De-fatted nut..What??

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De-fatted nut... What?

I am a huge peanut butter fan; the only problem is I tend to eat more than the recommended serving size. Peanut butter can be a great snack but if you’re eating 2-3 servings in one sitting you’re consuming way more fat and calories than your body needs.  

The other day I was at the grocery store looking for peanut butter (shocker) and one jar caught my eye. The jar said it had 85% less fat. It looked like it had the same consistency as peanut butter and it said it had nuts in it so I was really confused. I know there are some powdered peanut butter with less fat but this was not powder.  Being a nutrition major, I was a little concerned about what this “peanut butter” was really made of.  I looked at the ingredients and the first ingredient was “de fatted nuts” …. I had never in my life heard of that so I obviously had to look it up.  I struggled to find information on this process for peanuts specifically but I found some on almonds.  So apparently, you can de-fat a nut by pressing it and removing the oil from it (which is where the fat comes from).  Ultimately, the nuts are dried out and then are made into peanut butter just like normal. To me, this process doesn’t seem very harmful.  So, after realizing that a de fatted nut isn’t anything crazy I looked at the other ingredients in the product and of course there was a whole list of added sweeteners and sugars. Due to all the added sugars, I skipped the de fatted nut butter and left the store with my normal, natural, peanut butter made from normal peanuts.  I am, however, still curious about how this peanut butter with the de-fatted nut tastes, but for now, I’m just going to stick with what I know. 

Also, if the fat is taken out of the nut, the peanut butter is losing a lot of its nutritious properties. The fat in peanuts are monounsaturated and polyunsaturated which are both fats that our bodies need, taking them out of the nut makes the peanut butter much less beneficial to us.  All in all, it is probably best to just stick with natural peanut butter! 

MG


https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1365-2621.1985.tb13780.x

http://www.peanut-institute.org/health-and-nutrition/protective-nutrients/protein-fats-and-fiber.asp

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 9, 2019 at 4:56 PM

    This is so interesting! I can't imagine what it would taste like without all the added stuff. Thanks for pointing out that the nutrition is squeezed out when you take out the fat. But as always, have to pay attention to serving sizes!

    ReplyDelete

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