Whole Earth Smooth Peanut Butter No Added Sugar

I love Peanut butter, I really do, so was happy to see that it is showing as this weeks Product of the Week, as normally, I don't buy the products that Ciao picks for their weekly campaign.

I don't always remember having peanut butter as a small child, but was introduced to it at about age 8 in the late 1960's. It was the Sunpat variety in those days. We never worried about exposure to peanuts, and knew little about allergies, as this seems to have been a quite recent phenomenon.

My mother used to pack us off to school with peanut butter sandwiches, which always gave me hiccups due to the dryness of the texture on fluffy white bread. She tried to make it easier, by layering on the butter. My American aunt did tell her to put redcurrent jelly with it, as it was delicious and would help with swallowing, but that was considered way too fancy from us over in Blighty.

As an adult, I have continued to enjoy Peanut butter, but in slightly different ways. I am very conscious about what I eat, preferring foods that have not been messed about with, and preferably organic. I check labels for ingredients that I don't recognise,and if there are more than one, I put back on the shelf, On this jar, there are just 3 ingredients.

Whole Earth has a range of snacks and drinks, and although they are mainly in health food shops, you can purchase them in the main supermarkets,too. This peanut butter is one of the jars that I buy, although I do prefer the crunchy if I am honest. However, the smooth can be used for cooking.

I am vegetarian, so I use this peanut butter to make Quorn Satay's for the BBQ. I stir it into a white sauce for pouring over Pasta; I use it as one of the flavours for muffins/cakes. I use it as a dip with bread sticks (it needs to be mixed with a little olive oil for this). Or just smear a dollup on some wholemeal toast - yum! There are endless experiments to be tried with the smooth paste!

The ingredients are simple:

Roasted Peanuts (96%)
Palm Oil (more of this later)
SeaSalt

The nutritional value is that a third of the jar will cost you 592 calories, so just over a quarter of the recommended guideline for women.
There is a lot of fat in it - 50.2 grams!
And Salt is always to be taken seriously.

But as a treat, it is a wholesome snack.

Now, onto the palm oil. Palm Oil used to be sourced from the Rainforests, and caused deforestation, and endangered some species, most notably, Orangutans. Whole Earth subscribe to RSPO (www.rspo.org) which stands for Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. Alll well and good, you might think, but recently, alarms have been set off that local farmers are being bullied to produce palm oil instead of other more locally produced crops, to provide the west with palm oil. Fairtrade is looking into this and working with RSPO.

So, a very good, tasty product, but maybe slightly less ethical than they think they are.

Enjoy your peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, though!

Can by purchased for approximnately £2 per jar (depending where from) and contains 350 grams.