,
15:11
Speaker 1: they didn't know what did they try him on a
15:12
Speaker 1: hot dog bun with mayonnaise. So one of the reasons
15:15
Speaker 1: why the peanut was viewed as such a lowly crop
15:19
Speaker 1: was that it was again it was used for oil
15:22
Speaker 1: and um, which I mean this wasn't necessarily just cooking oil.
15:25
Speaker 1: They would use it to lubricate machinery, that kind of stuff.
15:28
Speaker 1: So the idea of eating the same thing that your
15:30
Speaker 1: machinery lube came from, it was probably not super appetizing.
15:35
Speaker 1: But it was also like you would get just basically
15:37
Speaker 1: trash when you got a bag of peanuts, because there
15:40
Speaker 1: was no easy way to harvest it, stem them, clean them,
15:44
Speaker 1: and prepare them for basically general consumption. Which so again
15:49
Speaker 1: you could just dump it into a trough and feeded
15:51
Speaker 1: to your livestock, or you could spend a lot of
15:53
Speaker 1: time trying to separate it, or you could just be like,
15:55
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not messing with this. And for a
15:57
Speaker 1: long time they didn't mess with it. Actually, Yeah, when
16:00
Speaker 1: the Civil War happened, the Union soldiers got their hands
16:03
Speaker 1: on some of our southern peanuts and they said these
16:05
Speaker 1: are delicious, and both armies ate a lot of peanuts.
16:09
Speaker 1: And then when the circus rolled around with P. T.
16:12
Speaker 1: Barnum Hugh Jackman, they started selling peanuts there hot roasted peanuts,
16:17
Speaker 1: and especially in the cheap seats, they become known as
16:20
Speaker 1: the pet peanut gallery, and that's where that phrase came
16:22
Speaker 1: came from, which is kind of interesting. Yeah, because apparently
16:25
Speaker 1: if they didn't like what they saw, they would toss
16:27
Speaker 1: their peanuts there that they were eating at the stage.
16:30
Speaker 1: So that's where peanut gallery came from. Yeah, and then
16:33
Speaker 1: you've got them on the street corners, you've got them
16:35
Speaker 1: at baseball games. Peanuts are starting to get a little
16:39
Speaker 1: traction as a snack, but they were still not. Uh,
16:42
Speaker 1: it was still hard to get like a really good
16:44
Speaker 1: quality peanuts because, like you said, the way they were
16:47
Speaker 1: being harvested at the time by hands, it was just
16:50
Speaker 1: tough to do. And then so too African Americans. UM
16:56
Speaker 1: around the turn of the last century, UM stepped up
17:00
Speaker 1: and basically said, we're going to make the peanut what
17:03
Speaker 1: it is today. So one obviously was George Washington Carver,
17:07
Speaker 1: who's known as basically the father of the peanut UM,
17:10
Speaker 1: who actually, contrary to popular belief, did not invent peanut butter,
17:14
Speaker 1: but he did come up with more than three different
17:17
Speaker 1: ways to use the peanut. And I never realized like
17:19
Speaker 1: why he was so bonkers for peanuts, but one of
17:22
Speaker 1: the reasons he was trying to make the peanut established
17:25
Speaker 1: it as a prominent crop was because the South had
17:28
Speaker 1: depleted its soil so badly from growing cotton for so long.
17:33
Speaker 1: And then you know, at the worst of this um
17:36
Speaker 1: there was a bowl weevil outbreak that just ruined the
17:40
Speaker 1: rest of the cotton crops. So the South really needed
17:42
Speaker 1: something to replace cotton. And George Washington Carver helped introduce
17:46
Speaker 1: and popularized peanuts and say, not only can you eat
17:50
Speaker 1: these things, look at all this other stuff you can
17:52
Speaker 1: make out of them. That's right. Uh. And there was
17:54
Speaker 1: another guy around the same time named Ben Hicks, Mr.
17:57
Speaker 1: Benjamin Hicks. He was from Virginia and which we already
18:01
Speaker 1: talked about being a big peanut state. And he invented
18:04
Speaker 1: a gas powered machine for cleaning and stemming these things.
18:08
Speaker 1: He got it patented, Uh, like a lot of well
18:11
Speaker 1: it still goes on, I guess with with a little
18:13
Speaker 1: guy and their patents. Um big farm came around and
18:17
Speaker 1: a farm equipment company challenged him. He actually had to
18:21
Speaker 1: go to court, but one the case in nineteen o one,
18:24
Speaker 1: and this picker was a big, big deal in modernizing
18:28
Speaker 1: peanut farming, and all of a sudden you could get
18:31
Speaker 1: really good peanuts a lot quicker doesn't take as many
18:34
Speaker 1: hands or are man hours or person hours, and the
18:39
Speaker 1: demand for peanuts, for oil for eating them, and peanut
18:42
Speaker 1: butter and candy all just kind of went through the
18:44
Speaker 1: roof at that point. Yeah. Yeah, because you could you
18:47
Speaker 1: could get your hands on good peanuts. They were widely
18:50
Speaker 1: available and they were just delicious. Everyone saw finally how
18:54
Speaker 1: great peanuts are, but not peanut butter yet. And I proposed, Charles,
18:58
Speaker 1: did we take a break and then come back really
19:01
Speaker 1: dig into the peanut butter. Let's do it, okay, in
19:08
Speaker 1: things and choosh and shock, so okay. So, like I said,
19:34
Speaker 1: the INCA probably had us beat as far as the
19:37
Speaker 1: invention of peanut butter went um. But it was actually
19:43
Speaker 1: a Canadian who they think was probably the actual inventor
19:48
Speaker 1: of modern peanut butter, a guy who I had never
19:51
Speaker 1: heard of before. His name was Marcellus Gilmore Edson Wallace.
19:57
Speaker 1: I'm kidding, by the last part. It was just that
19:59
Speaker 1: was going Marcellus Gilbore Edson. You just can't say the
20:03
Speaker 1: name Marcellis and not followed up with Wallace somewhere. You know.
20:06
Speaker 1: It's it really has become like peanut butter and jelly.
20:10
Speaker 1: So he patented a paste made of peanuts in four,
20:15
Speaker 1: which was described by him and his patent as uh
20:19
Speaker 1: at room temperature, having a consistency like that of butter, lard,
20:22
Speaker 1: or ointment. It sounds gross, but when you think about
20:27
Speaker 1: peanut butter, that's kind of about right. He added sugar
20:31
Speaker 1: to stabilize it a little bit, and this was kind
20:34
Speaker 1: of like the first modern peanut butter that we think of.
