Peanut butter goes back to many countries and times. Dating back over 100,000 years ago, a fossilized peanut was discovered in the Republic of China . For centuries, peanuts have been crushed and ground into paste to be used in cooking. Africans made peanut stew as early as the 15th century, and the Chinese have used peanuts in sauces for hundreds of years.Civil War soldiers dined on peanut porridge, but peanut butter didn't really make the scene in America until the late 1890's. Although Dr. George Washington Carver developed 300 uses for the nutmeat, shell and foliage of the peanut. Peanut butter was invented in 1890 by a St. Louis physician seeking an easily digestible, high protein food for some of his patients who couldn't eat meat because they had bad teeth. Friends and relatives of the patients found they liked the new health food so well that by the early 1920's it had become a staple food throughout the nation. About the same time, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, cereal pioneer, began to experiment with peanut butter and eventually patented it. A Kellogg employee even began selling hand operated peanut butter grinders in 1897 and it was in 1904 when this yummy gooey treat went mainstream when it was introduced at the Universal Exposition in St Louis.
The Jif plant in Lexington, Kentucky is reportedly the largest peanut butter factory in the world. Peanut butter accounts for over half of U.S. peanut production, and Americans eat almost 7 pounds of peanuts and peanut butter per capita. Eighty three percent of all Americans purchase peanut butter. By the time an American graduates from High School, he or she will have eaten 1,500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Their consumption equates to more than 700 million pounds of peanut butter annually, or enough to cover the floor of the Grand Canyon.
An acre of peanuts can yield more than 30,000 peanut butter sandwiches, the most popular ones for kids to take to school. It takes 540 peanuts to make a 12-ounce jar of peanut butter. Runner peanuts are the preferred nut for peanut butter making since they are uniform in size making them better for even roasting. Seventy percent of all peanut butter sold is smooth and the remaining thirty percent chunky. Creamy peanut butter is preferred on the East Coast, Chunky on the West Coast.
Peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth because of a process called hydration of the peanut protein. The high level of protein in peanut butter draws the moisture away from your mouth as you eat it, just like a sponge soaks up water.
And finally peanuts aren't really nuts, they are legumes, in the same family as beans and peas. But even though their physical structure and nutritional benefits resemble legumes, their use in diets and cuisine more resembles nuts.
Source: American Peanut Coalition
