Sunday, October 27, 2013

A Nod to Peanut Butter

Yesterday I was enjoying my daily snack of Wheat Thins and Peanut Butter. Comment all you want to on my snacking choices but I do love Wheat Thins and Peanut Butter.

Beware, the following train of thought might scare you.

As I was enjoying my delicious peanut butter the following thought popped up in my head: As much peanut butter as I eat a year (and it’s a lot trust me!) I wonder if I support at least one peanut farmer.

That thought led me to wonder how many peanuts are in a jar of peanut butter.

And you guessed it…I looked it up!

As if they could hear my thoughts before they happened, the National Peanut Board was so kind as to put up a Fun Fact page! I will list some of their fun facts below:

  • It takes 540 peanuts to make a 12-ounce jar of peanut butter.
  • There are enough peanuts in one acre to make 30,000 peanut butter sandwiches.

Of course my resulting question was well how many peanuts are there per acre? According to this article, yield per acre ranges from 2,900-4,200 pounds per acre. Not sure how many peanuts that actually is, but that’s a lot of peanuts considering a bushel of peanuts is about 22 pounds.

That doesn’t exactly answer my question but my conclusion is that that is a lot of peanuts. And I definitely don’t employ a peanut farmer on my own especially if you consider another that the average peanut farm is 100 acres (according to the Peanut Board). That’s 3 million peanut butter sandwiches. Yikes!

  • The average American consumes more than 6 pounds of peanuts and peanut butter products each year. (I think you could probably at least double that in my case especially considering the amount of Reese’s I eat…seriously, I would die if I was allergic to peanuts.)
  • Americans spend almost $800 million a year on peanut butter. And make more than 10 billion PB&J sandwiches a year. Wooooeeee that is a lot of PB&Js! YUM!
  • Peanuts are high in protein, niacin and folate and are cholesterol-free. Eating peanuts can keep you heart-healthy and trim! Check out these articles if you don’t believe me: Harvard Health, The Peanut Institute, Purdue News
Of course we can’t forget that peanuts/peanut butter/peanut paste/peanut oil are in a number of foods, especially snacks and protein bars, as well.

I work in agriculture and I didn’t know all of these amazing things about peanuts (and peanut butter)! It just goes to show that we all have our specialties. Not to mention I have never lived in a place where peanuts are grown.

Someone told me I had too much time on my hands if I was looking up how many peanuts are in a jar of peanut butter. I don’t think I have too much time on my hands…I just want to know as much as I can once I come up with a question! And look at all the awesome things we have learned!

Moral of this story: I already loved peanut butter. But now I have some cool peanut facts to share. And if my Korean counterparts in the office hadn’t already commented to me on America’s obsession with peanut butter…well I can now safely say Americans really do love our peanut butter! And now I know to add more peanuts to my diet to increase heart-healthiness!

Too bad peanut butter pie doesn’t fall on the list as heart-healthy…but I think I’m going to go enjoy some anyway!


Have a great day!

No comments:

Post a Comment