20:37
Speaker 1: His peanut butter. It's sold for about six cents a pound,
20:39
Speaker 1: which is pretty good price. Yeah, and if you from
20:43
Speaker 1: what I can tell just reading about it, if you
20:45
Speaker 1: tried it today, you'd be like, yeah, it's peanut butter,
20:47
Speaker 1: Whereas if you tried some of the other stuff, you'd
20:50
Speaker 1: be like, oh, yeah, that's the artisan peanut butter. It's punished, yeah,
20:54
Speaker 1: And the other stuff was first developed. So it's interesting
20:57
Speaker 1: to me that there's in the first try, right out
21:02
Speaker 1: of the gate, the guy who invents peanut butter basically
21:04
Speaker 1: invents the modern version of it, and then it takes
21:07
Speaker 1: a big step backwards or sideways, I guess you can say,
21:10
Speaker 1: depending on your viewpoint. When our buddy doctor John Harvey
21:14
Speaker 1: Kellogg comes along, and if you'll remember from the live
21:18
Speaker 1: show we did on the Kellogg Brothers. He invented nut butters,
21:23
Speaker 1: and in particular peanut butter is considered one of the
21:26
Speaker 1: main inventors of peanut butter. Well, yeah it was. It
21:29
Speaker 1: was right up his alley, because, um, I think that
21:32
Speaker 1: might be my favorite live show we've done. Actually, I
21:35
Speaker 1: think so PR was my favorite. PR. Howney, you're going
21:38
Speaker 1: to say that you did. Yeah, that was a good
21:40
Speaker 1: one you did. I think those are my top two?
21:43
Speaker 1: What about Pinto's Man, what about Cooper? Those might be
21:49
Speaker 1: the first four? Name what else have we done? Malls bars?
21:54
Speaker 1: We did the secret one that is still supposedly on
21:58
Speaker 1: tour but on High eight US right now, Um, I
22:01
Speaker 1: think that's it. I think that's all. Well, I'm gonna
22:04
Speaker 1: go with John Harvey Kellogg because he uh as if
22:08
Speaker 1: you listen to that when he was very big on
22:10
Speaker 1: chewing food until it was the consistency of peanut butter basically,
22:15
Speaker 1: and so peanut butter comes along and he's like, well,
22:17
Speaker 1: this is perfect because you don't have to chew it
22:20
Speaker 1: like that, it's already like that. It'll just glad right
22:22
Speaker 1: through your system and come out as delicious. Peanut butter poop. Yeah,
22:26
Speaker 1: and it won't poison your entire body and you won't
22:28
Speaker 1: have to spend any time in the electric light bath
22:32
Speaker 1: for the needing machine. So Dr Kellogg creates basically what
22:37
Speaker 1: we would recognize today as the um the artisan version
22:42
Speaker 1: of peanut butter. It's just ground up peanuts that form
22:46
Speaker 1: a paste, and apparently that's just a natural thing that happens.
22:49
Speaker 1: Like if you put roasted peanuts in food processor, it's
22:54
Speaker 1: going to turn like gritty and everything. But if you
22:56
Speaker 1: just keep going, it eventually reaches this point, this threshold
23:00
Speaker 1: where that grit turns into this oily paste like peanut butter,
23:05
Speaker 1: like um an ointment, like Marcellis Wallace would call it,
23:09
Speaker 1: and um that's basically what John Harvey Kellogg did and
23:13
Speaker 1: served at Battle Creek. But most of the people who
23:18
Speaker 1: would have been exposed to peanut butter would not have
23:20
Speaker 1: tried John Kellogg's because you know, that sanitarium was really
23:25
Speaker 1: expensive and it was for the wealthy, it was for celebrities.
23:29
Speaker 1: So most people experience peanut butter at one or two places.
23:33
Speaker 1: And Chuck I really found out in researching this that
23:36
Speaker 1: the history of peanut butter is super murky. It's like
23:41
Speaker 1: a smooth full of peanut butter stirred up in a
23:43
Speaker 1: glass of water kind of murky, right where it's kind
23:47
Speaker 1: of chriss, where it's just not entirely clear who did
23:52
Speaker 1: what when, who's um contribution has been disproportionately mytholologized. But
24:01
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, John Harvey Kellogg is definitely
24:04
Speaker 1: one of the fathers of peanut butter um. Mr. Marcellus
24:08
Speaker 1: was one as well. And then it gets a little
24:12
Speaker 1: murkier after that, so much so that people say, well,
24:16
Speaker 1: peanut butter made his debut at the nineteen o four St.
24:18
Speaker 1: Louis World's Fair, and then other people are like, no, no,
24:21
Speaker 1: that's way wrong. It made its debut at the Chicago
24:24
Speaker 1: World's Fair, And I can find good credible sources that
24:30
Speaker 1: say either one. So I have no idea where it
24:33
Speaker 1: made his debut. I believe it was sold for sure
24:37
Speaker 1: at the St. Louis World Fair in nineteen o four,
24:40
Speaker 1: and that a guy named um C. H. Summers sold
24:44
Speaker 1: like twenty dollars worth of peanut butter as snack items there,
24:49
Speaker 1: but that the people who ate it there had probably
24:53
Speaker 1: already been exposed to peanut butter and liked it. It
24:55
Speaker 1: might not have been something that was part of like
24:57
Speaker 1: their everyday thing. They weren't standing in their pantry eating
24:59
Speaker 1: it off of a spoon, but they had probably had
25:02
Speaker 1: it before, and this is like a real treat for
25:05
Speaker 1: them too to experience it. It It wasn't like debuted in
25:07
Speaker 1: nineteen o four from what I can tell right, well,
25:11
Speaker 1: we're regardless of who introduced it initially. By nineteen oh seven,
25:15
Speaker 1: thanks to companies like Hinz and beech Nut, they were
25:18
Speaker 1: selling thirty four million pounds of peanut butter, up from
25:22
Speaker 1: just two million in eighteen nine, So over an eight
25:24
Speaker 1: year period, that's that's a pretty big increase. And the
25:29
Speaker 1: soldiers come into play again. It wasn't just the Civil
25:31
Speaker 1: War and World Wars one and two. Um, And I've
25:34
Speaker 1: had peanut butter k rations before. Uh huh. It's my
25:39
Speaker 1: dad used to get that stuff a lot when I
25:40
Speaker 1: was a kid for camping and stuff at the Army
25:43
Speaker 1: Navy store. So, uh, it became a big part of
25:46
Speaker 1: your your army rations and the armed forces because I
25:49
Speaker 1: had a lot of protein. It was good sustenance. You
25:51
Speaker 1: can make a P B and J and that was
25:53
Speaker 1: pretty comforting. If you were on the front lines or
25:55
Speaker 1: in a trench. In World War One, supposedly they popularized
25:59
Speaker 1: the pban a the troops did. That's right, and thank
26:03
Speaker 1: them for that. Oh, I will all salute the troops
26:06
Speaker 1: for that one. But it was pretty regional at the
26:09
Speaker 1: time in the early twenties century. Uh, it didn't travel
26:12
Speaker 1: that great. Um. They finally let you know, I mentioned
26:17
Speaker 1: hydrogenized earlier. It was this hydrogenation, is that right? That
26:23
Speaker 1: really led to the Big Three coming about with the
26:28
Speaker 1: industrialization of peanut butter production. And three gentlemen named Peter, Pan, Skippy,
26:37
Speaker 1: and Jeff, which I was curious about Jeff, where that
26:41
Speaker 1: came from? And all I found was that they said
26:43
Speaker 1: it's easy to spell, easy to say, and easy to remember.
