My love affair with peanut butter began when I was a child. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches made up a lot of my diet during my adolescent years. Later on, I could eat peanut butter by the spoonful; it didn’t even have to be on anything. Peanut butter on apple slices were a frequent snack. My peanut butter and jelly sandwiches changed to peanut butter and tomato sandwiches. Yes, peanut butter and tomato sandwiches are quite yummy.

What do you expect to be in your peanut butter? Years ago, I wasn’t really concerned what went into the foods my family consumed. Then I began to find out the dangers of eating products with hydrogenated oils in them.

My first taste of natural peanut butter left me addicted. It tasted like peanuts! No longer did regular peanut butter taste or smell good to me. I had trouble remembering why I had actually liked it.

While I was clipping coupons, I ran across an ad for a new Jif peanut butter. It said that now choosy moms have a new natural choice. Jif now makes a natural peanut butter with only 5 simple ingredients. Curious as to what these 5 simple ingredients were, I logged onto their website to find out. The 5 ingredients that go into their all natural peanut butter are roasted peanuts, sugar, palm oil, salt, and molasses.

The advertisement had a picture of a jar of this peanut butter. Underneath creamy, it stated that this was a peanut butter spread that contained 90% peanuts. I don’t know about you, but I want my peanut butter to be 100% peanuts!

No longer will I eat or buy peanut butter that has more in it than peanuts and salt. The inconvenience of having to stir it up is more than made up for by its wonderful taste and health benefits.

Regular Jif peanut butter contains roasted peanuts, sugar, molasses, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, fully hydrogenated vegetable oils, mono- and diglycerides, and salt. These are the ingredients in almost all brands of commercial peanut butter. They all pale in comparison with natural peanut butter, though.

When oils are hydrogenated, they are heated and hydrogen bubbles are passed through it. This makes the fatty acids in the oil more dense. If it is fully hydrogenated, a solid or a fat is formed. If the process is stopped part way through, a semi-solid fat with the consistency of butter is the result. If only this process were as harmless as it sounds.

Oils that have been hydrogenated contain high levels of trans fats. Trans fats interfere with the body’s natural ability to ingest good fats.

Most partially hydrogenated oil is soybean oil. Soybean oil can lower your metabolism and make you sluggish, thereby making you fat! Could this be at least part of the cause of the epidemic proportions of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer in America? The mono- and diglycerides are also trans fats.

Before you buy another jar of peanut butter, stop and really think about what you are buying. Do you really want to fill your body and the bodies of your children with the junk found in regular peanut butter? Or do you want them to fill their bellies with something that is good for them. I believe that choosy moms choose all natural peanut butter with at the most 2 ingredients - peanuts and salt.