26:46
Speaker 1: It's true all three of those, and had no meaning
26:49
Speaker 1: beyond that basically. Really, I would have guessed I had
26:52
Speaker 1: something to do with, you know, like doing it in
26:54
Speaker 1: a jiff or jiffy or something. Huh, I mean, you know,
26:57
Speaker 1: I mean you've got to be in the room, I
26:58
Speaker 1: guess to know where the seed came from. But they
27:00
Speaker 1: just said it was simple and super easy, and uh,
27:04
Speaker 1: that was kind of the end of that story. The
27:07
Speaker 1: good night. No, I'm with you. I do too. I'm
27:12
Speaker 1: kind of mad right now. But we've gotta we gotta
27:14
Speaker 1: press on UM with hydrogenation, right because there's this guy
27:19
Speaker 1: named John Crampner, and he wrote a book called The
27:22
Speaker 1: Creamy and Crunchy all about peanut butter, and he basically
27:26
Speaker 1: points that saying like that that's that was the turning
27:29
Speaker 1: point for peanut butter, maybe even tied for first with
27:32
Speaker 1: its invention. UM was the introduction of hydrogenation, which takes
27:37
Speaker 1: oils that are liquid at room temperature and as hydrogen
27:42
Speaker 1: and a catalyst, usually like powdered nickel, and those those
27:47
Speaker 1: bonds become infused or saturated with hydrogen and so they
27:52
Speaker 1: stick together a lot more easily. So those liquid oils
27:56
Speaker 1: have a um more stable um solid state at room temperature.
28:02
Speaker 1: So you go from like peanut butter with oil on top,
28:05
Speaker 1: to peanut butter that doesn't have oil on top of
28:07
Speaker 1: the oils mixed into the mixture, and it stays that
28:10
Speaker 1: way even on the store shelf, which people love because
28:14
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, from eating artist and peanut butter,
28:16
Speaker 1: it's kind of a pain to stir it up. I
28:20
Speaker 1: mean that that initial stir is a little dodgy because
28:23
Speaker 1: it's so close to the lid. But um, you just
28:27
Speaker 1: have to have the right spoon, take your time to
28:29
Speaker 1: be in a rush. Uh. And you know, shelf life
28:34
Speaker 1: stability is super important with peanut butter because only monsters
28:37
Speaker 1: put their peanut butter in the refrigerator. Who does that?
28:40
Speaker 1: Who point them out to me? Monsters who like you've
28:43
Speaker 1: met somebody who's done that before. I think that was
28:46
Speaker 1: in a Judge John hand been listener mail at one point. Uh.
28:51
Speaker 1: I don't think it was a major case, but I
28:52
Speaker 1: think it was one of their one of their listener
28:55
Speaker 1: man ones. But totally totally think it should be on
28:58
Speaker 1: the shelf. That's where it belongs. Um. Although I will
29:01
Speaker 1: say if you mix a little P, B and J
29:03
Speaker 1: with a natural kind and you put it in the
29:05
Speaker 1: fridge because you've had your two bites and you made
29:07
Speaker 1: too much the next day, it is interesting. It's more
29:10
Speaker 1: like a Reese's cup consistency. It's kind of hard. Uh.
29:14
Speaker 1: It makes for a nice little snack, but it's certainly
29:16
Speaker 1: not anything that you can spread on bread right right. Well.
29:19
Speaker 1: That's the other thing too, is if the oils are
29:21
Speaker 1: mixed into the solids that forms this creamier substance that
29:26
Speaker 1: makes it way easier to spread, which moms love. Right.
29:30
Speaker 1: And then the other thing it does too is with
29:32
Speaker 1: all of those hydrogen atoms linked on to the fat
29:37
Speaker 1: chains the lipids, um, there's not all these unused or
29:41
Speaker 1: open bonds that an oxygen atom can come along and
29:45
Speaker 1: bond too, and um oxidize the peanut butter, which creates peroxide,
29:50
Speaker 1: which gives it a rancid taste. So hydrogenation not only
29:54
Speaker 1: made peanut butter um less liquid e more creamy, it
29:59
Speaker 1: also may it last longer. Like sitting on the shelf
30:03
Speaker 1: before it was sold and used, it wouldn't turn rants
30:05
Speaker 1: and nearly as fast, So it was a big deal.
30:08
Speaker 1: The problem is is that took peanut butter, which is
30:10
Speaker 1: actually kind of healthy with a mono unsaturated fat that
30:14
Speaker 1: liquid oil and turned it into saturated or partially saturated
30:18
Speaker 1: saturated fat, which is really tough on the old ticker. Yeah,
30:23
Speaker 1: that's why I'd stay away from that stuff. I mean,
30:25
Speaker 1: it's so good. Um, but yeah, I just I made
30:28
Speaker 1: the switch many years ago. Good for you, Jack. Yeah,
30:31
Speaker 1: the hydrogenated outsold natural for the first time in forty
30:35
Speaker 1: two and accounts for about of the current market Peter Pan,
30:39
Speaker 1: believe it or not, I don't think I've ever had
30:41
Speaker 1: Peter Pan. It's not bad unless it was just at
30:44
Speaker 1: a friend's house or something. I don't think we ever
30:46
Speaker 1: had it in our house. Peter Pan makes a natural
30:49
Speaker 1: one too, and I mean I'm making air quotes um
30:52
Speaker 1: like Jiff does, and it's I think it might even
30:55
Speaker 1: be better than Jiff's natural version. I think Emily likes
31:00
Speaker 1: the Smuckers Natural, but I also got some. Uh, I
31:05
Speaker 1: can't remember the brand. It's one of the one of
31:08
Speaker 1: the other natural brands. They're they're all pretty good. I
31:10
Speaker 1: think so was when peter Pan rolled out and was
31:16
Speaker 1: the first which I didn't know was the first major brand.
31:19
Speaker 1: It was the biggest seller at the time. Uh. It
31:22
Speaker 1: used that partial hydrogenation process that was patented by a
31:26
Speaker 1: guy named Joseph rose Field from Kentucky. And then that's
31:32
Speaker 1: where Jeff Skippy came from. Peter Pan's parent company said
31:36
Speaker 1: I want to cut your licensing fee. He said, I'm
31:38
Speaker 1: done with you, and I'm gonna go out and I'm
31:40
Speaker 1: gonna make Skippy on my own. And by the end
31:43
Speaker 1: of his career he had tin patents, not just for
31:45
Speaker 1: peanut butter, but relating to food, and he was just
31:48
Speaker 1: kind of like a Chevy Chase in vacation movies. He
31:51
Speaker 1: was a food scientist. Yeah, what was it The thing
31:54
Speaker 1: that he learned code of flake with that he used
31:59
Speaker 1: on this lead some sort of non nutritional I can't remember.
32:06
Speaker 1: I'll figure it out. No need to email everyone, No
32:08
Speaker 1: need to email, I want to hear. I want every
32:11
Speaker 1: email for about this. I think it was called a
32:13
Speaker 1: non nutritional coding, is what he called it. But but yeah,
32:17
Speaker 1: he was very much like that. But he was also way, way,
32:20
Speaker 1: way better than anything Chevy Chase could ever be because
32:23
Speaker 1: he was a really great boss. He um paid his
32:26
Speaker 1: his workers really well, and in creating the Skippy brand,
32:30
Speaker 1: he broke off from this kind of um this corporate
32:34
Speaker 1: overlord that he he worked for was keeping him under
32:37
Speaker 1: his thumb and then trying to um short change him. Uh,
32:40
Speaker 1: and said, you know what, by creating Skippy, I'm going
32:44
Speaker 1: to not only challenge you, Peter Pan, I'm going to
32:46
Speaker 1: become the best selling peanut butter there is from like
32:50
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty to nineteen eighty, like Skippy was it. And
32:54
Speaker 1: I just missed the Skippy train. So I'm wondering like
32:57
Speaker 1: if I had been, you know, born in nineteen s
33:00
Speaker 1: and d if I would have been raised on Skippy.
33:01
Speaker 1: But I came along at the jiff Era really yeah,
33:05
Speaker 1: he said in your face, and they said, I love
33:08
Speaker 1: peanut butter in my face, and he went, oh, I
33:10
Speaker 1: gotta think of a new comeback, you know, Chuck. One
33:12
Speaker 1: thing that's always bothered me about Peter Pan is do
33:15
Speaker 1: you remember that jingle where it's like, eat some peanut
33:18
Speaker 1: butter anytime you can. It's like, oh, that's nice, and
33:22
Speaker 1: then they follow it up with but only if it's
33:24
Speaker 1: Peter Pan, like it's got kind of this like if
33:27
Speaker 1: I can't have you, no one can psychotic mentality to it. Yeah.
33:33
Speaker 1: I never I never heard that song, so I never
33:35
Speaker 1: really thought about that. Do you didn't watch the television
33:38
Speaker 1: in the ninet nineties. I did. I don't remember that
33:41
Speaker 1: one though, But I mean I was in the nineties.
33:44
Speaker 1: I was in college, so I probably wasn't. I don't
33:47
Speaker 1: even think we had cable. I didn't watch much TV
33:48
Speaker 1: in college. Uh, so Skippy is doing great. Peter Pan
33:54
Speaker 1: is just like, well, I guess I'll just have to
33:56
Speaker 1: be second banana and Skippy, and Jeff said, do you
34:00
Speaker 1: like being third banana because that's where you're headed. That
34:04
Speaker 1: same year, in nineteen fifty five, this is when rose
34:07
Speaker 1: Field sold Uh Skippy to Best Foods. Procter and Gamble
34:12
Speaker 1: bought Big Top Peanut from William T. Young, also of Kentucky,
34:16
Speaker 1: and then they became Jeff uh and they held that
34:20
Speaker 1: brand until two thousand one, two thousand two. Yeah, I
34:25
Speaker 1: did not know that. But wait two thousand one, two
34:28
Speaker 1: thousand two when they sold the Smuckers. Okay, but Jeff
34:32
Speaker 1: is still the number one brand today, right as far
34:35
Speaker 1: as I know. Okay, Yeah, that's that's my understanding too.
34:38
Speaker 1: I thought you were saying like it was the number
34:39
Speaker 1: one brand until then, but yeah, from from I think
34:42
Speaker 1: night two today it's it's number one. Yeah, and they
34:46
Speaker 1: got a lot of uh, I think they all do.
34:49
Speaker 1: But Jeff alone has fifteen different kinds of peanut butter,
34:53
Speaker 1: which is kind of nuts. If you look at their lists,
34:55
Speaker 1: They've got all kinds of different crazy peanut butters out there. Now, well,
34:59
Speaker 1: nuts is just and variety. Well they all have peanuts
35:03
Speaker 1: in it, but yeah, well they have they have a
35:05
Speaker 1: good almond butter too. Yeah, I can. I can get
35:09
Speaker 1: down with some almond butter. You know what, buddy, I'm
35:11
Speaker 1: gonna buy you some. When we see each other again,
35:13
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be brandishing a jar of Jiff almond butter
35:17
Speaker 1: for you. You You know, it's not good. What is? Uh?
35:21
Speaker 1: You know you can't take peanut butter sandwiches into classrooms anymore,
35:26
Speaker 1: or at least it, you know at my kids preschool,
35:29
Speaker 1: and um, of course you can't take anything in there
35:31
Speaker 1: anymore because it's closed. But you have to make um,
35:37
Speaker 1: you have to make it with what a cheese. I
35:39
Speaker 1: used to chew these things all the time. What a
35:41
Speaker 1: baseball players chew? Sunflower seeds? Sunflower butter? That's good too.
35:47
Speaker 1: I've had that. It's not bad. Oh, I do not
35:49
Speaker 1: care for it. So you don't like it? Huh? I
35:51
Speaker 1: think it's all right. I guess wow. I'm I really
35:54
Speaker 1: like basically any kind of butters, including just butter butter. Well, yeah,
35:59
Speaker 1: butter is great, But I just cannot get down with
36:01
Speaker 1: the sunflower sun flower. Yeah, yeah, no, it totally and
36:05
Speaker 1: it's definitely there's a taste of sunflower to it, like
36:08
Speaker 1: you could have no idea what you're eating and somebody
36:11
Speaker 1: gives it to you, and you would be like that
36:12
Speaker 1: sunflower butter, isn't it. I love sunflower seeds though. That
36:16
Speaker 1: was a big thing in college for a little while.
36:18
Speaker 1: We would sit around and, you know, just put a
36:21
Speaker 1: mouthful of sunflower seeds on our mouth. Yeah, I remember
36:23
Speaker 1: the sunflower trend quite well. Remember that. And you would, Yeah,
36:26
Speaker 1: you would crack them open with your teeth and you
36:29
Speaker 1: would spit out the shell and then swallow the seed
36:32
Speaker 1: that you want, the seed and swallow it. So I
36:34
Speaker 1: would eat the whole thing. You know, you didn't eat
36:37
Speaker 1: the shell. Yeah, this is I would eat the whole thing.
36:40
Speaker 1: And that would smoke a whole cigar and in halee it.
36:42
Speaker 1: You're a very bad squirrel. And then you would drown,
36:44
Speaker 1: drown your lawn and water. Yeah, and you would sit
36:48
Speaker 1: back and say, I'm doing life just right. Yeah, I
36:51
Speaker 1: got it all figured out. Would you really eat the
36:54
Speaker 1: shells still due to this day? Really? Yeah. And it's
36:58
Speaker 1: kind of dangerous because every once in a while there's
37:00
Speaker 1: like one part to it that's just a spear and
37:03
Speaker 1: you can go right into your gums if you're not careful.
37:06
Speaker 1: So I'm pretty good at it, but every once in a
37:08
Speaker 1: a while and be like, um, I think I'm bleeding. Well,
37:12
Speaker 1: here's how I eat peanuts when I go to the
37:14
Speaker 1: ball game. I stick the whole peanut in my mouth,
37:19
Speaker 1: uh huh, like a squirrel, and I kind of suck
37:21
Speaker 1: on it for a second and get that salty goodness,
37:23
Speaker 1: and then I crack it open with my teeth and
37:26
Speaker 1: I pull it out of my mouth and then dump
37:29
Speaker 1: the peanuts in and throw away the shells. And then
37:31
Speaker 1: between every bite you have to coat your lips with
37:33
Speaker 1: lip balm because it's so dried and cracked it is
37:38
Speaker 1: pretty salty. But the only time I eight peanuts in
37:40
Speaker 1: the shell like that is in a baseball game. So
37:42
Speaker 1: now I do something similar, but it's with peanut M
37:44
Speaker 1: and m's. I will like crack the peanut M and
37:47
Speaker 1: M in half and expose the peanut in your teeth, yes,
37:51
Speaker 1: and then eat that the the freed chocolate shell side,
37:56
Speaker 1: and then eat the other chocolate shelled side from around
38:00
Speaker 1: the peanut, and then I eat the peanut by itself.
38:04
Speaker 1: Are you kidding? Are you serious? I'm dead serious. I
38:06
Speaker 1: can't remember the last time I ate a peanut eminem
38:09
Speaker 1: without doing that with every single one. All right, here's
38:12
Speaker 1: what I'll do sometimes with peanut eminem's. Okay, we should
38:15
Speaker 1: just have a side gig where we just talk about
38:17
Speaker 1: our stupid quirks. It's part of the podcast I put.
38:22
Speaker 1: And sometimes I'll just a MoU on them like there's
38:25
Speaker 1: no tomorrow. But sometimes I will, and this helps me
38:27
Speaker 1: eat fewer of them because I will pop on it
38:29
Speaker 1: or two in my mouth and I'll just let him
38:32
Speaker 1: sit there and marinate in my saliva. Yeah, and swirl
38:35
Speaker 1: them around and then that candy coating kind of melts
38:37
Speaker 1: away a little bit and makes it like a really
38:39
Speaker 1: soft little crunch Yep. I know, I know what you mean.
38:42
Speaker 1: You know that move. It's really good. I do that too,
38:45
Speaker 1: But usually I'm a little less patient than that. It's
38:48
Speaker 1: every once in a while, maybe when I'm like, you know,
38:50
Speaker 1: I have a whole tupperware bowl full of peanut eminem's,
38:54
Speaker 1: I might go crazy like that. All right, So let's
38:58
Speaker 1: should we take a break or should we wait a second? Yeah,
39:00
Speaker 1: let's do that. Let's take a break things and chop
39:22
Speaker 1: Josh and shock. Alright, So where we left off was
39:33
Speaker 1: Jeff was killing it. You and I have very weird
39:37
Speaker 1: eating habits, and Jeff starts killing it. They start putting
39:41
Speaker 1: sugar and molasses in there. Everyone else followed suit, and
39:44
Speaker 1: finally in the nineteen sixties, the f d A stood
39:47
Speaker 1: up and said, hold on a minute, guys, this stuff
39:50
Speaker 1: you're calling peanut butter is junk food. Now, uh, there's
39:55
Speaker 1: one leading brand. I'm not going to name names. It
39:59
Speaker 1: was only s actual peanuts. He's like, so you gotta
40:03
Speaker 1: start putting peanuts in the whole thing. The peanut butter
40:07
Speaker 1: lobby said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. How about And
40:11
Speaker 1: they said, we're the FDA, We meet people in the middle.
40:14
Speaker 1: Let's settle on peanuts and peanut butter. And since ninety
40:19
Speaker 1: one that's been the standard. Yeah, I think, like, um,
40:21
Speaker 1: this went on for a dozen years. There's a really
40:24
Speaker 1: interesting article on today I found out called the Momentous
40:28
Speaker 1: Peanut Butter Hearings. It's definitely worth reading. But it just
40:31
Speaker 1: was nuts, how literally nuts how long this went on for.
40:36
Speaker 1: And then finally it's just kind of heartening that the
40:39
Speaker 1: FDA was like, no, that's as low as we're going.
40:42
Speaker 1: Make sure that your peanut butter has peanuts. Good day
40:46
Speaker 1: to you. Sir, And that was that finally, and then
40:49
Speaker 1: it became enforced in nineteen seventy two UM and still
40:54
Speaker 1: today there is a federal legal definition for what constitutes
40:58
Speaker 1: peanut butter. And one the first things is it has
41:02
Speaker 1: to have peanuts in it. That's right, because that is
41:05
Speaker 1: still the standard. Uh. If it is smooth, it has
41:08
Speaker 1: to be very fine with an even texture and no
41:12
Speaker 1: hint of grainy peanuts at all. If it's a medium,
41:16
Speaker 1: you can have a little grain to it, but nothing
41:19
Speaker 1: larger than one sixteenth of an inch in dimension, and
41:22
Speaker 1: then all bets are off. If you're crunchy, I don't
41:26
Speaker 1: I don't know who says chunky, but it's definitely crunchy. Yeah,
41:29
Speaker 1: that's like a type of Campbell soup. So crunchy can
41:33
Speaker 1: be larger than one and I guess I mean they're
41:38
Speaker 1: all about the same size. Would be curious to see
41:40
Speaker 1: if there are any kind of half sized peanuts. If
41:43
Speaker 1: it gets that chunky, oh yeah, like larger an yeah,
41:49
Speaker 1: like a half of a peanut, people would be like,
41:51
Speaker 1: it's too chunky. I can't take it. Maybe, I mean
41:53
Speaker 1: that's that's like candy bar level. It is. It is
41:57
Speaker 1: so chuck what you've just said is the FED real
42:00
Speaker 1: government's definition of the different varieties of peanut butter as
42:04
Speaker 1: far as they're concerned. And I don't know if you
42:06
Speaker 1: said it or not, but that guy Joseph rose Field
42:08
Speaker 1: who who was the founder of Skippy, he actually created
42:12
Speaker 1: chunky sorry um, crunchy peanut butter. We both said crunchy,
42:16
Speaker 1: and now we're both saying chunky. I know it's kind
42:18
Speaker 1: of stuck in my head, but he's the guy. If
42:20
Speaker 1: you like chunky peanut butter, first of all, shame on you.
42:24
Speaker 1: But secondly, thank Joseph rose Field for that, because he
42:26
Speaker 1: came up with it I think in the fifties. Yeah.
42:29
Speaker 1: Like I said, I like it all. Uh, there is
42:32
Speaker 1: not a kind of peanut butter that that I won't eat.
42:34
Speaker 1: I think it's all really good. So then I think
42:36
Speaker 1: also the um the this kind of demonstrates just how
42:41
Speaker 1: seriously Americans take peanut butter. The U. S. D A.
42:44
Speaker 1: Goes on to say, there are other qualities that make
42:47
Speaker 1: a peanut butter either Grade A, Grade B or sub
42:51
Speaker 1: standard peanut butter. And it's my favorite. It's things like
42:56
Speaker 1: um color. The color has to match certain color samples
43:01
Speaker 1: that you can only obtain from a company called Aggtron, Inc.
43:06
Speaker 1: Of Sparks, Nevada. This is in the two law that
43:09
Speaker 1: you have to write to Aggtron and say, can you
43:12
Speaker 1: please send me the peanut butter colored standards because I
43:15
Speaker 1: need to make sure that my peanut butter matches the U.
43:18
Speaker 1: S d A standards for color of peanut butter. They're online.
43:23
Speaker 1: Get with it while you're writing me a letter, right,
43:26
Speaker 1: That's that's a really good point. You do you email,
43:29
Speaker 1: or you'd right back like, I don't know, can you
43:31
Speaker 1: please send me the website you are l And then
43:34
Speaker 1: they would. But when you get this color standard, you
43:36
Speaker 1: can't just look at it wherever you have to. You
43:39
Speaker 1: have to look at it with a at a light
43:41
Speaker 1: with a color temperature of about seventy d calvin plus
43:45
Speaker 1: or minus two hundred and fifty kelvin or something equal
43:48
Speaker 1: to a moderately partly cloudy day. That's that's the government's
43:53
Speaker 1: standard for judging the color of peanut butter. All I
43:57
Speaker 1: can think of now somebody writing a handwritten letter to
44:00
Speaker 1: someone asking for U r L. Someone with a ballpoint
44:05
Speaker 1: pin spelling out https slash slash. I looked up aggtron Inc.
44:12
Speaker 1: They're still around and they are on point many They've
44:14
Speaker 1: been in business for I think about a century. But
44:17
Speaker 1: they are all about like food analysis. If you're a
44:21
Speaker 1: coffee roaster or barista or something, you can take their
44:24
Speaker 1: online class. I think it's online. It's like a daylong
44:27
Speaker 1: class that like really teaches you all like the science
44:31
Speaker 1: behind the coffee you're selling and roasting and grinding. It's
44:34
Speaker 1: a really interesting company, it looks like. But that's if
44:37
Speaker 1: you start making peanut butter, you need to You need
44:40
Speaker 1: to write a letter to aggtron Ink asking for their
44:43
Speaker 1: u are l and they will send you a laminated
44:46
Speaker 1: sheet and a Manila envelope. So if you're talking peanut butter.
44:51
Speaker 1: In the United States, about half of the edible use
44:56
Speaker 1: of peanuts is from peanut butter um. Obviously peanut butters
45:00
Speaker 1: and a ton of It's one of my favorite parts
45:02
Speaker 1: of candy bars and stuff like that. I'm I'm a
45:04
Speaker 1: sucker for any peanut butter ice creams, peanut butter candy bars.
45:09
Speaker 1: It's just I can't get enough of that combination. Totally
45:12
Speaker 1: with you, buddy, which, by the way, Joseph rose Field
45:15
Speaker 1: was the skippy guy was the guy who came up
45:17
Speaker 1: with that peanut butter and chocolate combo before Rees's did.
45:21
Speaker 1: But the National Peanut Board estimates that it takes about
45:24
Speaker 1: five hundred and forty peanuts to make up one of
45:27
Speaker 1: those twelve bounced jars, which is a lot of peanuts.
45:30
Speaker 1: That kind of surprised me. It was more than I thought. Yeah,
45:32
Speaker 1: sit there and shell peanuts until you reach five hundred
45:35
Speaker 1: and forty individual peanuts, and you will have a sudden
45:37
Speaker 1: appreciation for your butter, you know what I mean for sure,
45:41
Speaker 1: But of course machines do that. But yeah, well, if
45:44
Speaker 1: it's artisan, no, somebody wearing like a calico so wrong
45:51
Speaker 1: is doing it with my hand in Vermont? Uh, I
45:57
Speaker 1: don't think Vermont people are like, yeah, I think that's
46:01
Speaker 1: my conception. Proved me wrong, Vermont. So in two thousand nine,
46:07
Speaker 1: we're talking about health aspects. There's a couple of parts
46:10
Speaker 1: to the health of it, of whether or not it's
46:12
Speaker 1: just good for you, which we'll get to. But also
46:14
Speaker 1: there have been a couple of peanut butter incidents throughout
46:18
Speaker 1: the years in recent years that have scared people off
46:21
Speaker 1: from peanut butter a little bit. Uh. In two thousand
46:24
Speaker 1: nine was the second one. There were five hundred people
46:28
Speaker 1: who got sick and eight people died from eating peanut
46:32
Speaker 1: butter from a plant in Blakely, Georgia. That was pretty
46:36
Speaker 1: gross and not maintained well. I remember that, don't you.
46:39
Speaker 1: I remember both of them. The other one was in
46:40
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, and that was sam and Ella in
46:44
Speaker 1: peter Pan and Great Value, both owned by ConAgra, and
46:48
Speaker 1: that got about six d and change sick, but nobody died.
46:54
Speaker 1: But I remember both of those. It was a big
46:56
Speaker 1: deal because peanut butter so ubiquitous. So there's also I
47:00
Speaker 1: didn't realize this until I started researching it. There's something
47:04
Speaker 1: called um aflatoxins. Have you heard of them? I think
47:10
Speaker 1: I did, back when all the stuff happened or not.
47:14
Speaker 1: So there's there's a mold called Aspergillis that grows on
47:18
Speaker 1: peanuts because peanuts are grown underground, right um and the
47:24
Speaker 1: Aspergillis can produce a toxin called aflatoxins. And apparently humans
47:28
Speaker 1: are um pretty much immune to its initial effects or
47:33
Speaker 1: its short term effects. But we have no idea what
47:35
Speaker 1: happens if you eat afflatoxins. You know, over the course
47:39
Speaker 1: of a lifetime, you know, what what happens, And apparently
47:42
Speaker 1: there's studies of humans that found that it's been linked
47:46
Speaker 1: to certain types of cancer, UM, potentially birth defects, UM,
47:52
Speaker 1: cognitive disabilities, all sorts of horrible stuff. And peanut butter
47:57
Speaker 1: producers say well, we get at least eighteen percent of
48:01
Speaker 1: the athlet toxins out just by processing peanuts. You say, well,
48:04
Speaker 1: what about the other eleven percent? And they're like, I
48:06
Speaker 1: have some peter pan and forget your troubles. That's right.
48:11
Speaker 1: So so there is like a real risk of something
48:16
Speaker 1: bad happening to you, whether it's a poisoning or not.
48:19
Speaker 1: But a lot of people are like, even if it's
48:20
Speaker 1: pure peanut butter, it's it's still it's still not healthy
48:24
Speaker 1: for you. Yeah, I mean the major brands that are
48:29
Speaker 1: sugary and hydrogenated certainly aren't good for you. If you're
48:32
Speaker 1: going to the farmer's market and and getting those peanuts
48:35
Speaker 1: ground right in front of your face, it's not it's
48:37
Speaker 1: not terrible. You know, it's got a lot of nutrition,
48:40
Speaker 1: it's got a lot of antioxidants. Uh, it's got we're
48:43
Speaker 1: talking this is a hundred grams of this stuff. You've
48:47
Speaker 1: got r D A of vitamin E, sent of vitamin
48:53
Speaker 1: B three sixteen seven percent I'm sorry, se of manganese,
48:59
Speaker 1: and thirty nine percent of magnesium. So it's got a
49:02
Speaker 1: lot of good stuff in there. It's got a lot
49:04
Speaker 1: of calories too. That's about six hundred calories reading a
49:07
Speaker 1: hundred gram's worth. But if it's you know, I mean
49:12
Speaker 1: that's a hundred grams is a lot. No, it is
49:15
Speaker 1: a tremendous amount. Um. The other thing is too, is
49:18
Speaker 1: if you're eating that artisan peanut butter, that craft peanut butter,
49:22
Speaker 1: the non hydrogenated I guess I should say peanut butter,
49:25
Speaker 1: the oils and the fats in it are actually good
49:28
Speaker 1: for you. The mono unsaturated fat is the kind that's
49:31
Speaker 1: good for your heart. Um. It's that saturated stuff that
49:35
Speaker 1: becomes shelf stable. That's the stuff that can build up
49:38
Speaker 1: as plaque in your arterial walls and cause heart attacks
49:43
Speaker 1: and strokes and that kind of thing. But the natural
49:46
Speaker 1: peanut butter actually does the opposite. It helps your cholesterol levels.
49:50
Speaker 1: That's it's just great. It's basically just really calorie dance.
49:54
Speaker 1: Like if you're trying to lose weight, it's a good
49:56
Speaker 1: idea to shy away from peanut butter. But if you're
49:59
Speaker 1: eating natural peanut butter, it's not like in a non
50:02
Speaker 1: nutritious food. It's actually pretty nutritious. It's just calorie dance, right,
50:07
Speaker 1: And if you're trying to lose weight and you up
50:10
Speaker 1: for a spoonful of peanut butter and honey rather than
50:12
Speaker 1: a pint of bin and Jerry's, then you're definitely doing
50:16
Speaker 1: the right thing, for sure, man, for sure. Um. One
50:19
Speaker 1: thing though that has, you know, strikes fear and a
50:21
Speaker 1: lot of people, like you were saying, in your daughter's preschool,
50:24
Speaker 1: you can't even bring a peanut butter sandwich in there anymore. Um,
50:27
Speaker 1: is this the ride of the peanut allergy? Like? There's
50:31
Speaker 1: a survey that was conducted in the eighties, the nineties,
50:34
Speaker 1: and the two thousands, and I think the most recent
50:36
Speaker 1: one was in two thousand eight, and they found that
50:39
Speaker 1: between two thousand and eight, in this national survey of
50:43
Speaker 1: fifty homes that the um the self reported peanut allergies
50:50
Speaker 1: went from point four percent of respondents to one point
50:55
Speaker 1: four percent of respondents, which it's one point four percent
50:59
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like a lot, but that's a huge increase
51:02
Speaker 1: between UM uh, Like eleven years, I guess. But the
51:07
Speaker 1: thing is is, if you look at other studies, they
51:09
Speaker 1: found that, yes, self reported rates are on the rise,
51:12
Speaker 1: but doctor diagnosed rates have held steady. So there seems
51:16
Speaker 1: to be an increase in perception that people have peanut allergies,
51:21
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily an increase in actual peanut allergies, which
51:25
Speaker 1: is really strange and bizarre to think of, if that's correct. Yeah,
51:30
Speaker 1: and I have seen the trend of oral immunotherapy like
51:33
Speaker 1: um feeding your very small child and your baby peanuts
51:39
Speaker 1: to a little bit at a time to ensure or
51:42
Speaker 1: hopefully ensured that they won't be uh stricken with the
51:45
Speaker 1: worst food allergy of all. It's tough, the peanut allergy.
51:49
Speaker 1: And uh they there was a study in Israel that
51:52
Speaker 1: had guidelines for early infant feeding and they said, around
51:54
Speaker 1: four to six months of age, just shove a bunch
51:57
Speaker 1: of peanuts in their mouth and see what happens and
52:00
Speaker 1: make them chew and then hit him with the lip ball. Yeah,
52:03
Speaker 1: hit him with that, hit him with the ball. Um as.
52:07
Speaker 1: So one last thing, chuck and I couldn't find a
52:10
Speaker 1: place to put it, but it has to be said.
52:12
Speaker 1: There's a phobia called um araca boot to a phobia,
52:18
Speaker 1: iraq a boodh or phobia. Yeah, I think I nailed
52:21
Speaker 1: it that last time, and it is is that for me?
52:26
Speaker 1: Is that my cue? Yes, it's hard to tell because
52:29
Speaker 1: you're not kicking me under the table. I'm not like
52:31
Speaker 1: doing that series of blinks. Uh. That is the fear
52:34
Speaker 1: of peanut butter getting stuck on the roof of your mouth.
52:38
Speaker 1: That is a true thing, which is shouldn't be a
52:40
Speaker 1: fear because all you gotta do is just keep working
52:43
Speaker 1: the tongue and that peanut butter is gonna dislodge and
52:45
Speaker 1: go right down your throat. That's right, just like John
52:48
Speaker 1: Harvey Kellogg foresaw little whole milk and you're all set,
52:52
Speaker 1: nice man, or some cool whip. Don't forget the cool whip.
52:55
Speaker 1: I gotta try that. That's I don't know if you
52:57
Speaker 1: should try that. Like I think I gained ten hounds
53:00
Speaker 1: in a month just after I discovered that it's it's
53:03
Speaker 1: not good for you, man. Yeah, I can't wait. Cool
53:05
Speaker 1: whip doesn't last long on the house. We can't keep
53:07
Speaker 1: it here. It's just like it's really hard not to
53:10
Speaker 1: just sort of I'll just have a little spoonful every
53:12
Speaker 1: now and then, right and then Yeah, it's like your
53:16
Speaker 1: hair is stuck to your forehead because you put your
53:18
Speaker 1: whole face in the tub. So good, and it's good
53:21
Speaker 1: frozen too. I don't know if you ever tried that. Yeah,
53:24
Speaker 1: I've tried it both ways, but if you, if you
53:26
Speaker 1: do want to try, it's about it's about half and
53:28
Speaker 1: half peanut butter cool whip per spoonful. I'll give it
53:31
Speaker 1: a shot if I'm ever allowed to go to the
53:32
Speaker 1: grocery store again. Yeah right, um, okay, well I think
53:36
Speaker 1: that's it then for peanut butter unless you have anything else,
53:39
Speaker 1: got nothing else? Okay, Well, since we said we have
53:41
Speaker 1: nothing else, it means it's time for loosener mail. I'm
53:47
Speaker 1: gonna call this early listener that came back as an
53:50
Speaker 1: adult love these hey guys. Last year, I well, what
53:54
Speaker 1: I really love is people that never stopped listening. Right,
53:57
Speaker 1: But we'll take this, Hey guys. Last year I started
54:00
Speaker 1: getting back into stuff you should know after a long
54:02
Speaker 1: break from the nine to ten days? What does that mean?
54:08
Speaker 1: And a need for an educational podcast? On my long
54:10
Speaker 1: drives to Blacksburg, Virginia from the Tidewater area of Virginia.
54:14
Speaker 1: I think they got hit by the apple at toxin. Uh.
54:20
Speaker 1: I think he may be. I don't know what he means.
54:22
Speaker 1: When I first started listening, I was in middle school
54:25
Speaker 1: and I always loved trivia in your podcast helped me
54:28
Speaker 1: annoy other students with random facts about twin Kings and floride.
54:31
Speaker 1: Once I went through church camp, it was appreciated. I
54:34
Speaker 1: earned the name random fact kid. You guys helped me
54:38
Speaker 1: encourage my natural instincts in the world that got me
54:41
Speaker 1: through electrical engineering and also helped me earn free beer
54:45
Speaker 1: at trivia nights because of my tendency to remember ob
54:47
Speaker 1: secure knowledge. I even made a friend through the podcast
54:53
Speaker 1: listener Lucas. I take it that's just Lucas listeners, not
54:58
Speaker 1: his first name, I hope. So uh. He was listening
55:02
Speaker 1: to your podcast while driving his bus and I recognize
55:04
Speaker 1: the familiar voices. So I just want to say thanks, guys,
55:07
Speaker 1: And that is from listener Daniel. So maybe that's how
55:10
Speaker 1: they met. They had the same first name, right, They're
55:13
Speaker 1: like I. I never thought I would have a brother,
55:16
Speaker 1: but now I do. Daniel and Lucas together, Are you
55:22
Speaker 1: got anything else? Now? I got nothing at all? Well,
55:24
Speaker 1: if you want to be like listener Daniel and let
55:27
Speaker 1: us know how long you've been listening. UM, we want
55:29
Speaker 1: to hear from you. UM. You can get in touch
55:32
Speaker 1: with this just through a simple email. Simple gesture, the
55:36
Speaker 1: gesture of wrapping it up, the gesture of spanking it
55:38
Speaker 1: on the bottom, gesture of early feeding at peanuts, and
55:41
Speaker 1: sending it all to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com.
55:48
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
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